Shikha Mukerjee | For BJP, Fringe Elements Create Growing Headache

Unexpectedly, the party that claims to have the largest membership in the world, a claim that is probably correct given India’s population, is neither as broad-based nor does it accommodate as much diversity of positions as would be appropriate for its size. This makes the BJP a tightly knit, well organised party where inner-party discipline prevails and the command- and-control structure allows for it to appear, to the outside world, as a monolith.

The Congress, on the contrary, is purportedly run by a “high command”, with decision-making concentrated in the Gandhi family, but it does accommodate and sometimes bows down to the positions of different groups that constitute it. The Congress has a left wing, a right wing, a moderate wing, a liberal wing, a conservative wing and people who shift from one to another group for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they make these moves for short-term gains and sometimes they make these moves in their long-term interests.

When some Congress leaders say things that are not in sync with the “party line”, it is both acceptable and typical of a party that was once deeply divided over the issue of leadership when the choice was between Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Mahatma Gandhi’s nominee. When BJP ministers and party spokespersons cross the line in their public pronouncements, the party does resort to spouting conventional denials, that what was said is not the BJP’s position. Sadly, the “distancing” is not credible.

Madhya Pradesh tribal affairs minister Vijay Singh’s unacceptable slur against Army spokesperson Col. Sofiya Qureshi compelled the BJP to distance itself. The minister followed a script that has been in use for years, when he branded Col. Qureshi as the “sister” of terrorists, “those who widowed our daughters”, and then explained why she was selected as the spokesperson as a deliberate message: “we sent a sister of their own to teach them a lesson”. Even his apology reeks of the indelible stench of his prejudices and complexes.

The grudging concession evident in his categorisation of Col. Qureshi as someone who rose “above religion and caste”, is a grave insult on top of a serious injury. If the BJP actually meant what it said -- “No one has the right to disrespect Col. Sofiya Qureshi, who has made the country proud”, then Madhya Pradesh BJP unit chief V.D. Sharma should have told Vijay Singh to resign by taking responsibility for disrespecting a serving Army officer during a national crisis.

The Madhya Pradesh minister acted the way he did because in the monolithic BJP and its network of frontal organisations and the much more powerful “fringe elements”, the choice of Col. Qureshi was disturbing and unacceptable. It is possible that Mr Singh felt he needed to reassure the party’s upset and angry constituents in Indore by explaining the Prime Minister’s choice.

The BJP as a monolithic organisation has assiduously cultivated one particular brand of politics over the past 11 years. It has worked to select as its representatives, in the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, state Assemblies, panchayats and municipal bodies, through its appointments of university vice-chancellors and the government’s nominees in various institutions, people who are either already aligned or are willing to be co-opted as a part of the same brand.

The brand has been strengthened by the contributions of many. A week before the Madhya Pradesh incident, the BJP did nothing when the famously abrasive Nishikant Dubey accused the Supreme Court of “taking the country towards anarchy” and charging that the Chief Justice of India should be held “responsible for civil wars” that would ensue if the apex court allowed petitions challenging the recently-passed Waqf Amendment Act. What Mr Dubey said is not so different from what Vijay Singh said, all things connected to India’s Muslim population, be it people or property or the law, are dangerous, evil, anti-national or anti-Hindu.

BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, who was discarded as a “fringe element”, was self-evidently no such thing; she was representative of her party. She was not shredded as an anti-national for jeopardising India’s national interests. Instead, the Narendra Modi government stepped in to salvage the situation after her attack on Prophet Muhammad provoked Saudi Arabia to make a formal protest along with Iran, Qatar and Kuwait. The party hasn’t distanced itself from its representatives like Ramesh Bidhuri, an MP who used obscene language in the Lok Sabha in a vicious attack on a Muslim MP, BSP’s Danish Ali.

That is why today, the BJP has very little wriggle room; it cannot put a restraint on its public representatives, like Vijay Singh or Nishikant Dubey. The BJP has endorsed and actively supported outfits like Jan Akrosh rallies in Karnataka in April this year targeting Muslim appeasement politics or the Hindu Jan Morcha rally of 2023 in Mumbai organised by the Sakal Hindu Samaj, an umbrella body of several Hindutva outfits such as Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, Shiv Pratishthan and Sanatan Sanstha.

It cannot distance itself from the shameful trolling of India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, for doing his job as assigned by the Prime Minister. Nor can the Prime Minister apologise to Mr Misri, and more so, to his daughter, for being the object of vicious trolling. The Prime Minister cannot apologise enough to Himanshi Narwal, the widow of an Indian Navy officer killed in the Pahalgam terrorist attack.

As much as the BJP, the Prime Minister’s hands are tied. And he has tied himself up and cannot get out of the bonds of his own making. When Narendra Modi was busy constructing what former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud described as “a new normal -- some call it the post-truth society”, where trolling is normal and “the smartphone helps keep us on automatic pilot in a time distorting distractable and vigilant neurophysiological state”, he should have had a few flickers of anxiety.

The new normal is the creation of a Hindu vote bank that responds to verbal signals like “Operation Sindoor”, that connects terrorist acts to symbols that are associated with Hindus, like the vermillion used by married women. This kind of signalling is not new; Mr Modi used the imagery of the “mangalsutra”, the chain worn by married women, in his campaign attack against the Congress. He said the Congress was the new Muslim League. The BJP needs people who keep the new vote bank on autopilot; and it needs to protect its best asset, Narendra Modi’s image as helmsman, the visionary of Viksit Bharat, shiny clean. It is a balancing act, like staying afloat on two boats. The BJP and Mr Modi have been lucky so far.