The informal system of recognition and reward operating in the hydra-like Sangh Parivar seems to have triggered an intense competition among their members to propagate and practice hard Hindutva. It will, as is already evident, have them propound archaic ideas, turn their rhetoric shrill, their language abusive and dripping with hatred. All this they will do in the hope of endearing themselves to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bosses for furthering their political careers.
Thus, from the fall and rise of Union Minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders will draw a lesson – it pays to indulge in the politics of extreme, use language you would not want to before children.
She called her political rivals haramzadon, provoking an entire array of parties outside the National Democratic Alliance to stall Parliament and demand her resignation. Jyoti apologised. Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the protesting MPs to forgive her because of her rural background. You thought Jyoti was genuinely contrite, Modi deeply concerned about the sensitivity of his political rivals, and that the BJP would refrain from pressing her into the Delhi election campaign.
But such assumptions were quickly belied. Before her haramzadon comment, Jyoti was just one among many BJP MPs deputed to campaign for the party. Now, she is the party’s star speaker, her very presence an eloquent symbol of hardcore Hindutva, inspiring cadres to unabashedly pursue the politics of hatred.
Invectives = Headlines
What other conclusion can you draw from the fact that her first public meeting following her apology was to speak in Delhi’s Trilokpuri area, which witnessed communal tension only weeks ago? Her infamy had turned her into a big draw overnight. The person who announced her arrival at the Trilokpuri meeting said, “See, the person who has come to our midst in Trilokpuri is one you have seen on the news. Minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti has come.”
In case you thought the BJP had no ignoble intentions, Jyoti was quick to dispel them at another rally in Delhi. She was reported saying, “I won’t say much, some people take offence. I don’t need to say much. The intelligent only need a hint to understand. The elections are coming. We have to win, do we not? Close your fist… when you have to face someone…you need a fist. I’ll now sing a bhajan…people should not take offence.”
She did not have to utter the H-word, or dredge out new invectives to grab the headlines. Her allusion to it sufficed to win her a page one slot or at least the lead on inside pages. Make no mistake, Jyoti is here to stay and will have a significant role to play in the months before the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
Loyal ministers
Perhaps the compulsion to please the RSS bosses was an important factor behind Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj pitching to have the Bhagwad Gita declared as a national scripture. Amiable yet ambitious, forceful but never irrational, Swaraj’s demand has sparked off a veritable outcry against what is perceived to be an attempt to impose the Sangh’s definition of culture on India.
You cannot but sympathise with Swaraj – she opposed Modi through most of last year, but now finds he is her boss, unforgiving and acutely conscious of her prime ministerial ambitions. True, she has the external affairs ministry, yet she must feel mortified that it is the prime minister who takes all important foreign policy decisions.
Then there is Smriti Irani, whose persona matches Swaraj’s. The political grapevine is perpetually abuzz with speculations that Modi has put his formidable weight behind Irani to build her as a counterfoil to Swaraj. To top it all, because of the human resource development ministry that Smriti heads, she closely works with the RSS to implement its education policy. The Gita comment is Swaraj’s way of demonstrating her Hindutva credentials to the RSS bosses, to support her in the extremely competitive camp of the saffron brigade.
Quick ascendance
The impulse to please the RSS, as also Modi, must have driven former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank to declare that India conducted the nuclear test all the way back in 2nd BCE. Wishing to be on the same page as Modi, who has been criticised for declaring that ancient India knew the science of plastic surgery, Nishank mounted an astonishing defence of Modi: “Ganesha’s surgery…was actually a surgery. The science…or knowledge to transplant a severed head existed only in India.”
Leaders having the stature of Swaraj will want the RSS to intercede on their behalf to ensure the power equation in the BJP does not become inimical to their interests. Others like Nishank will also seek to demonstrate their personal fidelity to Modi for feathering their political nests. But it is the example of Jyoti which will inspire many in the overcrowded camp of BJP MPs, many of whom were elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time, to imitate her belligerent style of politics to rise in the estimation of RSS bosses.
It will, no doubt, roil the political waters, but this is precisely what the RSS wants, which has openly declared that it wants to reconvert 4,000 Christians and 1,000 Muslims to Hinduism. It will only inspire hardcore Hindutva activists to become even more unabashed in their pursuit of the divisive agenda. Through such strategies, district Bajrang Dal and Vishva Hindu Parishad leaders will try to win the approval of the RSS, rise in the Parivar or corner election tickets for themselves. For instance, will not Bajrang Dal functionary Ajju Chauhan, who was in the forefront of converting Muslims to Hinduism in Agra, feel delighted at discovering he has been quoted in the national media? Will he not think the RSS might ask him to play a bigger role next time?
Discordant language
Others too had pursued Jyoti-like strategy to rise in the Sangh’s political firmament before she spectacularly implemented it early this month. This is the trajectory, for instance, Giriraj Singh took, openly declaring that the opponents of Modi should migrate to Pakistan – and won for himself a berth in the Union council of ministers. Sanjeev Baliyan is accused of fomenting riots in Muzaffarnagar and he is a Union minister too.
Then again, was BJP MP Satish Gautam insistent on Aligarh Muslim University celebrating the birth anniversary of Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh only for slipping into the RSS’s list of “potential ministers” or “effective leaders”? Before him, BJP MP from Moradabad Kunwar Servesh Kumar had rescinded an agreement between Muslims and Dalits over the use of loudspeaker in a village in Kanth town to spark off communal tension there.
In all this, caste calculations too play a role. For a party long known as the preserve of Brahmins and Banias, there is a lot for lower caste leaders to gain from speaking the harsh, discordant language of Hindutva. They are provided ministerial berths or at least a spot in the proscenium of the BJP’s theatre. Recognition and reward for them are projected as according respect to their social groups, and providing them space in the political arena.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His book The Hour Before Dawn will be published by HarperCollins in December-end.
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Thus, from the fall and rise of Union Minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders will draw a lesson – it pays to indulge in the politics of extreme, use language you would not want to before children.
She called her political rivals haramzadon, provoking an entire array of parties outside the National Democratic Alliance to stall Parliament and demand her resignation. Jyoti apologised. Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the protesting MPs to forgive her because of her rural background. You thought Jyoti was genuinely contrite, Modi deeply concerned about the sensitivity of his political rivals, and that the BJP would refrain from pressing her into the Delhi election campaign.
But such assumptions were quickly belied. Before her haramzadon comment, Jyoti was just one among many BJP MPs deputed to campaign for the party. Now, she is the party’s star speaker, her very presence an eloquent symbol of hardcore Hindutva, inspiring cadres to unabashedly pursue the politics of hatred.
Invectives = Headlines
What other conclusion can you draw from the fact that her first public meeting following her apology was to speak in Delhi’s Trilokpuri area, which witnessed communal tension only weeks ago? Her infamy had turned her into a big draw overnight. The person who announced her arrival at the Trilokpuri meeting said, “See, the person who has come to our midst in Trilokpuri is one you have seen on the news. Minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti has come.”
In case you thought the BJP had no ignoble intentions, Jyoti was quick to dispel them at another rally in Delhi. She was reported saying, “I won’t say much, some people take offence. I don’t need to say much. The intelligent only need a hint to understand. The elections are coming. We have to win, do we not? Close your fist… when you have to face someone…you need a fist. I’ll now sing a bhajan…people should not take offence.”
She did not have to utter the H-word, or dredge out new invectives to grab the headlines. Her allusion to it sufficed to win her a page one slot or at least the lead on inside pages. Make no mistake, Jyoti is here to stay and will have a significant role to play in the months before the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
Loyal ministers
Perhaps the compulsion to please the RSS bosses was an important factor behind Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj pitching to have the Bhagwad Gita declared as a national scripture. Amiable yet ambitious, forceful but never irrational, Swaraj’s demand has sparked off a veritable outcry against what is perceived to be an attempt to impose the Sangh’s definition of culture on India.
You cannot but sympathise with Swaraj – she opposed Modi through most of last year, but now finds he is her boss, unforgiving and acutely conscious of her prime ministerial ambitions. True, she has the external affairs ministry, yet she must feel mortified that it is the prime minister who takes all important foreign policy decisions.
Then there is Smriti Irani, whose persona matches Swaraj’s. The political grapevine is perpetually abuzz with speculations that Modi has put his formidable weight behind Irani to build her as a counterfoil to Swaraj. To top it all, because of the human resource development ministry that Smriti heads, she closely works with the RSS to implement its education policy. The Gita comment is Swaraj’s way of demonstrating her Hindutva credentials to the RSS bosses, to support her in the extremely competitive camp of the saffron brigade.
Quick ascendance
The impulse to please the RSS, as also Modi, must have driven former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank to declare that India conducted the nuclear test all the way back in 2nd BCE. Wishing to be on the same page as Modi, who has been criticised for declaring that ancient India knew the science of plastic surgery, Nishank mounted an astonishing defence of Modi: “Ganesha’s surgery…was actually a surgery. The science…or knowledge to transplant a severed head existed only in India.”
Leaders having the stature of Swaraj will want the RSS to intercede on their behalf to ensure the power equation in the BJP does not become inimical to their interests. Others like Nishank will also seek to demonstrate their personal fidelity to Modi for feathering their political nests. But it is the example of Jyoti which will inspire many in the overcrowded camp of BJP MPs, many of whom were elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time, to imitate her belligerent style of politics to rise in the estimation of RSS bosses.
It will, no doubt, roil the political waters, but this is precisely what the RSS wants, which has openly declared that it wants to reconvert 4,000 Christians and 1,000 Muslims to Hinduism. It will only inspire hardcore Hindutva activists to become even more unabashed in their pursuit of the divisive agenda. Through such strategies, district Bajrang Dal and Vishva Hindu Parishad leaders will try to win the approval of the RSS, rise in the Parivar or corner election tickets for themselves. For instance, will not Bajrang Dal functionary Ajju Chauhan, who was in the forefront of converting Muslims to Hinduism in Agra, feel delighted at discovering he has been quoted in the national media? Will he not think the RSS might ask him to play a bigger role next time?
Discordant language
Others too had pursued Jyoti-like strategy to rise in the Sangh’s political firmament before she spectacularly implemented it early this month. This is the trajectory, for instance, Giriraj Singh took, openly declaring that the opponents of Modi should migrate to Pakistan – and won for himself a berth in the Union council of ministers. Sanjeev Baliyan is accused of fomenting riots in Muzaffarnagar and he is a Union minister too.
Then again, was BJP MP Satish Gautam insistent on Aligarh Muslim University celebrating the birth anniversary of Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh only for slipping into the RSS’s list of “potential ministers” or “effective leaders”? Before him, BJP MP from Moradabad Kunwar Servesh Kumar had rescinded an agreement between Muslims and Dalits over the use of loudspeaker in a village in Kanth town to spark off communal tension there.
In all this, caste calculations too play a role. For a party long known as the preserve of Brahmins and Banias, there is a lot for lower caste leaders to gain from speaking the harsh, discordant language of Hindutva. They are provided ministerial berths or at least a spot in the proscenium of the BJP’s theatre. Recognition and reward for them are projected as according respect to their social groups, and providing them space in the political arena.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His book The Hour Before Dawn will be published by HarperCollins in December-end.
