Post Kairana defeat, Sambit Patra on Live TV reveals BJP’s dangerous plan for 2019 Lok Sabha polls and it’s no Freudian slip
By Rifat Jawaid
- June 3, 2018
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra on Friday
stunningly claimed that his party candidate’s defeat in Kairana bypolls
was the defeat of Hindus and victory of Muslims. While taking part in a
live TV debate on News24, Patra told the show’s anchor, Manak Gupta,
“If one religious group (Muslims) decides to polarise, then other group
(Hindus) too will polarise. This shouldn’t happen but if one group has
voted en masse for a particular candidate, then please mark my words,
this will have its effect across India.”
Sambit Patra
The
show’s anchor sought to correct him stating that Muslims constituted
only 32% of Kairana’s vote share, while 68% population were still
Hindus, Patra blurted out his party’s dangerous plan for 2018. He said,
“When this will reverberate across India, then everyone will pause and
reflect. When word will spread that 32% Muslims could unite, but where
were Hindus? Islam won but why did Hindus lose, then everyone including
Manak Gupta and Sambit Patra will be forced to think.”
His
comments coincided with a dangerous social media campaign by BJP
supporters, who falsely blamed the newly elected RLD MP, Tabassum Hasan,
for saying that Kairana results were the victory of ‘Allah’ and ‘defeat
of Ram.’ A shocked Hasan had told Janta Ka Reporter that she never made
those comments and was contemplating filing a criminal case against the
members of the Hindu Yuva Vahini for spreading the dangerous
propaganda.
Sambit Patra is often termed as
BJP’s loose canon while taking part in TV debates or flying the flag for
his party in conclaves organised by TV channels. But, his stocks within
the saffron party have skyrocketed in the recent months, particularly
after he was made an independent director in the government-owned ONGC.
Another
theory about Patra’s perceived loose talk in TV debates is that he says
things that the higher echelon in his party would not publicly utter
for the fear of reprisals. In other words, Patra’s seemingly bizarre
utterances, according to many politics watchers in India, are prompted
by a shrewd political design, to extract the much-needed electoral
advantage.
Just before the last year’s Gujarat
assembly elections, Patra was taking part in a conclave, organised by
ABP news channel. For every criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on
his failure to deliver the election promises, Patra would pretend to
get animated and utter repeatedly, ‘Sun raha hai na Gujarat? They
(Congress) are making fun of Modi because he’s a Gujarati.” This was a
clever move given that, for the first time, the saffron party had
started to develop cold feet in its own bastion, a state that the BJP
had first sown its Hindutva seeds so successfully. It was a dangerous
but effective move to make it Gujarati Vs non-Gujarati by selling Modi’s
credential as the son-of-the-soil to woo voters in order to ward off
any potential threats to BJP’s survival in the western coastal state of
India.
Post Kairana’s defeat, Patra’s party is
facing an existential crisis not just in Gujarat but across India with a
united opposition appearing determined to shatter Modi’s dreams for a
second term in the prime minister’s office. The RLD’s decision to field a
Muslim candidate in a predominantly Jat constituency and ensure her
decisive win over the BJP candidate in Kairana also demolished a
communally divisive plan that has always suited the BJP in the past. BJP
had ridden piggyback on the growing anti-Muslim sentiments in Kairana
in 2014 Lok Sabha polls after a bloody religious strife in the
neighbouring Muzaffarnagar in August 2013. Then, a small fight had
metamorphosed into full-blown communal violence killing more than 60
people in the Jat-dominated Muzaffarnagar.
Although
Modi spoke about development in all his public rallies while leading
the BJP’s campaign to wrest power from Manmohan Singh in 2014, that mask
has been taken off long ago. Faced with a huge anti-incumbency, series
of electoral setbacks in bypolls and unprecedented unity among the
opposition parties have seemingly prompted the BJP to return to its
age-old agenda of Hindutva and religious polarisation more explicitly.
Modi
gave the first hint towards religious polarisation during the UP
assembly elections when he spoke about Qabristan and Shamsan (burial and
cremation grounds for Muslims and Hindus). Modi and BJP President Amit
Shah’s choice of Yogi Adityanath, a known face of militant Hindutva, to
quit as an MP and become UP’s chief minister was another step in that
direction. Post BJP’s stunning defeats in Gorakhpur, Adityanath’s home
constituency, Phulpur and now Kairana, the party appears to have decided
its electoral agenda for 2019 elections. Whether it will be help Modi
reap dividends is anybody’s guess.
When Patra
and his party intend to polarise Hindu votes, they surely don’t have
plans to do so using emotional appeal. That doesn’t work anymore and we
saw that in Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana. In the absence of using
words, one could only expect something sinister from these so-called
Hindutva warriors. Let’s not forget that it took 2002 pogroms for Modi
to cement his position as chief minister indefinitely before staking his
claim for India’s prime minister.
