By Anirudh Prakash
This has probably been one of the worst election campaigns in recent memory, with the bar being set extremely low, as senior political leaders hurl abuse and threats at not just each other, but at the voters at large. Strangely enough, at a time when the Election Commission should have been at its most pro- active, it seems sluggish and almost non- responsive, taking a long time to reach a decision on issues that are making a mockery of the secular and democratic tenets of the Indian Constitution.
At times, it also forgets that its role is not to forgive and forget in the face of apologies, but to take action on the basis of the offence. And one would have thought that hate speech would have invited the strongest action from the august Election Commission.
It is difficult to say who has done what, and who started it. The attack by the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, against not just the Congress, but also the powerful Nehru- Gandhi family is, of course, a case in point. But this is a political battle, and the Congress leadership is also free to retaliate, as Priyanka Vadra has demonstrated recently, with far more flair than her brother and mother. In other words, while base and quite over the top as it were, the Congress and the BJP are political parties and well accustomed, or at least they should be, to the nastiness of an election that is crucial for the ambitions of one and the existence of the other.
The difficult really arises when senior political leaders hurl accusations at a community, and invoke images and stereotypes to strengthen illusions, even as they issue serious threats to sections of the voters.
It is no secret, and apparent to even diehard supporters of the BJP, that this time around the signal has been given— perhaps silently, perhaps not— to target the Muslims across the country.
Modi, in a sense, opened the gateways with his Jammu speech, where he brought in Pakistan for the first time, by describing leaders like Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal and Union defence minister A.K. Antony to machine guns wielded by terrorists.
Kejriwal became AK 49, because of the 49 days he had run the Delhi government; while India’s defence minister was virtually branded a Pakistan agent, with his A.K. initials playing off on the machine gun imagery.
He might or might not have intended this as a signal, but from then on, the floodgates of hate speech opened, with various leaders from the BJP and its affiliate organisations actually urging others to capture houses owned by Muslims, and not allow them to stay in their localities. Revenge has been vowed and threats have been issued, and while there is the Samajwadi Party leader, Azam Khan, with his vitriol and communal language, in this election the propaganda has remained largely anti- minority.
This is a serious issue and an indication of the kind of forces being unleashed on the country. The social media is also full of crawlers threatening and attacking anyone who dares speak for secularism.
The attack here is particularly vicious, with ordinary citizens who dare to open their mouths on the side of democracy and secularism being virtually chased off the sites by a barrage of abuse and threats.
The self- styled, faceless custodians of a new majoritarian order are currently sending everyone to Pakistan, with a senior leader recently making a speech threatening the same in the public domain.
Needless to say, this was met with a barrage of protest, with a senior academic on Facebook pleading with Modi to send him to China, and not Pakistan, as he was an atheist! However, jokes apart, this intolerance of dissent, and this bludgeoning of views on the side of secularism and democracy, is extremely worrisome and should make all Indians sit up and take serious note.
Election through religious polarisation is extremely dangerous in any country, and more so where approximately 20 per cent of the population falls in the category of “minorities”, and the remaining 80 per cent is not a monolith, but a splendid example of the same diversity and pluralism that defines India. India is not Germany, as it is too vast and too diverse, to be contained by even any one party.
The mandate given to the Congress in the initial years after Independence was never really repeated for any other party, with completely federal governments, led by a regional party dotting the Indian landscape since the 1990s. The Congress and the BJP too have been able to come to power only through coalitions, with neither in a position today, despite the hate speech and the drum- beating, to seize power at the centre as a single party.
The late prime minister, Indira Gandhi, had in a way sensed this drift in the early 1970s and the Emergency was a desperate measure to keep her, as well as her party’s control over India. The result was that the first non- Congress coalition came to power in Indian in 1977, which did not last, but did bring in the realisation that such coalitions were possible.
Today, India is even more federal than at that time, with regional leaders and parties holding governments in the majority of states. Hence, hate speech and threats can work only up to a point, to establish leaders totally out of tune with India’s democratic aspirations, as in the long run, these “experiments” with secular and progressive polity can only fail.
But having said this, it is also a fact that the attack on India’s constitutional foundation can have serious and damaging repercussions if it is allowed to continue unchallenged, and over time change the face of a country that once dreamt of waking up to a new dawn of harmony, liberty, equality, social justice, empowerment and peace. INAV