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The BJP must realise that it demeans the mandate it got in 2014, reaffirmed in 2019, when it participates in, or sanctions, the coarsening of public political discourse.The allegations levelled by the BJP’s official spokesperson against former Vice President Hamid Ansari cast extremely unflattering light on the BJP, not its intended target. Ansari has had a distinguished career as a diplomat and occupied high constitutional office with grace and dignity. For India’s ruling party now to cast a slur on him on the basis of unsubstantiated and perhaps unsubstantiable claims made by a little-known Pakistan journalist in a YouTube interview, or the word of a former R&AW operative, is a move both shabby and unseemly. The accusations against Ansari are that he invited a Pakistani spy-journalist, Nusrat Mirza, to a conference on terrorism in India while he was V-P in 2010, and that the journalist used the trip to collect information which he later shared with the ISI, and that as ambassador of India to Iran he compromised national interest. Pointing out the gaping holes in the case sought to be made against Ansari is an exercise in stating the obvious, and engaging with the bizarre. As Ansari himself has pointed out, invitations to conferences such as the one on terrorism in 2010 are sent out by the organisers on the advice of the government. In the interview that the BJP has seized upon, Mirza also makes claims such as these — that America had caused the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, and floods in the same country in 2010, and the tsunami in Fukushima in 2011.
The unfortunate fact seems to be this: The BJP is throwing terms that are heavily loaded and highly charged at Ansari and hoping that something — the innuendo, if not the substance — sticks. “Terrorism”, “national interest”, “Pakistan”, “ISI”, “sensitive and classified” — in a time of polarised and distrustful politics, these are the building blocks of sinister stories that are often constructed from thin air. They collapse, eventually, but not without leaving a residue that is hurtful to their victim, regardless of his or her innocence. The attempt to tar the reputation of a distinguished public figure, following not long after Nupur Sharma’s rant against the Prophet, only lends credence to the apprehension that for all its rhetoric of inclusive politics, the BJP, or a significant section of the party, keeps returning to minority-baiting, and the rest of the party is ok with this, if not collusive.
The BJP must realise that it demeans the mandate it got in 2014, reaffirmed in 2019, when it participates in, or sanctions, the coarsening of public political discourse. It has power and, by all accounts, still enjoys the people’s trust. To conquer, it does not need to stoop so low.
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