No fight with Muslims: New Bengal BJP chief
"There is a conscious effort to divide Bengal on the basis of religion. The minority community should understand we are not fighting against them. We are fighting against the forces that shove stones in their boys' hands. We want to replace thosestones with books. We want to replace the swords in their hands with pens," he said.
Bhattacharya's line contrasts sharply with the shrill anti-Muslim pitch adopted by his BJP colleague and assembly opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari, and comes after his party's abject defeat in Kaliganj assembly bypoll.
Kaliganj is a Muslim-majority constituency in Nadia. BJP was the only party that saw its vote share dip (from 31% in 2021 to 28.2% now), prompting TMC to emphasise how BJP had failed to hold on to even its majority community votes.
It remains to be seen whether Bhattacharya's party colleagues keep up their anti-Muslim pitch even as he takes a conciliatory approach, which would indicate the party has hit on a good cop-bad cop strategy with Bengal's approximately 2.5 crore Muslim voters.
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"Look at Bengal's villages. Morchhe Musalman, marchhe Musalman (Muslims are killing and Muslims are dying). Who is responsible for this situation? Those who do not like BJP may not vote for us. But they should accept that 90% of the people killed in the last three years have been Muslims," he said.
"BJP wants visarjan and Muharram processions to walk side by side without any malice against each other. We do not want riots. We want the minority youth to know Bengal through the eyes of Syed Mujtaba Ali and Kazi Nazrul Islam, not terrorists. We want to save Bengal's plurality," Bhattacharya said while the Bengal BJP leadership and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad were on the dais.
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