Will communal rhetoric help or hurt BJP?

There are two strange turns in the affairs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — India’s pre-eminent party — that have become visible in this election. The first is the induction of politicians tainted by corruption charges — this is not an exception but has become the rule. It’s reached an epidemic in a party where one of its architects, L K Advani resigned as an MP in 1996 following allegations of his involvement in the Jain Hawala scam. Entries were found in the diaries of hawala broker S K Jain by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that presented them as evidence against politicians, including Advani.

Advani, who put the BJP on India’s political map with the Ram temple agitation, then said: “for a politician to command people’s trust demands morality and the need to maintain probity in public life.” (He would not resign over criminal cases linked to the demolition of the 1991 Babri mosque as the BJP saw that as an ideological movement). By 1998, when his name was cleared in the Hawala scam, Advani was re-elected.

The idea of distancing oneself from corruption charges and being what was then called ‘a party with a difference’ was big with the BJP’s founders. Even if we look at that era as an age of relative innocence, there is something bizarre about the smash-and-grab policies that characterise the BJP’s actions during the second term of the Narendra Modi government.

The list of corruption-accused leaders currently aligned with the BJP is long, but let’s take two from Maharashtra: Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar who split the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to support the BJP in the state, and former chief minister Ashok Chavan, who quit the Congress to join the BJP. Until recently, both Pawar and Chavan were targeted by the BJP’s entire ecosystem (from workers to leaders to the IT cell) for being corrupt. Now that they have switched sides that ecosystem must support and work for them. Many ordinary workers in the BJP and the Sangh parivar are uncomfortable, and some are disgusted. The same is the case with the many other controversial inductees.

The decision to induct corrupt politicians from other parties cannot be that of a political organisation that has a long-term vision in politics. These can only be the decisions of individuals with a short-term plan for the party.

The BJP has transformed during the Modi era with other power centres in the party destroyed. The subjugation of state leaders is somewhat tragic in a party where everyone could once aspire to be heard and accommodated.

Communal polarisation

Anti-Muslim rhetoric is part of the BJP’s journey, but the level of it during the current election campaign has hit a new low. This is the second turn in the affairs of the BJP.

Before the campaign began, Modi was positioning himself as a world statesman particularly posturing over links with West Asia nations such as the United Arab Emirates and and Qatar. But once the campaign began, Modi turned to making the most loaded Hindu-Muslim speeches of his prime ministerial career.

He has made rather outlandish suggestions about the Muslim community getting (or snatching) resources should the Congress come to power. Other top figures in the BJP, including India’s Home Minister Amit Shah who is in charge of law and order, have also chosen to invoke fear of the Muslim by saying that should BJP be defeated, Sharia or Islamic law could come to India.

Such rhetoric at a time when there is no major communal conflagration in the country. At the start of his career in mass politics in Gujarat, as chief minister after the 2002 communal riots, Modi had famously used the phrase “hum paach-hamare pachees” while referring to Muslims. That was still post-riot rhetoric.

Twenty-two years have passed, and Modi has never lost an election. One had imagined that after posturing at the G20 summit as a respected world leader and then some months later standing at the Ram mandir consecration ceremony like the head priest of the nation, the prime minister would have left the rabble-rousing to the troops.

Instead, we are hearing daily speeches about Muslim appeasement, wild scenarios are being painted about the possible snatching of mangalsutras by some entities (Muslims or Congress, or both?), statements have been made about Muslim reservation that’s not legally possible today, and even Mughal emperor Aurangzeb has been brought into the conversation. At a rally in Karnataka’s Belagavi, the PM said that Rahul Gandhi insulted Hindu kings but kept quiet about atrocities by Nawabs, Nizams, Sultans, and Badshahs, and Muslim rulers like Aurangzeb.

There has been some offense taken and complaints have gone to the Election Commission of India, but it’s also become darkly comical and hysterical.

Particularly so when we recognise that there have been occasions when attempts at polarisation have not brought electoral rewards for the BJP. The Delhi assembly election of 2020 that took place in the shadow of the anti-CAA protests and some jarring rhetoric by BJP lawmakers was one occasion when the national party lost badly to the state party, Aam Aadmi Party. In the assembly election last year, Karnataka was the very state where the BJP was defeated by the Congress despite the former raising multiple Hindutva issues.

On June 4 we will learn whether the induction of the corrupt and the escalation of a communal rhetoric will help or hurt the BJP.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.