Narendra Modi’s passive-aggressive communalism
Modi doesn't need to emphasize his anti-Muslim side because his credentials there are solid. All he needs to do is not act and keep his image intact
In the mid-1990s, M.J. Akbar regularly referred to “the forked tongue of the Congress.” The writer, now a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was referring to then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s attitude to Muslims, saying one thing and doing, or allowing to be done, something else.
It is a good line that describes Narendra Modi’s approach in these elections.
The BJP’s prime ministerial candidate telegraphs two things to his constituents and prospective voters. The one his ads are full of is what we are already familiar with. This is the message on his promise to free India of the problems which are all the fault of government. It is non-partisan, non-controversial in most ways, and not divisive.
His second message, the anti-Muslim signalling, which was core in Gujarat, has been folded into the main message, stressing clean and efficient government.
The bigotry exists, but subliminally. We can see it in Modi’s reaction to Giriraj Singh’s and Pravin Togadia’s aggression against Muslims.
Modi tweeted that he’s irritated by these distractions (”Petty statements by those claiming to be BJP’s well-wishers are deviating the campaign from the issues of development and good governance”).
The fact that such a thing could be said in the open in a state he has run for a dozen years, or that the citizens of an elite Bhavnagar neighbourhood could feel strongly enough about a Muslim neighbour to seek the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s advice to muscle him out, he did not comment on. This sort of thing, readers may not know, is commonplace in Gujarat, where the ground has been poisoned by nearly two decades of BJP rule. Modi could have addressed this and reached out, but chose not to.
Instead, he tweeted that Indians were “looking toward BJP for going to people solely on the issue of good governance and development.”
Does that mean he’s turned from his past? Of course, the answer is no. I would put it differently—hence this blog.
Enough has been said and written about his putting Muslims in their place in Gujarat, and then refusing to accept responsibility. He doesn’t need to emphasize his anti-Muslim side because his credentials there are solid. All he needs to do is not act and keep his image intact.
That is why he rejects the Muslim cap. Having to act interferes with his passive-aggressive communalism. I would call this a strategy, and a deliberate one.
In the Babri mosque phase that upset Akbar as it did so many of us in those days, the Congress was not ideologically against Muslims, only opportunistically. Today few Muslims can credibly accuse Sonia Gandhi of being prejudiced. With Modi it is not the same.
It is his developmental message which has roused the population to him. This is something he acknowledges. That he refuses to let go of the divisive aspect fully, despite winning on development and governance, tells us something vital, something worrying about him.
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First Published:1 May 2014, 12:15 PM IST
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