It is a small step, but to be welcomed, nevertheless. BJP president Amit Shah has threatened party MP from Unnao Sakshi Maharaj with disciplinary action if the latter cannot give satisfactory explanations for his blatantly communal observations that have contributed not a little to vitiating the social and political atmosphere in the country.
The erring MP has called Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin a patriot, and has asked Hindu women to produce four children each, presumably to fight off the imagined demographic aggression of the Muslims. Doubtless, Mr Shah’s hesitant step emanates from the widely expressed anxiety that the strongly communal element of the ideological make-up of the RSS-BJP was threatening to overshadow Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s avowed “development” agenda. If this underlying pressure has resulted in the show-cause notice to the UP MP, the BJP chief will no doubt appreciate that if it is tokenism he is engaging in, he is likely to be found out.
The nature of Sakshi Maharaj’s reply may be expected to be under close public scrutiny. Many BJP middle-level leaders have gained notoriety through their deeply divisive remarks since about the time the party came to power. If the party seeks to carry conviction in dealing with communal offenders, it could do no better than to publicly ask Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, a minister of state in Mr Modi’s government, and former Bihar minister and Lok Sabha MP Giriraj Singh, to explain their foul remarks which have caused public unease. The message would then go down.
