Three separate incidents over the course of about a week have revealed all too clearly the real face of the Sangh Parivar and its hidden agenda. First, we had Bihar BJP leader Giriraj Singh – who is also the party’s candidate from Nawada – addressing a meeting in Jharkhand and declaring that all those who oppose Narendra Modi have no place in India and will be sent to Pakistan, where they belong, if the BJP comes to power. Next, we had the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Praveen Togadia exhorting his supporters in Bhavnagar in Gujarat to forcibly evict any Muslim who dared to buy property in a ‘Hindu area’ and assuring them that he had done this several times over and ensured that Muslims had lost both lives and property. Finally, on Tuesday, Shiv Sena candidate Ram Das Kadam declared that Muslims were unpatriotic and that Modi would find a ‘final solution’ to the problem. Modi would also smash Pakistan in six months, he asserted.
Those who might like to dismiss these as the random rants of the lunatic fringe of the Parivar should consider the fact that on two of these occasions, it happened in the presence of the senior most leaders of the BJP. In Mumbai, Modi himself was present on the dais when Kadam was taking potshots at Muslims and in Jharkhand former BJP president Nitin Gadkari was sharing the dais with Giriraj Singh.
The reactions of the BJP leadership to these utterances have also been telling. Modi has tried to distance himself by suggesting that many of his well-wishers had been making “petty” and “irresponsible” remarks, which are best avoided. Arun Jaitley too has called upon his party men to avoid making “irresponsible” comments and to be “restrained” in what they say since the BJP is likely to be subjected to intense scrutiny at this point. What is revealing is that no leader has said any of these comments is condemnable. The repeated use of the word “irresponsible” to describe them and Jaitley’s appeal for restraint make it clear that nobody in the Sangh Parivar really feels what has been said by Kadam, Singh or Togadia is objectionable and unacceptable. In their view, the comments are at worst, ill-timed and embarrassing.
In fact, it is not even very clear that the Sangh genuinely feels embarrassed by such comments or regards them as ill-timed. More likely, it approves of a strategy in which the BJP’s top leadership maintains a façade of ‘moderation’ by talking of development, to attract those in the urban middle class who are uncomfortable with an overtly communal agenda, while others focus on the subliminal message of ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’ and muscular Hindutva. Amit Shah’s appeal to the Jats of western UP to take ‘revenge’ against those who had ‘humiliated’ them in the Muzaffarnagar riots, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s promise that a Ram temple would indeed be built in Ayodhya and Modi’s own repeated references to the ‘pink revolution’ – a term used to describe the export of meat, particularly beef –must all be seen as part of this larger strategy. The repeated references to Pakistan are intended to convey more subtly what Kadam stated very bluntly – Muslims are suspect, or as the sangh parivar’s ideological gurus have put it, ‘internal enemies’.
This then is the real face of the Modi campaign, one that belies claims of ‘sab ka saath, sab ka vikas’ made in the BJP manifesto. If this is what it looks like when there is a need for not appearing too rabid or overtly communal and authoritarian, one can well imagine how ugly things could get in the extremely unlikely event that we actually have ab ki baar, Modi sarkar.
April 23, 2014