New Bharatiya Janata Party's troubled road ahead

The BJP will find it extremely difficult to calibrate the utterances of its loudmouths so as not to hurt Muslim sentiment and maintain good relations with the Muslim world

Religious issues, unless stoked, tend to have a short half-life. With appeals from Muslim clergy, the countrywide protests over the insult to the Prophet by a spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in all likelihood will die down after some outpouring of anger in the community. But remarkably neither Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said a word about the communal discord sparked by the designated public face of their party.

Junior officers in the Ministry of External Affairs have been left to defend the party and the government, assuaging the anger of Muslim nations. Local police have been belatedly mobilised to register cases for disturbance of social peace. In a bid to distribute the blame, a few outspoken Muslims have also been booked. Immediately, the protests, which led to the death of two teenagers and several people being injured, may benefit the BJP, as they deepen the religious rift in the country. However, unfolding events warn of greater instability in Indian politics.

The main culprit in the insult to the Prophet, Nupur Sharma, is infamous for shrill and uncouth interventions on television. But she is not alone. Other BJP spokespersons are equally choleric, pugnacious, and bellicose. Their offensiveness in TV debates may not be directed by the party’s top leadership, but no one seems to have discouraged it either.

A new BJP seems to be taking shape in which public aggression against political adversaries is not only appreciated but also rewarded. There is a greater acceptance of confrontational politics. Those who hark back to the so-called moderation of BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and L K Advani’s tenures, fail to recognise that it was a compulsion forced by the dominant political culture of their time. Nor should their role, especially L K Advani’s, be underestimated in raising the ambient communal temperature of Indian politics. Painting the minority community as fanatic, blaming it for historical ‘wrongs’, flagging its extra-geographical religious loyalty and wanting to ‘Indianise’ them were as much strands of their Hindutva politics then as today. Now they have come to full fruition.

That is why despite the embarrassment Nupur Sharma has caused the government, the BJP has only suspended her pending an inquiry. The BJP must fear that its core constituency could react adversely to her expulsion from the party. Many within it think like her. Their support is not only expressed in social media; there has even been a public protest in Gujarat in her favour. And BJP MP Pragya Thakur has publicly said, “If telling the truth is rebellion, then by that coin, I am also a rebel.” 

Thakur herself is a representative of a new and less apologetic BJP; she has described Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, as a ‘patriot’. She is also accused of the Malegaon bomb blasts of 2006 which resulted in the death of several Muslim pilgrims. She is the perfect symbol of the aggressive, in-your-face next-generation leadership of the BJP.

Within the party cadres, there is a feeling that the BJP need not be penitent for Sharma stating ‘facts’. Protests by Islamic countries are seen as “over-reaction”. Any action by the party or the government which seems apologetic will make them unhappy. If the party and its government are seen to ‘capitulate’, then questions could be raised about the adequacy of other measures projected by the government as disciplining the minorities. The criminalising of triple-talaq for example or pushing for a Uniform Civil Code despite opposition from the Muslim clergy might simply not cut ice as being sufficiently aggressive.

Perhaps it is the need to prevent offending their “core constituency” which explains the silence of the BJP’s top leadership. That may also be why Iran was persuaded to pull down its version of the meeting between its Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Apparently, Doval told the visiting dignitary that those who had made the controversial remark against the Prophet “would be taught a lesson”. Perhaps the visible reminder of the NSA’s alleged assurance on official record might have confused the BJP party cadre. Such tensions arising from the disparity between the outlook of the party’s supporters and the face its representatives in government must put on for international acceptability have to be managed by the top leadership.

Despite the government’s best efforts to balance its domestic Hindutva constituency with the need to maintain good relations with the Muslim world, the Gulf countries are likely to be on a short fuse henceforth. A majority of them are autocracies which survive by partnering with the Islamic clergy. They cannot afford instability or a restive public opinion. If public pressure on the rulers of these countries increases, they may not remain as solicitous of India as they are now.

The BJP will find it extremely difficult to calibrate the utterances of its loudmouths so as not to hurt Muslim sentiment. Its electoral compulsions force the BJP to divide the electorate on religious lines and that can rarely be done gently or genially. Psychologically at least, the Islamic countries have been put on the other side of the fence as long as the BJP is in power.

Over and above these processes is the security implication of Nupur Sharma’s hate speech. Warped notions of vengeance and justice from among the ‘faithful’ as well as from within radicalised Hindutva elements will make the BJP’s balancing act much harder.