Thakur’s candidature took many by surprise. The BJP has no dearth of tall leaders in Madhya Pradesh to challenge Digvijaya Singh, the Congress candidate from Bhopal who was the state’s chief minister for a decade. (PTI)The BJP has made Bhopal the epicentre of its Hindutva ideology by fielding terror-accused Pragya Singh Thakur as its candidate for the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat. A BJP bastion for the past 30 years, Bhopal has suddenly become the site of one of the most interesting electoral and ideological battles in the country.
Thakur’s candidature took many by surprise. The BJP has no dearth of tall leaders in Madhya Pradesh to challenge Digvijaya Singh, the Congress candidate from Bhopal who was the state’s chief minister for a decade. They have the hugely popular Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who ruled MP for a record 13 years. Charismatic Uma Bharti, who trounced Singh 15 years ago, is still around. So is former CM Babulal Gaur, who holds the enviable record of representing Bhopal in the state assembly for 10 terms, winning the seat every time with an increased margin.
Yet, the BJP chose Thakur, facing trial in a case of terrorism: The 2008 Malegaon blasts killed six persons and injured 101 others. Apparently, it has discovered a new Hindutva mascot in Thakur. The BJP, though, alleges that its predecessor, the Congress government, implicated Thakur and other radical Hindu activists in fake cases. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described Thakur’s candidacy as a symbolic answer to those who falsely labelled Hindus as terrorists. BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya says bluntly: “The Congress tried to prove a Hindu is a terrorist. Now Hindus should give a reply through votes.”
While the RSS prides itself on “nation building”, opponents like Singh have accused it of violence and communal politics. His candidature from Bhopal was an open challenge to the BJP that had been winning the seat since 1989. Along with its earlier avatar, the Jana Sangh, it ruled the state for more than 20 years. Although it lost power in the state five months ago, it actually polled more votes than the Congress.
As the Congress flexed its muscles, the BJP bared its fangs. It knows that fielding Thakur against Singh would lead to polarisation. That seems to be its ideological agenda. The 49-year-old Thakur started her political career as an ABVP activist in her home district of Bhind, in Chambal valley. But the RSS proved too conservative for her. She graduated to another Hindu organisation, considered more radical.
Maharashtra’s ATS arrested her in 2008 as one of the “principal conspirators” in the Malegaon blasts and she spent nine years in jail. In 2015, a year after the BJP came to power, the NIA sought to drop the charges against her. However, the court refused to go along with the NIA’s decision, and, framed charges against her for terror activities, criminal conspiracy and murder. The public prosecutor in the case quit four years ago, alleging government pressure.
Thakur was also arrested, along with seven others, in the sensational 2007 murder of Sunil Joshi, her colleague and a former RSS activist. The court, however, acquitted all eight accused two years ago as the prosecution failed to prove its case. The murder remains unsolved.
During her campaign, Thakur portrays herself as a “victim” of the plot to malign Hindutva, often breaking down while narrating vivid stories of how she was stripped naked, hanged upside down and tortured in police custody until she “lost consciousness”. She alleges that as a result of “inhuman treatment”, she developed cancer. However, now she is supposedly cured, thanks to the cow urine therapy she undertook.
The BJP soon discovered that it has found not only a mascot but also a loose cannon in Thakur. At a meeting she vilified Maharashtra ATS officer Hemant Karkare, winner of the Ashoka Chakra, India’s highest peacetime gallantry award, after he was shot dead in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack. Karkare, she pronounced, died after she had “cursed” him for torturing her in custody. Her offensive remarks shocked most people. Even as a a political firestorm broke out, Thakur boasted that she had climbed atop the Babri Masjid and demolished it, saying, “we removed a blot on the nation.”
The Election Commission may slap notices on her, but there is little doubt about the direction of this campaign. Faced with Hindutva’s onslaught, Singh is weaving his campaign around the development plank. This is ironical because as chief minister he believed that elections are won not by development but by political management and social engineering.
Singh has tried to reinvent himself as a born-again Hindu. He started his campaign by visiting temples. Last heard, his supporters were distributing bottles of holy Narmada water to woo voters! Singh had undertaken a 3,300-km arduous pilgrimage along the Narmada last year. He hoped that the 192-day march on foot would help him shed the anti-Hindu image that his detractors have imposed on him.
Ironically, Singh is a devout Hindu in his personal life. In fact, once as chief minister he took his entire cabinet to Mathura for a 24-km foot march around a hill that Hindus consider holy. A senior BJP leader commented that the Bhopal election has become a litmus test for RSS’s Hindutva: “We have taken a big risk. If we lose, it will mean voters have rejected Hindutva”. And, if it wins?
The writer is a Bhopal-based journalist
