The careful art of sounding inclusive

A story under this headline was reported this month: ‘No Muslim name finds place in BJP’s Bengal list’. The story went on to provide readers the numbers, that is to say, how many tickets were distributed and so on, but beyond that headline, there is not much to add. This does not surprise most of us, because the data since 2014 have taught us what the BJP wants.

In the last three Lok Sabhas, the BJP has won 282, 303 and 260 seats without a Muslim. It has over 100 MPs in the Rajya Sabha — none of them Muslim. A decade or so ago, it was reported that it had over a thousand MLAs across India, of whom one was Muslim. There is no Muslim minister in the Union cabinet, for the first time since 1947.

Again, this does not surprise us because, if there is one thing to be appreciated about the BJP, it is honesty. The party, especially in its current edition under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is clear about the fact that it seeks total exclusion of India’s largest minority, against whom it holds historical resentment.

We need not go into the merits of this sentiment, other than to acknowledge that this is how the party and many of its votaries feel. The issue to consider is something else. Why, given how clear the BJP and the prime minister in particular are about pushing this exclusion, do we then hear things like ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vishwas’ and ‘140 crore Indians’, and so on? The party and the leader could just as well be honest and craft slogans that are as exclusionary as their behaviour, but they do not. Why?

There are two ways to answer this, and the first is the less complicated way. The slogans are coined and regurgitated to assuage those who are anxious about such things. They don’t mean much because the reality of exclusion is right before us in the way that it is practised.

This answer is not particularly satisfying because it doesn’t address the issue of why the BJP needs to do it at all, given the transparency of its practices. It also does not accommodate the fact that, in the very acts of being full-throated and genuine about exclusion and persecution of Muslims, the prime minister has won over many people who want this sort of behaviour and this sort of society.

The real reason the party and the prime minister are forced into hypocrisy is that their desire for total exclusion does not sit well with Indian society and Indian culture. Who says things like ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam (the whole world is family)’ in their manifesto? It is not the Opposition or intelligentsia. It is the BJP. It rests on Indian wisdom when it comes to advertising its wares while it is peddling something else.

The constituency for the BJP’s authentic offering exists, of course, but it is smaller than the total set of BJP voters. It is for this reason that ‘development’ is, or at least was, such a large part of the party plank. The fangs have to be kept hidden in formal declarations and particularly in engaging with the wider world. Our poor diplomats have to juggle with this dilemma of acting brutishly at home while pretending to be liberal abroad.

On one of his visits to the US, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar had an interview with Donald Trump’s former national security advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster. The general, who is familiar with India and has visited it, questioned Jaishankar: ‘I wanted to ask you about how you see political developments in your own country. You are not a partisan person. You have served with great distinction across many administrations.

'There is concern in the midst of the pandemic about some of these Hindutva policies that could be undermining the secular nature of Indian democracy… and are India’s friends right to be concerned about some of these recent trends?’

Jaishankar avoided answering the question directly but went into a segue about how ration was distributed and cash transferred. He did not address the specific question regarding the problem of Hindutva policies that McMaster asked.

What are they? They are the introduction by India of religion into citizenship. Of new laws criminalising Muslim marriage and criminalising Muslim divorce, or new laws criminalising the possession of beef, the forced ghetto-isation of Muslims in Gujarat by law, the use of shotguns on crowds only in one part of India — Kashmir — and the demonisation by the government of Muslims, including for spreading Covid.

These are the things that India’s friends were concerned about. Jaishankar replied to McMaster without using the word ‘Hindutva’ once and without referring to the laws that India was getting pulled up for around the world. The reason he ran away from the debate, of course, is that there is no defence. Obfuscation and avoiding the issue was the only way to respond to the accusation, an accurate one, that India was harming itself and its own people through Hindutva.

This should give some hope, even if it is just a sliver, to those who rightly worry about our society and where it has landed and where it is headed. If even those who successfully divide Indians by faith find it uncomfortable to stand by their beliefs when challenged, it reveals this is not what we ultimately want and who we truly are.

Views are personal. More of Aakar Patel’s writing may be read here