Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accused the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh of discriminating on the basis of religion and caste. He said that it was the major problem besetting the state. According to the SP, anything for the Muslim has to be matched by something for the Hindu and vice versa. The Prime Minister’s message comes through loud and clear. The Samajwadi government, he says, is following a policy of minority appeasement. Policies favouring the minority are obviously at the expense of the majority’s needs and interests. Modi is employing a notion of governance and development that sees it as a zero-sum game. He has painted the electoral contest in UP as a stark and grimy tug of war between communities denuded of shared concerns. Of course governments which loudly advertise there secular credentials like the Samajwadi Party in UP hardly justify their claim. The building of graveyards on their boundaries can be mere tokenism. What is really important is development through collective endeavour- sabka saath, sabka vikaas. But that is no excuse for perpetuating inequalities.
The problem is that the Prime Minister represents a party which has a following decidedly dedicated to stoking communal insecurities. The BJP’s 2017 manifesto is a testimony to that. It contains a subtle allusion to communal hatred. In UP, the BJP list of candidates does not have a single Muslim. Narendra Modi’s attack on discrimination practised by the Samajwadi Party is discriminatory. For the BJP, it is pot calling the kettle black.