All the money in the world cannot seem to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party poll machine on-message. This election was supposed to have been about Prime Minister Modi and his magical Gujarat model. Millions have been spent on advertising and business, celebrity endorsements have been secured and friendly newspaper coverage has been guaranteed. But yet, the grubby core of the party and some awkward allies keep forgetting the script and keep blurting out what they truly believe.
The BJP’s Giriraj Singh (“Modi’s critics should be forced to relocate to Pakistan”), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Pravin Togadia (“illegally occupy Muslim property and hang a Bajrang Dal board on it”) and the Shiv Sena’s Ramdas Kadam (“Muslims are responsible for mayhem”) once again have voters and the media asking whether the new-look BJP has genuinely jettisoned its core organising principle – consolidating Hindus by raising the spectre of a Muslim threat within and outside our borders. The number of times Pakistan has been mentioned in this election campaign suggests that the BJP has defined this as a contest between Modi supporters and Pakistan supporters.
The architects of the party’s election strategy claim that such talk is confined to the lunatic fringe. However, it is Narendra Modi who set the terms of engagement for this campaign. At a rally in Hiranagar in Jammu and Kashmir on March 26, Modi called his political rivals “agents of Pakistan, enemies of India”. The message was unmistakable: his political opponents (Arvind Kejriwal, who had just filed his nomination papers in Varanasi, and the Defence Minister AK Anthony) were serving Pakistan’s interests, while he alone represented India’s.
No wonder Giriraj Singh asserted that he had said nothing he would not repeat. Asked to comment on Singh’s remarks, Modi referred to his own post-election speech from 2002, in which he said he had made clear that his government was everyone’s government. That election victory came at the end of a campaign defined by sectarian violence and leavened by sectarian invective. Modi had spared no one, impugning even the conduct of the Chief Election Commissioner because he was a Christian. In one speech in 2002 he said: "Some journalists asked me recently, 'Has James Michael Lyngdoh come from Italy?' I said I don't have his janam patri. I will have to ask Rajiv Gandhi. Then the journalists said, 'Do they meet in church?' I replied, 'Maybe they do.’"
The BJP Prime Minister at the time, Atal Behari Vajpayee, mildly upbraided him for his "improper language" and "indecorous insinuations". This time round, despite claims that the election is about growth and development, Modi just got a very loud round of applause. No one in the BJP found anything to object to and the media merely referred to Modi’s attacks as “a jibe” and “a dig” at his opponents.
The Growth and Governance BJP is irritated by any reference to 2002. It is also easily riled by talk about the party’s sectarian instincts. It is firmly of the view that the BJP’s earlier electoral defeats were a consequence of its opponents’ focus on these elements of their party’s history. This carefully constructed election campaign has no place for such things.
Arun Jaitley, widely believed to be one of the authors of the BJP’s election strategy, says as much in his campaign diary dated April 22, titled Don’t Deviate from the Campaign Theme: “Even an isolated irresponsible statement will bring discredit to us. Every sensible well-wisher of the BJP is expected to exercise utmost restraint and concentrate on issue of governance, which is the theme of our campaign. Any statement to the contrary will only help our rivals.”
Despite Jaitley’s rousing words, it is clear that the campaign theme was always for some and not for others. Those closest to Modi have in 2014 continued to employ strategies that were tested in 2002. In western Uttar Pradesh, the Sangh Parivar organisations stoked the fires of sectarian strife by escalating a small local dispute into violent Jat-Muslim riots last August. During this campaign, BJP candidates and campaigners, including Modi’s right-hand man Amit Shah, actively played on the insecurities and divisions shored up by the communal violence last year to try and consolidate the Hindu vote.
Sectarianism with a dollop of economic growth: that is the real Gujarat model.
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The BJP’s Giriraj Singh (“Modi’s critics should be forced to relocate to Pakistan”), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Pravin Togadia (“illegally occupy Muslim property and hang a Bajrang Dal board on it”) and the Shiv Sena’s Ramdas Kadam (“Muslims are responsible for mayhem”) once again have voters and the media asking whether the new-look BJP has genuinely jettisoned its core organising principle – consolidating Hindus by raising the spectre of a Muslim threat within and outside our borders. The number of times Pakistan has been mentioned in this election campaign suggests that the BJP has defined this as a contest between Modi supporters and Pakistan supporters.
The architects of the party’s election strategy claim that such talk is confined to the lunatic fringe. However, it is Narendra Modi who set the terms of engagement for this campaign. At a rally in Hiranagar in Jammu and Kashmir on March 26, Modi called his political rivals “agents of Pakistan, enemies of India”. The message was unmistakable: his political opponents (Arvind Kejriwal, who had just filed his nomination papers in Varanasi, and the Defence Minister AK Anthony) were serving Pakistan’s interests, while he alone represented India’s.
No wonder Giriraj Singh asserted that he had said nothing he would not repeat. Asked to comment on Singh’s remarks, Modi referred to his own post-election speech from 2002, in which he said he had made clear that his government was everyone’s government. That election victory came at the end of a campaign defined by sectarian violence and leavened by sectarian invective. Modi had spared no one, impugning even the conduct of the Chief Election Commissioner because he was a Christian. In one speech in 2002 he said: "Some journalists asked me recently, 'Has James Michael Lyngdoh come from Italy?' I said I don't have his janam patri. I will have to ask Rajiv Gandhi. Then the journalists said, 'Do they meet in church?' I replied, 'Maybe they do.’"
The BJP Prime Minister at the time, Atal Behari Vajpayee, mildly upbraided him for his "improper language" and "indecorous insinuations". This time round, despite claims that the election is about growth and development, Modi just got a very loud round of applause. No one in the BJP found anything to object to and the media merely referred to Modi’s attacks as “a jibe” and “a dig” at his opponents.
The Growth and Governance BJP is irritated by any reference to 2002. It is also easily riled by talk about the party’s sectarian instincts. It is firmly of the view that the BJP’s earlier electoral defeats were a consequence of its opponents’ focus on these elements of their party’s history. This carefully constructed election campaign has no place for such things.
Arun Jaitley, widely believed to be one of the authors of the BJP’s election strategy, says as much in his campaign diary dated April 22, titled Don’t Deviate from the Campaign Theme: “Even an isolated irresponsible statement will bring discredit to us. Every sensible well-wisher of the BJP is expected to exercise utmost restraint and concentrate on issue of governance, which is the theme of our campaign. Any statement to the contrary will only help our rivals.”
Despite Jaitley’s rousing words, it is clear that the campaign theme was always for some and not for others. Those closest to Modi have in 2014 continued to employ strategies that were tested in 2002. In western Uttar Pradesh, the Sangh Parivar organisations stoked the fires of sectarian strife by escalating a small local dispute into violent Jat-Muslim riots last August. During this campaign, BJP candidates and campaigners, including Modi’s right-hand man Amit Shah, actively played on the insecurities and divisions shored up by the communal violence last year to try and consolidate the Hindu vote.
Sectarianism with a dollop of economic growth: that is the real Gujarat model.