LABELLING POLITICAL OPPONENTS AS TERRORISTS UNWARRANTED
By Sagarneel Sinha
The political temperature has risen spectacularly in Delhi, which will go to polls on February 8. The National Capital Territory is not that quite significant in terms of electoral strength — as it has a 70 member legislative assembly and sends 7 and 3 representatives in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha respectively.
In spite of that, Delhi assembly polls have been in the limelight in national politics — anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests, particularly in Shaheen Bagh, which has emerged as the centre of protests, has to do a lot with it.
The protests of Shaheen Bagh have divisively polarised, at least for now, the electoral battle of Delhi. It can be easily witnessed from the divisive comments floating around the electoral arena. The remarks of BJP’s Lok Sabha MP Parvesh Verma, who called Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwaal a “terrorist”, is one such case.
If this was not enough, Verma’s labelling got endorsement from a senior party leader — none other than Prakash Javadekar, who is the minister of Information and Broadcasting in Narendra Modi’s cabinet. Javadekar instead went ahead and said that “there is plenty of evidence against Kejriwal — that he is a terrorist”.
This is really disturbing that such hate comments are endorsed by a Union minister like Javadekar. Just a few days ago another rising BJP leader Anurag Thakur, who is also the state minister of finance in the Modi government, was seen asking the crowd to raise a controversial slogan — “Shoot the country’s traitors”. Later, Anurag was banned by the election commission for just 72 hours.
BJP is not so wrong when it says that anti-CAA protests of Shaheen Bagh are politically motivated. Obviously, they are. Misguided information spread through the social media that “Modi led BJP government is hell bent on making India free from Muslims” has actually resulted in Shaheen Bagh demonstration — supported by Indian liberals, mostly leftists, and opposition parties like Congress, AAP, Left etc.
So, BJP has the right to criticise those protestors of Shaheen Bagh and its supporters. But, the problem arises when the leaders of the saffron party attempt to paint their political opponents as “traitors” or even worse as “terrorists”.
In a democracy like India, where electoral battles are very common, labelling a political opponent a “terrorist” is really unhealthy. Here, the one called “terrorist” is the chief minister of Delhi, who got a strong mandate from Delhi’s electorate in the previous election.
There are many other labels to castigate a political opponent that don’t pollute the health of democracy. One shouldn’t forget that terms like “terrorist” are not usual barbs to attack a political opponent. This is a term not to be normalised because when it is done so, the label will lose its original value. And if that happens, it will only weaken the fight against terrorism — practiced by those who believe in killing innocents across the world in the name of religion, ethnicity etc. That’s the reason why a cabinet minister like Prakash Javdekar should have refrained from using this term against his political opponent Arvind Kejriwal. Instead, he had the opportunity to set a healthy precedent by denouncing the “terrorist” remark made by his own party MP.
However, the opposition which is now strongly criticising BJP for polluting the environment with hate speeches also needed some soul searching. If Arvind Kejriwal is a popular choice of Delhi voters, same goes for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is also the popular choice of the Indian voters, including the Delhiites too — not once but twice. But, Modi himself has been receiving unhealthy barbs from the opposition leaders and a section of intellectuals, since the day he became prime minister. Modi during his six year tenure didn’t execute any religious minority in the way Germany’s notorious dictator Hitler did with Jews.
Even today speaking on the floor of the parliament, Modi clearly reiterated that India is home of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and Parsis — while Hitler coming to power in 1933 started his open hate campaign against Jews — 1% of then Germany’s population. In spite of this, Modi is almost everyday equally labelled with Hitler and his six year regime is termed as “Fascist”. One shouldn’t forget that present Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi’s controversial jibe of “maut ka saudagar” against Modi way back in 2007 during Gujarat elections, too was unhealthy. Now, even some of Modi’s critics admit that Modi wasn’t then involved in those horrific Gujarat riots — more importantly, the judiciary has given him clean chit on this.
Actually, the main point is that politicians of all parties, whether ruling or opposition, shouldn’t forget that political barbs against their opponents can be effectively carried out with healthy jibes. India’s democracy will only strengthen more when there will be political battles and without any barbs, these battles aren’t interesting too. So, let there be innumerable political barbs, whether in Delhi or in any other election. Caveat: No more unhealthy jibes on political opponents. (IPA Service)