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Regular-article-logo Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Amit Shah's chilling warning

The BJP president's pep talk may unite his party but it is dividing the nation.

The Editorial Board Published 16.09.18, 06:30 PM
Amit Shah

Amit Shah Pradip Sanyal

Amit Shah. Photo by Pradip Sanyal

Pep talks may unite a party but divide a nation. That seems to be the message that can be gleaned from the recent speech that the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party delivered in Rajasthan. Amit Shah thundered that the BJP's political juggernaut has rolled on in spite of the reservations expressed by 'liberals' on Mohammad Akhlaque's lynching in Dadri. Mr Shah also added for good measure that his party remains committed to expel illegal immigrants. The BJP, which has expressed its eagerness to welcome Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Parsi and Christian asylum-seekers from neighbouring countries, presumably believes that the infiltrators belong to one particular faith. It does not matter that the contentious issues that were referred to by Mr Shah, namely lynching and the National Register of Citizens that the BJP implemented in Assam, have attracted the attention of the highest court. The BJP is known to be bullish in temperament. That may be because in the India that Mr Shah and his party have been busy building, several such murders - the victims were mostly Muslims - have not been enough to check the BJP's electoral march in assembly elections. These repeated triumphs must have emboldened the BJP to believe that the political discourse can eventually be stripped of moral imperatives. India has learnt to live with this sad truth for nearly five years now. Civility need not lie at the heart of an electoral message either. Mr Shah - surely his party is in agreement - has demonstrated this with his barely disguised attempt to instil a sense of fear and discrimination among minorities.

Of course, Mr Shah's view is consistent with that of a majoritarian party that allegedly seeks to replace a constitutional India with a sectarian State. The import of Mr Shah's divisive utterances lies in the reiteration of the fact that the BJP is never shy of exploiting fault lines premised on identity. As a party, it is in the habit of balancing seemingly conflicting interests. The BJP thus speaks of, say, Hindutva and development, or patriotism and ultra-nationalism, in the same breath, attempting to blur the lines that must hold in a democracy that cherishes pluralism. But the mask tends to fall quite often before the elections. It is possible that Narendra Modi's slogan to make vikas truly representative will be shelved till the dust settles over the general election. What would be played up instead is Mr Shah's chilling warning.

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