We make mistakes and give ‘masala’ to the media, PM Narendra Modi tells BJP MPs and MLAs

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on course correction. In his interaction on Sunday morning with BJP MPs and MLAs through video conferencing, the prime minister bluntly told his colleagues that silence is golden.

“We make mistakes and give ‘masala’ to the media… as if we are great social scientists and experts who can analyse complex issues…  the moment you see a camera you start speaking. So this half-baked stuff is picked up,” he said. “Don’t blame the media. It is doing its job. It is our job to not get entangled in everything, just because we are standing in front of the TV,’’ he added.

He also said that only designated spokespersons should comment on matters concerning the party. “If everyone comments on everything then the conversation goes off the tangent, this harms the country, the party and our personal image.” He recalled that he had once chided some MPs from the party for speaking out of turn; they had desisted after that. His remarks would have touched a raw nerve, especially among loudmouths who have expounded with aplomb their home spun theories on such complex matters as Darwin’s theory of evolution and Internet during days of Mahabharata.

But more than the theatre of absurd that some BJP leaders are adept at, there are others who have spoken without thinking on such sensitive matters as terror, communalism and rape. On Sunday itself, as the PM was dishing out his homilies, junior finance minister Santosh Gangwar waded into a row by asserting that one should not make it such a bid deal if “one or two cases of rape are reported” from a huge country. Gangwar momentarily forgot that the nation is outraged at not just the rapes but also at the political inertia that prevents the establishment from taking action, or when the government chooses to act only when there is a media or public outcry.

To pick up another recent example, BJP MP Bharat Singh on Saturday asserted that Christian missionaries control the Congress and Sonia Gandhi works on the directions of these missionaries. This is not the first time that PM Modi has rapped his colleagues for speaking out of turn. At a party conclave last year Modi had sermonised: “Practice the art of silence”. In a similar vein, he told his party men with a touch of sarcasm on Sunday: “The microphone is not a machine that forces people to speak”. (Quotes from NDTV.com)