A dangerous path

Political rhetoric has taken an unwarranted turn

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power not just at the Centre and in several states; it also dominates India’s electoral politics through its mastery of narrative, its outsized purse, and the popularity of its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Such a position brings with it certain responsibilities. In particular, it must not seize on every possible method that appears available in order to win state elections. The behaviour of an insurgent opposition, with little to lose, cannot be adopted by a party that has taken on the burden of steering the ship of the state. Yet, the BJP’s attitude in recent weeks, particularly following the growth of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens, and leading up to the Assembly elections in the National Capital Territory of Delhi, suggests that it has forgotten this basic responsibility.

Certainly, the Delhi election is a high-stakes endeavour, and it is understandable if the BJP wants to pull out all the stops to win such an important contest. The BJP’s mystique in recent years has been built on its desire for victory, and its ability to convince voters in the final weeks of a campaign. But this has now taken a dangerous turn, and is infecting national politics. Recently, two senior BJP politicians were banned from campaigning because of hate speech. Instead of accepting the Election Commission’s strictures in the right spirit, the party instead chose to undermine them by allowing the two members to lead the discussion on the vote of thanks to the President’s Address in Parliament. Parliament is the highest institution in India’s democracy, and the vote of thanks has enormous symbolic power in that it is the highest level discussion about the direction the government seeks to give the country. What signal does it send when those who have been censured for hate speech are given responsibility in that context?

Even in the trenches of the political battle, there are lines that have been crossed. One Union minister called the chief minister of Delhi a terrorist — which is surely beyond the pale for acceptable political debate, particularly from a member of the Cabinet. A chief minister from the BJP, campaigning in Delhi, talked of feeding protesters “bullets, not biryani”. The popularity of chants related to “bullets” has now expressed itself in lone wolf attackers firing guns in proximity at unarmed protest rallies in Delhi. No party of government should be satisfied by a situation in which its own rhetoric is giving rise to turbulence of this sort. It should seek to clamp down on violence while continuing to fight the rhetorical battles with protestors and official opposition that it has previously so easily won. India’s stability, its self-image, and its profile overseas depend upon how the BJP manages these tensions. The prime minister himself has sought to portray India as a stable, growing country on the cusp of leading power status. But such behaviour by the party undermines these ambitions and imposes severe injuries upon the body politic. This is not the direction in which India should be going, and the BJP must draw back from the brink before it is too late.