RSS reaching out to Muslims in West Bengal ahead of 2016 assembly polls

KOLKATA: Shlokas from Rig Veda fill the air. The chanting is flawless, casting a spell on listeners. Were it not the skull cap and the beard, anyone would mistake Shakil Ansari a Hindu priest. The Muslim leader said he was recruited by the RSS owing to this skill, and later inducted in the BJP. “In shakha (local branch), we practice everything that we are instructed to, except uttering the stotra during Pranam.

We believe in Islam and we can only pray to Allah. The Sangh never forces us to preach Hindu stotras,” said Ansari, leader of BJP’s minority cell. Ansari was a member of CPM before he quit the party in protest against the “high-handedness” of some leaders. “An RSS friend took me to BJP,” he said. He exemplifies the success of the RSS in encouraging Muslims in West Bengal to join its shakhas as it strives to present a secular face ahead of the assembly polls next year. The Sangh functionaries term the awareness campaign an “appeal” to the indigenous Muslims in the state to “unite as Hindus” against the infiltrators from Bangladesh.

The RSS is targeting a section of Muslims, among whom discontent is brewing as the Mamata Banerjee government has come up with “appeasement” schemes including allowances to Muslim clerics.