New Delhi, July 07: Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid has said most of the Muslim leaders in the country are “rootless” and many of them are handpicked by political parties for their capacity to garner Muslim votes.
“There is a real absence of an organically developed political Muslim class rooted in the community and organically related to it… Most Muslim leaders today are, by and large, rootless and lack organic links with their community. Many of them are from established political families, handpicked by various political parties for their ability to garner Muslim votes,” Khurshid told weekly news magazine Tehelka in an interview.
Referring to leaders like Maulana Azad and Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, the minister said they were neither aggressively dissident nor sycophantic, pliant or excessively dependent on external forces.
–PTI