By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI – A senior Muslim functionary of Bharatiya Janata Party in Rajasthan has paid the price with his expulsion and arrest on flimsy grounds for speaking out against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent hate speech in Banswara, where he described Muslims as infiltrators and claimed that they produce a large number of children. Modi’s offensive remarks during the Lok Sabha election campaign have sparked an outrage across the country.
The BJP’s office-bearer who has been targeted by the saffron party for showing courage to criticise Modi is the party’s Bikaner District Minority Morcha president Usman Ghani. Ghani said while speaking to a television news channel in New Delhi that being a Muslim, he was shocked and disappointed with Modi’s observations that people’s wealth was going to be snatched and distributed to Muslims.
“When I, as a BJP member, go to Muslims to seek their votes, they ask me about the PM’s remarks. I feel embarrassed. I am going to write to Modi Ji with the request not to indulge in such vahiyaat (nonsense) talks,” Ghani said. He also said that the BJP was going to lose three to four out of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan, as the Jat community was angry with the party and had voted against it in Churu and other Lok Sabha constituencies.
Rattled by Ghani’s remarks, which were widely circulated on the social media platforms, the BJP swung into action and expelled him from the party’s primary membership for six years on April 24 on the ground of tarnishing its image. BJP’s Rajasthan state disciplinary committee chairman Onkar Singh Lakhawat said the party had taken cognizance of Ghani’s act of indiscipline and found that his remarks had adversely affected the party’s image.
However, the BJP’s retributive action did not stop at Ghani’s expulsion. The Bikaner police functioning under the BJP government in Rajasthan arrested Ghani on April 28 on charges of breach of peace by allegedly creating a ruckus at a police station in the city. Ghani, booked under the preventive arrest provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, was produced before a Sub-Divisional Magistrate the next day and sent to jail under the judicial custody.
Ghani reached the Mukta Prasad Nagar police station around noon on April 28 after a police vehicle was sent as a precautionary measure to his locality two to three days ago, when he made the remarks against Modi. The Station House Officer (SHO) said Ghani asked the policemen how dare they sent a vehicle to his home and fought with them. Ghani was arrested under Section 151 of Cr.P.C. when he continued to fight with the policemen and did not relent despite attempts made to control him, according to the police.
However, the police did not explain why a vehicle had been sent to Ghani’s residence in the first place. Ghani is now spending time in jail, as was sent to judicial custody instead of being granted the bail with the signing of a bond for maintaining peace for the next six months, which is a routine affair under Section 151 of Cr.P.C. The arrest and refusal of bail clearly pointed to the punishment as a revenge.
Ghani was earlier a member of the BJP’s student wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and had joined the regular cadre of the party in 2005. He had welcomed Modi at Bikaner airport a few months ago, when he arrived in the district during the 2023 Assembly elections.
Ghani was considered as one of the trusted Muslim leaders of the BJP in Bikaner. During his presidency of the Minority Morcha, he organised one of the biggest conventions on former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s birth anniversary in 2021, the biggest in the last 10 years across all districts in Rajasthan. He led several protests in the district, campaigned for Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal for the Lok Sabha polls and was invited to welcome the Prime Minister during the Assembly election rally.
Ghani worked proactively for the BJP’s affairs in Bikaner district and took part in the programmes organised for reaching out to the Muslim community. He also organised the Minority Morcha’s pushpa varsha (flower showers) on a religious procession of Hindus as a gesture to ensure communal harmony. During the 2023 Assembly election, he was tasked to campaign and hold a community meeting in Bikaner East where the erstwhile royal family member Siddhi Kumari was contesting.
None of these initiatives and good works for the BJP could help him when the party decided to show him the door when he criticised Modi’s offensive remarks against Muslims and counselled restraint in the language used during the election campaign. The entire episode shows the true colours of the BJP which wants to be seen as anti-Muslim and does not brook criticism of its highly divisive and communal agenda.
BJP State Minority Morcha president Hameed Khan Mewati said Ghani should have raised the issue of his displeasure at an appropriate forum. “Despite being an office-bearer of the party, he talked about his discontent over a certain matter on a wrong platform. It is incorrect to say that Muslims are being targeted in the BJP rule. They are benefiting from all the welfare schemes of the Central Government,” Mewati said in an interaction with journalists in Jaipur.
National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate from Kerala’s Malappuram, M. Abdul Salam, who is the lone Muslim candidate from the BJP in the fray, has defended the party’s decision to expel Ghani as well as Modi’s remarks at the election rally in Banswara. Salam said Ghani was dismissed as he made statements that should not have been made while he is a member of the party.
“In any party, leaders should maintain at least minimum discipline. You will have to obey some policies of the party, even if you don’t agree with them. And, if you cannot accept them, you should quit the party,” Salam said. Referring to Modi’s speech, Salam said it was an attack on the Congress, not the Muslim community. Modi criticised the practices of the Congress, citing that public funds were being utilised to entice a specific segment of the populace to secure their votes, he said.
In a positive development, the support for Ghani has come from an unexpected quarter. Mohsin Rasheed, a Muslim leader of Congress from Rajasthan’s Tonk city, has condemned Ghani’s expulsion and arrest and praised his courage to speak up against the Prime Minister. “The BJP probably needs the people who would stay with the party as its slaves. If Ghani is not granted bail, we will launch a major agitation across Rajasthan with the demand for his immediate release from the jail,” Rasheed said. Rasheed is at present the coordinator of the Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee’s minority department.
