Even if the Election Commission lacks the courage or conviction to do it, the time has come for all Indians collectively to say to PM Narendra Modi: “You have gone too far, sir. In the name of decency, please stop.”
Inflammatory rhetoric, especially on communal and religious lines, is explicitly outlawed in the EC’s Model Code of Conduct. Yet, its principal purveyor has been the PM himself. In harsh and immoderate language, he has embarked upon a fear-mongering offensive, comparing the Congress manifesto to a document of the Muslim League, claiming it will divert SC/ST reservations to Muslims, and declaring the party will snatch away people’s gold, even their wives’ mangalsutras, and give them to Muslims. And then he doubles down on this allegation by claiming the Congress intends to confiscate half of everyone’s assets—right down to a buffalo if you happen to have two—to redistribute them to “infiltrators” who “have too many children”: an obvious allusion to his Muslim fellow-citizens. He even dragged Mughal emperor Aurangzeb into his invective, claiming that Rahul Gandhi insulted Hindu kings but kept quiet about atrocities by nawabs, nizams, sultans and Aurangzeb.
What’s going on? Aside from the PM demeaning his office by uttering such hate-filled words, the allegations are so far-fetched, educated voters would consider them laughable. The Congress manifesto does not even contain the words “Muslim” or “redistribution”. Nor was inheritance tax discussed, let alone proposed. Yet Modi has seized upon two stray remarks of Congress eminences to ascribe malign intentions to a party whose long track record in governance points to no such actions.
The first was a speech made by PM Manmohan Singh 18 years ago to the National Development Council, in which he asserted “our priorities should be to uplift the most depressed sections of society, such as the SCs, STs, OBCs, minorities, and women and children... We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources”. This statement provoked the BJP even in 2006, leading the Prime Minister’s Office to clarify at that time that “the first claim on resources referred to all priority areas, including programmes for uplifting SCs, STs, OBCs, women, children and minorities”. And Manmohan Singh served as PM for eight more years without doing any of the things Modi now alleges his successors will do on the basis of his statement then.
The second was a television interview by telecoms guru Sam Pitroda in Chicago, musing aloud that the US had an inheritance tax and it was an idea India could consider. Pitroda is perfectly entitled to express his personal views, but inheritance tax was abolished by a Congress PM, Rajiv Gandhi, in 1985 and the party has never considered bringing it back. The idea was not even discussed in the Manifesto Committee (of which I am a member), let alone included therein. Indeed, the only party to have even contemplated restoring inheritance tax was the BJP—in discussions around the 2019 budget, both cabinet minister Arun Jaitley and minister of state Jayant Sinha advocated the idea, though it was not eventually adopted. But none of this prevented Modi from making hysterical allegations.
A reference by Rahul Gandhi to the “shakti” of the government led the PM to accuse the leader of abusing Goddess Shakti. His colleagues and fellow travellers predictably chimed in. Home Minister Amit Shah went so far as to say if the Congress comes to power, Sharia law will be introduced. UP CM Yogi Adityanath says the Congress will impose the jizya tax (a tax on unbelievers last imposed by Aurangzeb 350 years ago). A member of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust suddenly announced, before the third phase of voting, construction of the Ram mandir was progressing faster than expected and could be completed by November, rather than in 2025 as planned—a desperate attempt to exploit the issue further for electoral gain.
The reversion to scare-mongering about Muslims should not entirely surprise us. In 2014, when he first came to power, Modi was sold to the electorate as the avatar of economic development, the CEO of Gujarat Inc who would bring development, jobs and prosperity—“achhe din”— to all Indians. The PM-candidate grandly promised that he would transform the economy and generate 2 crore new jobs a year.
In 2019, with the economic narrative collapsing in the wake of Modi’s disastrous demonetisation and the resultant hardship and mass unemployment, a new approach became imperative. The Pulwama terrorist attack by militants based in Pakistan, which killed 40 paramilitary troops just two months before the election, gave the BJP the opportunity to convert the ballot into a national security referendum. Modi was portrayed as the tough warrior with a 56-inch chest who would keep the country safe from Pakistani depredations. The much-hyped Balakot air raid sealed his image and transformed the election result, especially in the north Indian states.
But in the wake of continuing tensions with China during Modi’s second term, in the course of which the Chinese army encroached upon the disputed frontier at several places, killed 20 jawans three years ago and denied Indian troops access to 26 of 65 points where both armies used to patrol previously, the national-security argument lost credibility. Modi’s assiduously-cultivated tough-guy image faltered with regard to China, where his inability to secure a Chinese withdrawal and restore the status quo ante will undermine such claims.
So yet another narrative is needed. This time we are witnessing the BJP reverting to its core message. It is clear all they have left is Islamophobia, stridently espoused by Modi, the “Hindu hriday samrat”.
The BJP is at its core the party of Hindutva, and Modi himself had been associated with the notorious anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 that took lives of nearly 2,000 people. It was partly to live down the negative image from that event that he was reinvented as the hero of economic growth in the 2014 campaign. But his government’s own dismal performance led him to abandon ‘Sab ka saath sabka vikas’ in favour of an India where, of the BJP’s 303 Lok Sabha and 92 Rajya Sabha MPs and 1,000-plus MLAs, not one is a Muslim, and abusing Muslims and excluding them from the national narrative is the political objective. That is the stark choice confronting Indians in the current elections.
And the only decent answer? Reject hatred and bigotry. Vote for Inclusive India.
(Views are personal)
(office@tharoor.in)
Shashi Tharoor | Third-term Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram and the Sahitya-Akademi winning author of 24 books, most recently Ambedkar: A Life