Rediff
New Delhi, Jul 14: Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate L K Advani on Sunday said if elected to power, the party would work for the welfare of Muslims, and irrespective of how many of them vote for it.
"Irrespective of what percentage of Muslims vote for the BJP and NDA, our government, if voted into office by the people of India, will work for the welfare, development and security of the Muslims," Advani said addressing a Muslim women's conference in the capital.
Asserting that the politics of minorytism must be defeated, the senior BJP leader alleged that some parties in India want Muslims to remain forever in the minority mindset.
"It is for this reason that I say that the BJP follows anti-minoritysm but is not anti-minority", he added.
Appealing to members of the community not to fall prey to the politics of minorityism, he clarified that the BJP is more interested in their welfare, all round development and security than in their votes.
Lashing out at 'other parties' for paiting BJP as an anti-Muslim party, Advani, who came to the forefront of National politics after the Ayodhya movement, said his party totally disbelieves in any kind of discrimination on the basis of religion.
"We accept and are indeed proud of-the religious diversity of India," he said adressing the seminar organized by the minority cell of the party.
Just because a section of the Muslim leadership mistakenly, and for its own vested interests, pursued the flawed policy of the 'two nation' theory, and brought about the tragic division of India, there is no justification to view Indian Muslims today through the prism of what happened 60 years ago, he observed.
Do not remain pawns in the selfish politics of the Congress and other pseudo-secular parties. Support the BJP and NDA, together we shall open a new chapter in the politics of genuine secularism and genuine empowerment of all the underprivileged people belonging to both majority and minority communities," he said.
"Our adversaries will say that Muslims will never vote for the BJP. But we are proving them wrong everywhere," he added.
As the Muslim women among the delegates shouted "Bharat mata ki jai" (hail mother India), Advani said, "The Congress rule, rather misrule, will soon become history. There will be no Congress-led government after the next Parliamentary elections, whenever they are held."
He called on the Muslim women to go back to their families with the message that the anti-BJPism spread by the Congress is a farce.
The resolution adopted in the conclave hailed Advani's candidature for Prime Ministership.
Condemning the UPA for price rise, the resolution said that the Prime Minister Manmohan Singhis eager to push the Indo-US nuclear deal because US president George Bush is more important for him than the welfare of the country.
The seminar was also adressed by the party's minority cell chief Syed Shahnawaz Hussain and other leaders including Najma Heptullah, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Vijay Goel and Kiran Maheshwari, the women cell incharge.