It also appears to underline that the unseemly and downright inflammatory campaigning by the BJP ahead of the Delhi elections in the last few days and weeks is sanctioned and even encouraged by the party’s very top.
Finally, the Prime Minister of India broke his silence on the ongoing protests against a discriminatory citizenship law at Shaheen Bagh among other places but only to sound off key.
It is no “sanyog (coincidence)” that protesters have gathered at Seelampur, Jamia or Shaheen Bagh, PM Narendra Modi said, but a “prayog (experiment)” — “iske peeche rajneeti ka ek aisa design hai jo rashtra ke sauhard ko khandit karne ke iraade rakhta hai”, there is a design that aims to destroy amity in the country. That statement is problematic because it seeks to frame the democratic expression of opposition to a law passed by government as something sinister.
It also appears to underline that the unseemly and downright inflammatory campaigning by the BJP ahead of the Delhi elections in the last few days and weeks is sanctioned and even encouraged by the party’s very top. If the prime minister, no less, frames the election as one between the BJP and conspirators against the nation, then Messrs Anurag Thakur, Yogi Adityanath, and Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma, who was fielded in Parliament by his party soon after being banned from campaigning for hate speech by the Election Commission, must not be seen as transgressors. They are loyal footsoldiers in a concerted assault on the norms of political civility.
The BJP has fought nasty election campaigns before and even the PM himself has gone low in the past. In the Haryana campaign last year in October, he spoke of the main political opponent’s “chemistry” with Pakistan. In the Gujarat assembly election in 2017, he had alleged that a conspiracy was hatched with Pakistan, involving former PM Manmohan Singh, to defeat the BJP.
And yet, the labelling and vilification of the protests against the CAA in the course of the campaign for Delhi is different, and worse. Here, the BJP and the PM are not just aiming barbs at their political rivals but also, and more, at the people. The anti-CAA protests that have erupted in Delhi and across the country and that are overwhelmingly peaceful and evidently leader-less are being relentlessly baited and targeted by the ruling party — instead of being listened to or engaged with. By painting Shaheen Bagh as the den of “pro-Pakistan” “anti-nationals”, “jihadis” and “urban Naxals”, the BJP and its government are not just breaching democratic etiquette but also denying agency to all those who have questions about a law that has stoked widespread concerns that go to the heart of Indian identity, equality and citizenship.
It may be that the BJP’s rhetoric will lose its harsh edge once Delhi has been won and lost. It may be that the moderating impulse that compelled the PM to take a step back from a nation-wide NRC in another speech that launched the BJP’s Delhi campaign will return. Meanwhile, this systematic trashing of the protest raises questions on the government’s willingness and ability to talk to its own people without calling them names. It is not the protests that threaten amity, it is their demonisation which does that.
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