Editorial: Textbook code violation

Narendra Modi’s campaign speeches have always been characterised by mockery and invective, and his performance on the stump in the past few months has been true to type. But even by his own standards, the speech at a rally at Banswara in Rajasthan on Sunday was remarkable for his wilful shedding of anything like a prime ministerial demeanour and engaging in verbal combat more typical of street-level karyakartas of his party.

In an extraordinary attack on the Congress’ agenda of redistribution of power, Modi launched off into fanciful simplification. He said that if voted to power the Congress would seize the hard-earned wealth of ordinary people and distribute it to its favoured social sections. Even the “mangalsutras” of “mothers and sisters” would be confiscated and distributed among the “Musalmaan”, whom he went on to refer to as “those who tend to produce more children”. He proceeded to twist a statement made by former PM Manmohan Singh in 2006 to mean that the minorities would always have the first access to resources.

Modi has history with this sort of thing. While he is remembered for his ‘Shamshan vs Kabristan’ remark during the UP elections of 2017, using pejorative invective to rally voters against Muslims has been his stock-in-trade from his time as chief minister of Gujarat. In his Gujarati Gaurav rallies after the Godhra riots, he used to routinely refer to Muslims as ‘miyan’ and describe their relief camps as “baby-producing centres’, throwing in an allusion to “hum paanch, hamare pachees” (we five and our 25).

Snide references to Muslim fecundity are not Modi’s intellectual property, however. They are straight out of the polarisation textbooks the Sangh Parivar has used for decades. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath frequently takes delight in pointing out “those who call their fathers abba jaan”. The fact that Modi has resorted to this divisive tool at this stage of the election campaign—after the first phase of voting reported a low turnout—and in Rajasthan—where it holds all the seats at stake—indicates that the going is not good for the ruling party and that its top leader is rattled.

Commentary following the Banswara speech has been critical of Modi but the censure has tended to be of the ‘not quite cricket” sort, pretending that this is a game we are playing and that there has only been a momentary slippage of noblesse oblige. No amount of prevarication can conceal the fact that Modi’s speech on Sunday qualifies as hate speech and violates the very first two points of the Model Code of Conduct for these elections. Point no. 1 forbids a party or candidate from engaging in “any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic”; and Point no. 2 mandates that “there shall be no appeal to caste or communal feelings for securing votes.”

Were India a functioning democracy and not an elected autocracy, this would be an open-and-shut case of hate speech requiring censure by the Election Commission. Unfortunately, this is a game being played on a souped-up pitch with a partisan umpire officiating and the opposition’s important bowlers hobbled or jailed. What chance is there of fair conduct?