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Politicians across party lines from these states closed ranks to criticise Adityanath — and audit his government. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s claim that if he is not voted back to office the state could become a Kerala, West Bengal or Jammu and Kashmir is a dog whistle, plain and simple and disquieting. These states have a substantial Muslim population. Except for Jammu and Kashmir, where mainstream politics is in the cold, the other two states have a politics that has resoundingly defeated the BJP. In the black-and-white discourse of politics, this, in the eyes of the BJP, makes them “appeasers of minorities”. So the message in the CM’s video, released just ahead of the first phase of polling in the state Thursday, was not lost on anyone. Expectedly, politicians across party lines from these states closed ranks to criticise Adityanath — and audit his government.
It is a self-goal when Adityanath has to talk about other states in the Union to stike imagined fears, raise old bogeys, to attract voters rather than let his own record in office speak for itself. Just the other day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in Parliament about the BJP’s commitment to cooperative federalism — he recalled the virtual meetings he had held with various chief ministers while formulating the government’s Covid strategy — and emphasised unity in India’s diversity. The fact is the BJP has been raising communal dog whistles in its UP campaign for some time. Adityanath had recently framed the electoral contest as 80 per cent versus 20 per cent, the latter an allusion to the percentage of Muslims in the state’s population. The BJP has routinely invoked the memory of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan who died in 1948, and woven it into the party’s exclusivist nationalism narrative to polarise the electorate: Adityanath described those voting against the BJP as supporters of Jinnah. Even claims made on improvement in law and order are framed communally and appeals for re-election are cast as a necessary step to protect “sisters, mothers and daughters”. Administrative actions taken in violation of due process — encounter killings to indiscriminate arrests and seizure of property belonging to protesters from minority groups — have become proxy indicators of a no-nonsense “tough” government.
The regress towards a discourse of majoritarianism and victimhood instead of a positive campaign focused on the party’s record in office may be good election politics but a campaign that paints the spectre of a communal threat only creates bitterness that will endure long after the votes are counted.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 12, 2022 under the title ‘Dog-whistle politics’.
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