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The hostilities between the BJP and AAP have recently received a boost due to the latter’s Punjab victory. Its high-profile success for the second time in Delhi had already set it on a collision course with the BJP. On a day when Union Home Minister Amit Shah was making a vivid speech in Parliament, invoking “janata ka faisla (people’s verdict)” and taunting political opponents including the Aam Aadmi Party, while responding to the debate on the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill 2022, a section of his partymen pushed their way up to the Delhi Chief Minister’s residence and acted like lumpens. Nearly 200 members of the BJP’s youth wing, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), broke through barricades, vandalised a CCTV camera, kicked and banged the main gate and threw colour on it. They were ostensibly protesting against CM Kejriwal’s comments earlier on the film, ‘The Kashmir Files,’ in the Delhi Assembly. They were led by BJYM national president and BJP MP Tejasvi Surya, the leadership’s posterboy who has acquired a reputation for making incendiary remarks against minorities — and who, recently, had to “unconditionally” swallow some of his words when, ahead of the Goa polls, he made a provocation too many, calling for bringing back into the Hindu fold all those who had converted to Islam and Christianity. Surely, the BJP can spot the bizarre contrast in these two scenes of a democracy. Surely, it cannot congratulate itself for impaling the Opposition with sharp arguments on the floor of the House, the highest forum of debate, without first expressing contrition for the thuggish protest outside the Delhi CM’s residence on Wednesday.
The hostilities between the BJP and AAP have recently received a boost due to the latter’s Punjab victory. Its high-profile success for the second time in Delhi had already set it on a collision course with the BJP. At the same time, it has also become clear that the AAP is carving out for itself a less tidy, more complex trajectory. On the BJP-led Centre’s August 5 scrapping of Article 370 in Kashmir, for instance, the AAP was the first in the Opposition to explicitly support the decision. It has also not hesitated to take the battle to the BJP with its own endorsement of, and participation in, a performative patriotism and religiosity in public spaces, be it in a temple in Delhi or Ayodhya. Whether or not the AAP’s strategy is the best way to take on the BJP’s challenge is debatable. But it may have already made it a little more difficult for the BJP to label Kejriwal’s party as “anti Hindu” or “pro Muslim” or “pro terror” reflexively, a ploy it uses with almost every Opposition party.
Perhaps the lumpenism by the BJYM Wednesday was meant to pin one of these labels on AAP. Or it was a show of muscle by a party out to fix anyone who stands up to disagree. Whatever it was, the BJP must condemn it unequivocally. And Delhi Police, which registered an FIR against “unidentified persons” even though the culprits are caught on camera, brazen and unabashed, must know that its cave-in is being watched. In Parliament, Shah said “BJP workers don’t need to be afraid of anyone.” Perhaps he should tell his younger colleagues, who broke barricades and clambered atop a police vehicle, that not being afraid is not a licence to spread fear. Because blinking at the thuggery of its own does not behove a ruling party.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on April 1, 2022 under the title ‘House and street’.
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