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Toxic war of words

Toxic war of words

The BJP seems to have lost the plot with its support to rabid  statements by party leaders and is in no mood to engage

If the ruling BJP is indeed serious about its outreach to civil society, which it feels is an alien species and needs an education in Bharat Parv, then its methodology of hammering home truths is grossly and crudely misplaced. And at best ends up as an egoistic assumption of what a dialogue should be like — more and more force-feeding, treating questions like malignant spyware and blaming all of the nation’s problems to either Pakistan or  Bangladesh. How else does one explain the distasteful transgressions of the BJP candidate for the Delhi polls Kapil Mishra and Bengal BJP in-charge Kailash Vijayvargiya? The former, clearly defying the party diktat to dispel fears on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), likened civil protest spots, like Shaheen Bagh, to mini-Pakistan. He even called the Delhi polls an Indo-Pakistan match, clearly implying Hindutva as India and lumping all sorts of otherness into one disposable basket. The Election Commission, which had overlooked incendiary remarks during the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls last year, has thankfully issued a notice and the Delhi police has lodged an FIR against him. Vijayvargiya, who is to drive the party’s campaign in Bengal, has found out a simpler method of identifying infiltrators that does not need documents at all. He feels people eating flattened rice or chidwa are confirmed Bangladeshis, totally ignoring the fact that all Bengalis have this as a staple snack or that poha is a breakfast favourite even in his home State, Madhya Pradesh. At least, he seems to have dispelled the need to go for an elaborate process of compiling and sorting out the National Population Register (NPR). The point is such racist, misogynist and uncouth statements are not even funny any more. They are dangerously serious considering that they are given legitimacy, either because the party’s top leadership stays silent or because fringe leaders of the Sangh, who were once kept under wraps by the old BJP, have  been coopted and rewarded in proportion to their success in disseminating a divisive agenda. What else could explain how even a seasoned senior leader from the old school like Prakash Javadekar had to reduce the Delhi electoral battle to the binaries of who is more committed to Indianness and who is a traitor. He labelled the fight as one between “Bharat Mata ki Jai” and “Jinnah wali azaadi.” One can understand that the BJP has nothing to show as a record of its performance unlike its key opponent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Can that, therefore,  justify this dog-whistling politics? BJP leaders know that their party cannot match the hyper-localised agenda of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and are, therefore, countering that with an umbrella issue that can generate a swell of emotion, which in the current scenario of identity politics, happens to be the most virulent strain of nationalism. Having been out of power in the city for almost 20 years, most of which had seen high-performing regimes, the BJP can no more claim to champion anything revolutionary. Even its war room expert and Home Minister Amit Shah has not picked up any issues except pledging Rs 1 lakh crore for bolstering infrastructure in the recently regularised colonies. And now that AAP deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia has also publicly extended support to the women protesting citizenship laws at Shaheen Bagh, the BJP feels it has drawn out its opponent to an arena  where civic issues become somewhat national.

What is frightening though is that in the process, the BJP is dictating the zeitgeist of contemporary politics. Worse, it is changing the DNA of political discourse with a mythologised sanctity of India’s greatness that has been eaten away by all kinds of imposed viruses until the party rescued it. There was a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself reined in party motormouths and had advised them to stay away from media platforms. Now that same man is either painfully silent or sometimes guilty of playing to the gallery. Anyway, his restraint was just in the nature of an advisory and the fact that someone like Pragya Thakur is now a bonafide MP or that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is allowed a free run with his religion-specific remarks, proves that they not only have the blessings of higher-ups but are deployed as their prize arrowheads. If the Modi of 2014 was about the ABCs of development, he himself has been rather brazen if his comments of green versus pink revolution (against meat-eaters) and kabristan versus shamshan ghat are any indications. So clearly, toxicity was not just limited to campaign rhetoric. And 2014 was just a stepping stone to get a hold of national consciousness in 2019. Now that the BJP has that at its command, it wants to replicate the Sangh’s vision as a voluntary national will that has nothing to do with science, reason, history or culture. With a new obsession on whom we need to be as Indians, issues like the economy can be easily swept under the carpet or become a secondary concern. The saddest part is that this does great disservice to Hinduism and the tenets of an Indic civilisation.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

Toxic war of words

Toxic war of words

The BJP seems to have lost the plot with its support to rabid  statements by party leaders and is in no mood to engage

If the ruling BJP is indeed serious about its outreach to civil society, which it feels is an alien species and needs an education in Bharat Parv, then its methodology of hammering home truths is grossly and crudely misplaced. And at best ends up as an egoistic assumption of what a dialogue should be like — more and more force-feeding, treating questions like malignant spyware and blaming all of the nation’s problems to either Pakistan or  Bangladesh. How else does one explain the distasteful transgressions of the BJP candidate for the Delhi polls Kapil Mishra and Bengal BJP in-charge Kailash Vijayvargiya? The former, clearly defying the party diktat to dispel fears on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), likened civil protest spots, like Shaheen Bagh, to mini-Pakistan. He even called the Delhi polls an Indo-Pakistan match, clearly implying Hindutva as India and lumping all sorts of otherness into one disposable basket. The Election Commission, which had overlooked incendiary remarks during the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls last year, has thankfully issued a notice and the Delhi police has lodged an FIR against him. Vijayvargiya, who is to drive the party’s campaign in Bengal, has found out a simpler method of identifying infiltrators that does not need documents at all. He feels people eating flattened rice or chidwa are confirmed Bangladeshis, totally ignoring the fact that all Bengalis have this as a staple snack or that poha is a breakfast favourite even in his home State, Madhya Pradesh. At least, he seems to have dispelled the need to go for an elaborate process of compiling and sorting out the National Population Register (NPR). The point is such racist, misogynist and uncouth statements are not even funny any more. They are dangerously serious considering that they are given legitimacy, either because the party’s top leadership stays silent or because fringe leaders of the Sangh, who were once kept under wraps by the old BJP, have  been coopted and rewarded in proportion to their success in disseminating a divisive agenda. What else could explain how even a seasoned senior leader from the old school like Prakash Javadekar had to reduce the Delhi electoral battle to the binaries of who is more committed to Indianness and who is a traitor. He labelled the fight as one between “Bharat Mata ki Jai” and “Jinnah wali azaadi.” One can understand that the BJP has nothing to show as a record of its performance unlike its key opponent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Can that, therefore,  justify this dog-whistling politics? BJP leaders know that their party cannot match the hyper-localised agenda of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and are, therefore, countering that with an umbrella issue that can generate a swell of emotion, which in the current scenario of identity politics, happens to be the most virulent strain of nationalism. Having been out of power in the city for almost 20 years, most of which had seen high-performing regimes, the BJP can no more claim to champion anything revolutionary. Even its war room expert and Home Minister Amit Shah has not picked up any issues except pledging Rs 1 lakh crore for bolstering infrastructure in the recently regularised colonies. And now that AAP deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia has also publicly extended support to the women protesting citizenship laws at Shaheen Bagh, the BJP feels it has drawn out its opponent to an arena  where civic issues become somewhat national.

What is frightening though is that in the process, the BJP is dictating the zeitgeist of contemporary politics. Worse, it is changing the DNA of political discourse with a mythologised sanctity of India’s greatness that has been eaten away by all kinds of imposed viruses until the party rescued it. There was a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself reined in party motormouths and had advised them to stay away from media platforms. Now that same man is either painfully silent or sometimes guilty of playing to the gallery. Anyway, his restraint was just in the nature of an advisory and the fact that someone like Pragya Thakur is now a bonafide MP or that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is allowed a free run with his religion-specific remarks, proves that they not only have the blessings of higher-ups but are deployed as their prize arrowheads. If the Modi of 2014 was about the ABCs of development, he himself has been rather brazen if his comments of green versus pink revolution (against meat-eaters) and kabristan versus shamshan ghat are any indications. So clearly, toxicity was not just limited to campaign rhetoric. And 2014 was just a stepping stone to get a hold of national consciousness in 2019. Now that the BJP has that at its command, it wants to replicate the Sangh’s vision as a voluntary national will that has nothing to do with science, reason, history or culture. With a new obsession on whom we need to be as Indians, issues like the economy can be easily swept under the carpet or become a secondary concern. The saddest part is that this does great disservice to Hinduism and the tenets of an Indic civilisation.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

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