As part of its outreach among minorities, the Bharatiya Janata Party is planning to hold a conference of Sufi saints across the country, which is likely to have the presence of Sufi leaders from religious centres like Hazrat Nizamudddin, Ajmer Sharif and Bareilly Sharif Dargah.
The party’s minority wing will hold a conference, ‘Sufi Saints Samvad Conference’, in March to reach out to the community, said a leader involved in the process.
“The idea is to have an exchange where the Sufi leaders get to know our policies, PM Modi's developmental agenda, and how the BJP as a party is inclusive to all communities and religions,” the leader said, adding that they plan to hold a meeting of the sufi saints with the prime minister soon.
In the party’s national executive held in Hyderabad in June last year, Modi asked party leaders to reach out to the “minorities within minorities”. The BJP has, since then, held outreach efforts within the Bohra Muslim community, too.
The party’s ideological outfit, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, too, has held meetings with Muslim intellectuals, with a second meeting being held last month. Senior RSS leaders Indresh Kumar, Ram Lal, and Krishna Gopal held a meeting with Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, former Election Commissioner SY Quraishi, hotelier Saeed Sherwani, former RLD MP Shahid Siddiqui, Ajmer Dargah’s Salman Chishti as well as leaders from Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind. A similar meeting was held in August last year.
The outreach is crucial to the BJP’s preparations for 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The party has intensified efforts in over 60 seats it lost in 2019, setting a target of bettering its 2019 tally of 303, and yet, party leaders say that the results in states like Bihar and Maharashtra could prove to be troublesome. The party is now focussing in states like Uttar Pradesh where it hopes to make up for possible losses.