The BJP’s tinder-box speeches have had a bigoted youth shooting at protesters. Delhi polls are no more local

The Election Commission (EC) may have banned Union Minister Anurag Thakur and MP Parvesh Verma as star campaigners and even set a curfew for their public speeches but that isn’t enough to counter the hate propaganda the BJP has unleashed. One that is manifesting itself as misplaced warriors and jeopardising the Delhi polls. For while the EC has been proactive enough to ban them for their incendiary remarks branding all disagreeing citizens as traitors or terrorists, the bottle has been uncorked. It doesn’t take rocket science to understand that when there is open exhortation to “shoot the traitors” and a mass frenzy worked up over having identified the “real enemy” from the entrails of a nation divided, there will be consequences. One that saw some delinquent firing at a protester in Jamia with a crusade-like zeal and mischievously justifying it in the name of Lord Rama. May be he was a sympathiser, who has indulged in theatrics simply to effect a plot twist. But let’s not forget, daredevilry thrives in an atmosphere that emboldens it. So far, divisive politics was confined to the game of numbers and electoral compulsions. Even the voter could sense that. Now, in the new regime that wants to overturn the civilisational idea of India into a militaristic trap of Hinduism, it is an opium that has dulled people’s minds into submission and a willing suspension of belief. They now have internalised the politician’s logic as their own. Therein lies the problem that no Election Commission diktat can tame. Perhaps, it could have halted the adventurism last year itself, when most BJP bigwigs, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, unleashed inflammatory campaigns prior to the Lok Sabha elections. But it let them off without so much as a censure, raising the first questions of institutional propriety. Once a threshold has been crossed, be it by an inch or a mile, it really doesn’t matter; the transgression has been all but sanctioned. And now that the BJP has a monolithic charge of governance, there is really no fear of crossing the line, leave alone civility. Which is why a new stricture won’t stop these motormouths from door to door canvassing. So apart from being a disincentive, there is no stopping their propagandist run, just that it won’t be overt but insidious.

The BJP has nothing to lose in its no-holds barred campaign, desperate as it is to get a hold of Delhi’s heart though it has got all the Lok Sabha seats in its kitty. The only way it can forge a change is to replicate the national agenda at the locality level, rather make the national local. This tinder-box politics has so far served it good and if indeed it manages to harden the faultlines and inflame passions, it might be able to make inroads. So it has consciously crafted its campaign for the Delhi polls, mainly on the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to consolidate Hindu votes among communities from the Hindi heartland where the issue has found positive resonance, namely the Purvanchalis and the Pahadis. Besides, now that the abrogation of Article 370 and the Ram temple are on the “work done” list, the BJP will be using every opportunity to push its citizenship law. Why this becomes significant as a voter’s choice is because a citizenship document becomes a qualifier of sorts for future Government largesse and benefits. Also, the party is betting big on momentary aggression, knowing full well that any punitive action, backlash and outrage can only come after the remarks have had their intended effect. That’s why Thakur lashed out at the Aam Aadmi Party(AAP), the Congress and anti-CAA protesters as traitors. Verma raised the spectre of Shaheen Bagh’s anti-CAA protesters “entering homes to rape and kill women” and vowed to raze mosques in the Muslim-majority colony. Perhaps, the BJP has got it wrong on the women of Shaheen Bagh, who have pioneered this movement without seeking endorsement and refused to become a subset of the politics of the day. Also, the party, which has been championing the protection of Muslim women by going to town with the Triple Talaq Act, certainly isn’t concerned about their other issues like the impact of citizenship and identity politics on their homes and lives. Or would it want to devalue the women of Shaheen Bagh as an aberration or worse, misguided and fielded by “urban Naxals?” Or may be, just may be, the party has given up its pretence of tokenism. That perhaps explains the mass resignations of Muslim members from the BJP’s unit in Madhya Pradesh. The gloves are off, the fangs are out. And when lives are at stake, seldom does anybody want to talk about improving them.