Tariq Mansoor is from UP, the place Muslims represent roughly 19% of the state’s citizens. (file)
New Delhi:
In an try and strengthen its ongoing outreach amongst Muslim Pasmanda communities, the BJP on Saturday appointed former Aligarh Muslim College vice-chancellor Tariq Mansoor as one in all its vice presidents.
Mr Mansoor was instrumental in steering the AMU, one of many hotbeds of anti-NRC and CAA protests, on a “center path”, and later intently working with the RSS on its challenge to advertise the teachings of Mughal prince Dara Shikoh on peaceable Hindu-Muslim coexistence that was in contradiction to his brother Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s method of working.
The appointment got here on a day when Residence Minister Amit Shah was in Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu to launch a e-book on former president APJ Abdul Kalam, additionally one of many icons of the social gathering’s Pasmanda outreach.
BJP has been constantly reaching out to a piece of the Muslim inhabitants by Minority Morcha conferences, principally centered on Pasmanda Muslims, who’re from Dalit and different backward class communities. Mr Mansoor was elected to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council, the fourth Muslim picked by the BJP for the put up in the previous few years.
Tariq Mansoor is from Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh, the place Muslims represent roughly 19% of the state’s citizens, and have a sizeable presence in a minimum of 30 Lok Sabha seats, out of which they play a significant function in deciding the result in 15 to twenty constituencies.
In keeping with an RSS functionary, Mr Mansoor had impressed the sangh’s management by his work on the Dara Shikoh challenge, by successfully utilizing the AMU’s Persian division to translate a lot of Shikoh’s work on inter-faith dialogue and challenge him as a great for the Muslim neighborhood. He organised seminars and conferences on the identical.
Mr Mansoor, a surgeon, has been related to AMU because the Seventies when he accomplished his MBBS diploma in surgical procedure from the college’s JN Medical Faculty. He then went on to do his Grasp of Surgical procedure (MS) diploma in 1982 from the identical faculty. Other than the BJP’s deal with the Pasmanda Muslims, which is necessary by way of affect, the RSS has been particularly reaching out to Muslim teachers, and folks of the neighborhood from professions corresponding to drugs, legislation, and forms, to make a distinction within the minority discourse.
Jamal Siddiqui, head of the BJP’s Minority Morcha stated Mr Mansoor was a “nationalist Muslim” who has at all times promoted the best of “nation first.” “His understanding of the fault traces within the Muslim neighborhood is as deep as his data in regards to the nation and its historical past. He has led the scholars of AMU on the fitting path and prevented them from being misled. His appointment will assist the social gathering to increase higher.”
He was the fourth particular person from the Muslim neighborhood to be promoted to the Legislative Council by the social gathering in UP since 2017, after Bukkal Nawab, Mohsin Raza, and Danish Azad Ansari.
Mr Mansoor was the AMU Vice Chancellor when it witnessed protests in opposition to the Citizenship Modification Act (CAA) and the proposed Nationwide Register of Residents (NRC) in 2020. He was then criticised for “not standing up for college kids” when policemen allegedly barged into the college, versus the VC of Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, who stood by the scholars. Mr Mansoor has, nevertheless, at all times stated he did his finest, and talked in regards to the significance of welfare and socio-economic justice over id points.
“Mansoor belongs to Aligarh, the hub of Muslim politics, and comes from an informed, center class household. His household has docs and legal professionals. That is the type of Muslims we need to work with to take the nation ahead,” a BJP functionary from UP stated.
Khalid Anis Ansari, affiliate professor from Azim Premji College, who has been actively elevating points pertaining to the neighborhood for a few years, has usually identified that Indian Muslims too are victims of caste-based stratification, and are divided into three primary lessons, and tons of of biradaris.
The ‘Ashraf’ Muslims, or native higher caste converts, as an illustration Syed, Sheikh, Mughal, Pathan, and so forth are on the high, and the Syed biradari is very revered. The actions in opposition to the Ashraf dominance have been led by the ‘decrease’ ones – Ajlaf (backward Muslims) and Arzal (Dalit Muslims), and these are referred to as Pasmandas, the neighborhood the BJP has been making an attempt to woo. Solely 15 % of the neighborhood come from these higher caste communities, whereas the remainder are largely Pasmanda Muslims. The BJP has deliberate a large Sneh Yatra to achieve out to those Pasmanda Muslims within the coming days.
Muslim intellectuals and opposition events have, nevertheless, stated this was an try by the BJP to create a divide among the many Muslim neighborhood, and that usually the Muslim victims of hate crimes or financial boycott had been Pasmanda themselves.