It is a cold reality that every time there is a major election, for Parliament or State Assembly, communal tendencies begin to show up, and the polarisation they entail is sought to be encashed by political parties for their own ends. In the decadent politics prevailing in India, there is a religious divide and in some states even a caste divide that is threatening to tear the society asunder.
There is an obscurantist India that exists side by side with a modern, progressive India which is competing with the best in the world.
The brutal killing of a minority Muslim by a Hindu mob in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh over beef-eating, the irresponsible statements by many political leaders and the media lapping up anything sensationalist, keeping the unfortunate incident alive in the public mind as a festering wound, have combined to fan the flames of communal hatred.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s complete silence on the Dadri lynching and the communally-charged atmosphere for a prolonged period until he finally spoke up in an election meeting last week has further soured the pitch.
This has assumed the shape of a pattern in so far as Modi is concerned.
While his eloquence is extraordinary in public meetings in the country and in public and diplomatic forums abroad, his enigmatic silence when a healing touch is required for communal wounds has been a subject of much adverse comment.
That Modi has finally broken his silence on the Dadri incident is gratifying indeed. In an election rally in Nawada, Bihar, he sent out a strong message against communalism and communal violence. His stern warning to both Hindus and Muslims that they must decide whether they want to fight each other or rather fight the scourge of poverty was testimony to his level-headed thinking which needs to be articulated more often. But his delayed expression of this sentiment gave a handle to his detractors to beat him with. The Congress, in particular, has been unfairly and unduly severe on him. And, as is his wont, he has tended to go into a shell whenever he has been taken on in this manner.
Even in the past, Modi’s sphinx-like silence on the communal divide in the country had exacerbated matters. In Parliament soon after the government took power, some Hindutva hardliners made statements that gave Modi and the BJP government a communal colour. But Modi did not consider it necessary to refute the expressions of hate that vitiated the atmosphere.
There is no doubt, however, that exploitation of the Muslim vote bank has assumed huge proportions across parties, and the BJP is not the sole culprit in this. The Congress may pretend to be secular from time to time, but it is not a babe in the woods when it comes to manipulative politics and playing the politics of expediency.
The Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav plays its games of minority appeasement. The Janata Dal (U) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal play their own communal and caste cards as and when it suits them to do so.
In election-bound Bihar, a survey has revealed that there has been a three-fold rise in communal incidents after the BJP and JD(U)—the ruling alliance—parted ways in June 2013. Both have been blaming each other for instigating the proliferated riots. Such communal animosity is a bad advertisement for the country abroad, particularly now when India is the focus of international attention with the bursting of the Chinese bubble in the wake of the stock market crash. k.kamlendra@gmail.com
Kanwar is a former journalist