BJP Is Becoming Predictable: The Party Must Fight Political Battles Politically
Seriously, someone in the BJP should sit down to write a manual on how to lose friends and make more enemies. Or how to resist the temptation of becoming predictable.
Even those who are appalled at the anti-India slogans at JNU and have little sympathy for those arrested in connection with that will be hard put to defend the hooliganism at the Patiala House courts on Monday. The details are too graphic, the pictures too telling for it to be dismissed as misreporting or exaggeration by `presstitutes’, `Lutyens journos’ and `paid media’.
The BJP cannot escape blame by saying it does not know who the hooligans were or that it has no connection with them. Its own MLA (OP Sharma) has been caught on camera beating up people. He has then brazened it out – goli maar deta agar bandook hoti (I would have shot these people if I had a gun).
If the BJP argues that the rampaging lawyers must have been planted to give the party a bad name, then it better accept the allegation that some of those shouting anti-India slogans at JNU were ABVP activists out to create trouble.
What happened at Patiala House was not a `scuffle’ over an emotive issue, as the Delhi Police commissioner B. S. Bassi would want us to believe. This was a lynch mob at work, with the police watching passively. Are policemen on duty not supposed to intervene when there are scuffles?
Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay has called it a routine fight and a natural reaction to anti-India slogans being raised. If the `natural reaction’ of BJP MLAs is to use their fists just because they don’t like slogans being raised and if senior party leaders rationalise it, then it is extremely alarming.
And, at the end of it all, what has the BJP gained? Attention has been deflected from the distasteful slogans raised at JNU on 9 February, from the attempt to whitewash those slogans as anti-government ones, from the utter ridiculousness of Rahul Gandhi upholding the freedom of students to say “afzal ham sharminda hain, tere kaatil zinda hain” when Afzal Guru was hanged during his government’s tenure (so technically Manmohan Singh and his home minister were the kaatils being referred to).
Now the entire focus is on louts like Sharma. This has only worked to the advantage of the mushy liberals and SLOB (secular left outrage brigade) who have got yet another opportunity to draw parallels with Hitler’s Nazi stormtroopers. Wait now for this narrative to be repeated ad nauseum.
Even if the BJP wants to pitch itself as a nationalist party, as R. Jagannathan has argued, these kind of incidents are likely to put off many who rally to nationalist sentiments but balk at violence. Remember, many commentators who have been highly critical of the anti-India sloganeering on 9 February, as well as of attempts at whitewashing it have termed the use of sedition laws an overreaction.
The BJP and the government need to do one thing each to redeem themselves. The BJP needs to take action against Sharma; it has to send out a clear signal that its members should not take law into their own hands.
And the central government needs to replace Bassi as the Delhi police chief. How could the police remain silent spectators to the violence inside the court? And how can he dismiss it so airily? This is not the first time that Bassi has behaved and spoken in a blatantly partisan manner.
There is also the larger issue of the complete lack of political management skills in the government and within the BJP. The sloganeering at JNU on 9 February should have been handled politically in a way that would have completely discredited the university and anyone supporting the sloganeers. The sedition case and the police action only backfired. Ridiculous statements by senior ministers didn’t also help.
A clear pattern is emerging. Either stray incidents are sought to be linked to the BJP or sangh parivar, and an atmosphere of intolerance is sought to be depicted. Or demonstrations/protests guaranteed to offend/provoke are organised, as in the case of the event to commemorate Afzal Guru.
BJP leaders/ministers/sundry rank and file immediately rise to the bait and react in precisely the way their detractors want them to – with intemperance and violence, verbal and physical. Proving its opponents right over and over again and also playing into their hands.
We saw this with Dadri, the death of Dalit children in Faridabad, the award waapsi protests, the Rohith Vemula suicide and now the JNU row. In each case, the controversy could have got defused but got ratcheted up because of statements and actions of BJP leaders.
The BJP is becoming predictable in its reactions; it cannot afford to continue like that given that it has an entire eco-system working against it and trying to depict it as foisting majoritarianism and a culture of intolerance. Knee-jerk responses have to be replaced by a refusal to be provoked.