Rightwing fringe elements feel empowered under Narendra Modi government

Three months before the Narendra Modi government was sworn in, Dinanath Batra, president of RSS-backed Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, won a battle when Penguin India agreed to settle a civil suit filed by him by recalling and pulping copies of Wendy Doniger’s ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’.
It generated a countrywide debate and many angry voices on social media perceived it as a serious attack on free thought, speech and expression. Batra was unfazed. On June 3, with the BJP-led government firmly in place, he met HRD minister Smriti Irani to demand setting up of a National Education Commission and revamp of the National Curriculum Framework to ensure that the NCERT “does not continue with its flawed curriculum”.

According to Batra, the HRD minister agreed to both.

Has the arrival of Modi Sarkar emboldened the right wing fringe elements? Social experts and political rivals say they have, pointing out that hardliners are increasingly hogging the limelight. According to sociologist Shiv Visvanathan, the advent of the Modi government has emboldened fringe elements. “They have the sense of majoritarianism and have turned bully boys,” he said.

Congress leader Kapil Sibal insists that increasing hardline utterances and incidents are not unrelated stray events but part of the BJP strategy to polarise voters. “It is their agenda. In the last one or two years of its term, the NDA will talk about bringing uniform civil code and do other things for Hindus,” he told ET.

In Goa, BJP minister Sudin Dhavalikar triggered a controversy last month when he demanded a ban on bikinis, mini-skirts and pubs in Goa because they were “against Indian culture”.

Another minister, Deepak Dhavalikar, goaded everyone in the Goa assembly to support Modi to establish a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.

The PM’s silence hasn’t helped clear the air, which may have prompted foreign media to call him “an over-sharing politician, now a silent prime minister.”

He didn’t react when Shiv Sena members of Parliament tried to force-feed a fasting Muslim employee of Maharashtra Sadan in the Capital to protest the poor quality of food. Sibal alleged that Modi was keeping quiet “because he wants these things to go on”.

To be fair, the PM expressed concern about incidents of communalism and violence in his maiden Independence Day speech.

A Congress leader said that was not enough. “How does mere lip service help? Modi has to rein in these elements. The enquiry report into the Saharanpur riots has accused local BJP MP Raghav Lakhanpal of inciting rioters. What is he going to do about it?” the person said. RSS spokesperson Manmohan Vaidya denied that there was any misplaced feeling of empowerment and entitlement.

“It is not because of the BJP government. Such feelings and utterances had been there earlier too,” he told ET.

Sociologist Dipankar Gupta agreed that these fringe elements were always active. “It is true that they may have become more emboldened now, but it is too soon to see a correlation between Modi government and the incidents,” he said.

Columnist Ved Pratap Vaidik — who was recently in news for his meeting with Hafiz Saeed, main accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack and leader of the blacklisted Jamaat-ud-Dawa — said the behaviour of right wing fringe elements was not in consonance with the government’s responsibility. “Modi must control them because his image is suffering,” he said.

Vaidik said some recent controversies were highly political in nature. A senior BJP leader admitted that when minister of state in the PMO Jitendra Singh talked about a debate on Article 370 (that provides special status to Jammu and Kashmir) and agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh advocated an open debate on the uniform civil code, they were part of an orchestrated design.

“These were thought balloons, floated to gauge public mood on the issues, and also to set off a debate amid the public,” the person said.