The dogs that did not bark

BY Darius Nakhoonwala| IN Opinion | 23/04/2014

You don’t say!
Darius Nakhoonwala

Amit Shah of the BJP and right hand man of Narendra Modi, talks of ‘revenge’ against the Muslims. Giriraj Singh, also of the BJP, says those who oppose Narendra Modi should go off to Pakistan. Ramdas Kadam of the Shiv Sena incites people against Muslims. And to top it all, Pravin Togadia of the VHP says Muslims must be chased out of their homes if they are living in Hindu majority colonies by Hindus armed with stones, tyres and tomatoes. Unbelievable!

Yet, Narendra Modi’s response was a tsk, tsk. He appealed to these fellows not to say such things. “I disapprove,” he said but not how strongly. He may as well have winked.

You’d expect leader writers to be tugging at their leashes, frothing at their mouths, rearing to express their shock and outrage. No such luck. Only two major newspapers wrote edits on the subject.

The first off, as usual, was the Indian Express. “In the second half of this election,” it said, “the voices of majoritarian triumphalism in the BJP’s campaign, though scattered, appear to be getting louder.” It said the BJP’s top leaders instead of punishing him had kept quiet. “In the event, the message is that such “fringe” opinions are free to do their work, unchecked.”

It went on to say that the “onus is on the BJP to disprove the perception that its vote-maximising strategy involves employing several vocabularies, depending on the context and their utility.” In other words running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. Or even more simply, duplicity.

Then the Express made the point everyone is worried about. “Many of these incomplete responses and conspicuous silences would appear to draw a continuum from Modi to Togadia to the RSS — regardless of the admittedly fraught relationships among them. …It is important that the BJP distance itself from the voices of hate within the parivar, wherever and whenever they make themselves heard.”

The Hindu took a loftier view. It said Togadia’s was not just a hate speech “made in the rough and tumble of elections. Mr. Togadia’s intent was far more sinister…It appeared to have a more long-term objective: to create a feeling of insecurity among India’s Muslims, push them into ghettos, and encourage Hindus to engage in violent action against them.”

Then the edit went off into legalities most of which is everyone knows about. But it did say that “By asking his supporters to pressure the state to invoke — actually misuse — the Disturbed Areas Act to prevent Muslims from moving into so-called Hindu localities, Mr. Togadia was not displaying an ignorance of the country’s laws: he was actually setting a majoritarian agenda for the government.”

It then asked Modi “to reassure voters that his is not a divisive, sectarian agenda, and that if he were to head the next government he would act in the interests of all sections of the country — and not serve merely as the prime minister of the Hindu majority.”

But it failed to note that he did not do so strongly enough, contenting himself with a mere tweet that it was a bad idea to say such things.

Mint wrote a very short edit (just 265 words) saying much the same thing. The BJP, it said, “should pay far more attention to the stench emanating from its extreme fringes…”

Indeed it should. But will it?