Ecostani | From Modi’s retirement to Muslim community’s fertility rate; “divisive” poll narrative misses its youth
BJP had tried to build a narrative on the long Congress history of ruling India and the mistakes the party is said to have committed during its years of rule
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday claimed that Union home minister Amit Shah will replace Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2025 as the PM when the latter turns 75 if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) returns to power. At the same press conference, Kejriwal said that the BJP will not be able to win over 220 Lok Sabha seats as compared to 303 in 2019 and 282 in 2014.
Shah was quick to rebut Kejriwal’s claims at a press conference in Hyderabad saying there was no retirement rule in the BJP’s constitution. However, in 2014 the BJP had benched its senior leaders such as L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, citing their age. Both of them at that time were above 75.
In 2016, the BJP removed Babulal Gaur and Sartaj Singh from Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s cabinet citing the officially undeclared “retirement after 75” rule. They were denied party tickets in the 2018 assembly polls.
To be sure, the BJP has given tickets to leaders over 75 years of age for state assembly and Lok Sabha polls since 2014.
Kejriwal’s first salvo at the BJP after coming out of jail on Friday night prompted the BJP to react quickly to prevent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) from building a poll narrative that Modi will not be prime minister for five years.
Divisive poll campaign narrative
The election campaign started with the BJP claiming how the PM has built India’s image globally, provided free food grains to 80 crore Indians and initiated new infrastructure development projects. The Congress, in turn, raised the issues of high unemployment, rising inflation, and, what the party claimed, to be the politics of hate.
As the first phase of polling got over on April 19, the campaign turned divisive with Modi speaking on the construction and consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. He also said the Congress wants to take away reservations meant for SC/ST and OBCs and give them to Muslims and also described Muslims as infiltrators.
Modi was expected to frame the election as a referendum on his decade as a PM, and was expected to speak on India’s progress, its space lifts, it’s success in foreign policy and India’s emergence as a global power.
Instead, he chose to reaffirm that the Ram temple represented a religious and cultural assertion of the Hindu community and accused the Congress of appeasing Muslims.
At a rally on April 21, Modi said that the opposition Congress wanted to distribute wealth to “infiltrators and those who have many children” referring to Muslims. At another rally, he warned women that the opposition would confiscate their gold and redistribute it to Muslims. So much so, he said in
Gujarat if one has two buffaloes, the Congress will take one and give it away as per their appeasement politics, referring to Muslims again.
Modi accused the Congress of orchestrating a “vote jihad”, urging the majority community to unite against them. Modi went to the extent of saying that the Congress would select the Indian cricket team on the basis of religion.
Then it was the turn of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) to come up with a paper on the share of religious minorities in the Indian population between 1950 and 2015 to claim that India has witnessed the “biggest decline in the majority population (7.82%)” in South Asia whereas that of minorities including Muslims has risen.
The Population Foundation of India, an independent think tank on whose data the study was based, rebutted the “misleading” claims saying that Hindus have grown more than Muslims in absolute terms and the highest fertility rate decline was seen among Muslims. Muslims make up 14% of India's more than 1.4 billion people. Following these assertions, the BJP social media posts have, as per the opposition, “demonised Muslims”.
The Congress has accused Modi of Islamophobia terming his remarks “divisive, hate speech” and has sought action from the Election Commission for violating the poll code. The EC has issued notice to BJP national president J D Nadda but is yet to take any action against the PM or the BJP.
That is not all.
Modi also accused the Congress of taking “truckloads” of money from billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani for elections. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has long spoken about the close ties that Modi shares with the country's two richest men. “For the first time you have spoken in public about Adani and Ambani. Is it your personal experience that you know they give money in trucks?” Gandhi responded in a video message to Modi. Neither businessman has reacted to the comments.
Modi also reacted sharply to the comments made by former head of Overseas Congress Sam Pitroda about the skin colour of Indians saying that the “mentor of Shehzada” (referring to Rahul Gandhi) had revealed the true mentality of the Congress. He has also said the Congress party was threatening India claiming that Pakistan has a nuclear bomb, referring to an old interview of now expelled Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on India-Pakistan relations. Modi also said the Pakistan leaders were backing the Congress in elections.
To all this, the Congress leaders have said Modi should be speaking on 10 years of being the PM and what he has done for the country. “We expect Modi ji to tell people what he has done for the country and its people in 10 years. He should not try to make this election about Hindus and Muslims and Pakistan,” Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi said on Friday in Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi.
The BJP had tried to build a narrative on the long Congress history of ruling India and the mistakes the party is said to have committed during its years of rule. BJP leaders have demonised Congress prime ministers, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajeev Gandhi and blamed them for all ills that India face today.
The ruling party has also accused the Congress of “disrespecting” non-Gandhi prime ministers such as P V Narsimha Rao and Lal Bahadur Shastri and accused the party of corruption even though in 10 years of power it failed to prove any charges against the top Congress leadership.
No BJP leader has spoken about the promises made in 2019 about doubling farmer income by 2022, providing drinking water in every home by 2022 and achieving total sanitation. Also missing from the BJP campaign are India's youth and women, about 70% of the country's population.
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