Exclusive-India Hindu group puts allies in Muslim universities in outreach for votes

Hindu groups linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi are appointing Muslim leaders to important roles in Muslim universities, hoping to win over Muslim voters ahead of the upcoming national elections, according to officials.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), associated with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is aiming to attract Muslim voters who traditionally support Congress and other parties, with the goal of increasing the BJP’s Muslim vote from 9% to 17% in the upcoming election.

Senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar, the chief patron of the group’s Muslim wing, expressed confidence that the BJP will gain a larger share of Muslim votes than in the past due to their efforts to appeal to India’s 200 million Muslims.

Despite longstanding tensions between the predominantly Hindu RSS and India’s Muslim minority, the organization’s Muslim Rashtriya Manch, established in 2002, has experienced significant growth in membership since Modi came into power, according to spokesperson Shahid Sayeed.

While there have been concerns about the RSS’s motives and their influence in institutions meant for the Muslim community, officials have revealed that the organization now recommends 99% of the vice-chancellors of Muslim universities, and the government largely accepts these recommendations, said Sayeed.

The RSS’s approach to placing Muslim allies in key university positions is a new strategy, and it indicates the organization’s efforts to work from within the community. The membership of the RSS’s Muslim Rashtriya Manch has surged to 1 million from 10,000 prior to Modi’s tenure ten years ago, noted Sayeed.

The RSS Muslim wing aims to establish a “well-organised system to reach out to the youth and the teachers” in Muslim-majority universities such as Aligarh Muslim University, the University of Kashmir, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti Language University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Jamia Hamdard and Maulana Azad National Urdu University, according to the RSS’s Kumar.

The move to nominate Muslim leaders in prominent university roles is part of the RSS’s larger strategy to create a network among teachers and students and foster a sense of patriotism in these universities, which have previously been criticized for not adequately promoting India’s national symbols and events, noted Kumar.

The vice-chancellor of the University of Kashmir, for example, raised the Indian flag on Independence Day, which was a significant shift from the past practices of the university, according to a senior professor.

At Aligarh Muslim University, India’s largest Muslim university, the former vice-chancellor who has close ties to the BJP resigned to become a BJP state lawmaker and was later appointed as the party’s national vice president. There have also been reports of increasing numbers of faculty members close to the BJP or the RSS joining the university in recent years.

While BJP spokesperson Shazia Ilmi defended the government’s right to nominate its own candidates for key positions and emphasized the importance of nationalism, former vice-chancellor of the University of Lucknow, Roop Rekha Verma, expressed concerns over prioritizing ideology over qualifications.

Congress, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of maintaining a diverse range of ideologies in educational institutions and criticized the imposition of a single ideology.

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das and Saurabh Sharma; Additional reporting by Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar; Editing by William Mallard)