Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has said sardonically that she might have to allot time for apologies in the House each day. If the minister of state for food processing, a sadhvi (a Hindu holy woman), no less, was forced to apologise to Parliament recently for her deeply disturbing words which called the Muslims “illegitimate” in a cheap play of words, it is now the turn of a well-known BJP MP, Sakshi Maharaj, a hardened saffron hand with a loose tongue. This ideologically-crazed man praised Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse as “a true nationalist.” In both instances, Parliament remained deadlocked until regret was secured by the Opposition. In the case of the sadhvi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was obliged to take a break to attend the House and plead with Opposition MPs to forgive his minister.
It would have been better by far if Mr Modi had ejected the sadhvi from his council of ministers as punishment. If such an object lesson had been administered, the likes of Sakshi Maharaj might show more circumspection in their public utterances. This is only a guess, of course. Sangh Parivar elements are ideologically raised in an environment in which hatred for the minority communities is routine currency. Gandhi is actually a reviled man in such groups. His so-called failing was that he was solicitous of Muslims, and by that reckoning not a Hindu nationalist. Hence, the extolling of Godse as “a true nationalist”.
The Prime Minister, his senior colleagues, and BJP president Amit Shah have expressed public displeasure over the cheap communal remarks of their flock. But they will have to do more to carry conviction, not only with the general public but the Parivar elements, which is more to the point. This means punishment being doled out to those who cross the line.
It is because the BJP chief and senior figures in the government are not taken at face value on the communal question that Swami Chinmayanand, who was minister of state for home in the Vajpayee government, called the Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid (himself no model of sober speech, of course) a “haramzada”, or ill-begotten. This was right after the sadhvi’s apology in the Lok Sabha. Indeed, this lady mocked her own apology at a subsequent public meeting in the national capital.
The massive momentum Mr Modi derived — before and after the Lok Sabha election — was on account of the promise of development, growth, and economic enhancement of the common man, in general. Alas, in the six months of Modi rule, Hindu communalism has gained extraordinary salience. This could play spoilsport.
