The attempt by a Telangana BJP MLA to revile Indian tennis star Sania Mirza has rightly raised concerns across the country. The communal tone of the attack on the ace player is unmistakable. In only two months since the Narendra Modi government took office, there has been a spate of episodes in different parts of the country featuring members of the saffron tribe and their associates speaking out of turn. They have not been ticked off by the highest quarters for giving vent to their Hindu communal agenda, at times in a violent manner, as was the case with the murder in Pune of a Muslim techie by Hindutva fanatics for just looking like an observant Muslim.
The silence on the government’s part has in most cases emboldened the peddlers of the hate agenda, and is raising questions that the untrammelled expression of communal ideas might play such a divisive role in society as to prejudice the development paradigm that the Prime Minister emphasised through the Lok Sabha election campaign and afterward..
It was hard to imagine that someone as famous as Ms Mirza — she is a national icon — would be trifled with so brazenly by an elected representative of the country’s political establishment. The MLA in question said Ms Mirza was a “Pakistani bahu” (she is married to a well-known Pakistani cricketer) and was therefore unfit to hold the position of Telangana’s brand ambassador, a position bestowed on her by the state government. The player’s response has been restrained and dignified. She calmly maintained that she would remain an Indian until her dying day.
The silver lining is that I&B minister of state Prakash Javadekar called Ms Mirza the “pride of India”, undercutting somewhat the effect of the MLA’s vile observation. The MLA himself tried to backpedal later. Alas, in spite of the BJP officially distancing itself from the cheap remarks, some party members have been all over television hinting broadly that Sania’s credentials to be a brand ambassador for her state were suspect.
There is, indeed, a sense abroad that while officially the ruling party seeks to dissociate itself from openly communal rants, lower down the order BJP politicians feel no sense of restraint. Now the BJP-run Gujarat government has made compulsory for state-run schools the books of Dina Nath Batra, the ideologue under whose pressure top publishing houses have had to withdraw certain books. This man’s writings espouse the cause of incorporating in maps of India all our neighbouring countries. This cannot but undermine our foreign policy. The time may have come for the PM and his senior colleagues to step in so that free rein to communal discourse in all its forms is ended.
