BJP tries to sell moderate image to Muslims

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is certainly working overtime to make that happen, pitching to Muslims its peace overtures to Pakistan and a booming economy while playing down its Muslim-bashing image and Hindu revivalist roots.

The key salesman is India's avuncular Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, seen as the BJP's moderate face.

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"I seem to recollect the days when Muslims were told if the BJP came to power they'd be sent to Pakistan," Vajpayee told a New Delhi rally last week.

"Where's the question of sending them to Pakistan? Now people travel freely between India and Pakistan," he said, referring to moves to restore transport links between the nuclear rivals after they nearly came to war in 2002.

Ever since Hindu zealots razed a mosque at Ayodhya in 1992, triggering savage religious riots in Gujarat, Indias 120 million-strong Muslim minority has given an even wider berth to the BJP, which rode to prominence on a shrill Hindu revivalist plank.

But now, Muslims are switching sides from the secular Congress party, even in western India, scene of deadly Hindu-Muslims religious riots two years ago, as the BJP seeks to show a moderate face embracing all Indians -- Hindus and Muslims -- ahead of next month's elections.