Prime Minister Narendra Modi's oratory skills are appreciated and deplored in equal manner, depending on which side of the camp you belong to. The recent comment by him during the ongoing Assembly elections may be hard to defend even for his diehard supporters.
At a rally at Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, February 19, Modi said, "If a village gets a graveyard, it should get a cremation ground too. If there is electricity during Ramzan, there should be electricity during Diwali too. If there is electricity during Holi, there should be electricity during Eid too. There should not be any discrimination." It is clearly communal and meant to incite divide between Hindus and Muslims. It presents a rather bleak message to the Muslims in the state.
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With such comments, Modi is manufacturing in Hindus a sense of perceived victimisation for not having enough attention paid to them by the Samajwadi Party. It is apparent that he is promising to be the messiah of Hindus. According to him, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) can be the only deliverers from this gross neglect that the state government has shown so far towards the community.
The Prime Minister's comment that "there should be electricity during Diwali if there is electricity during Ramzan" obviously targets the SP, calling the current government communal, and taking a direct hit at SP and by association, the Congress. It also implies that the SP-Congress alliance will be working solely in favour of one minority community over others. However, by doing so, Modi is implicating his own party in an act that he is criticising the other for. By solely talking about Diwali, he is saying that the BJP is a Hindu party, and providing no assurance to other minorities that they won't become second class citizens in fear of the majority group.
Also, his comment that if there is a Muslim burial ground there should also be a Hindu cremation ground further cements his communal sentiments when he projects the SP-Congress alliance as working for Muslims and not Hindus.
Both his statements widely ignore the other minorities — Sikhs, Christians and Jains — living in the state, making the whole Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections get centred on appeasing a certain community with a big voter base. With his comments, Modi has crossed the boundaries laid down by two esteemed institutions of the country – the judiciary and the Election Commission.
Asking for votes based on religion, caste, creed has been banned by the Supreme Court. But that doesn't seem to be stopping politicians. And when the man with majority in Lok Sabha dares invoke religion he forfeits his right to deride others doing the same.
Until now, Modi focused on harping upon the work done by the Central government, the lack of involvement by the state government, and even making personal attacks on his chief opponents – Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati – for their failures in governance. But with the latest remark he's made sure that a situation like Muzaffarnagar riots is only waiting to happen. The history of the state will retain the blot of 2013 for a long time, when a communal riot led to the death of 42 Muslims and 20 Hindus, and displaced over 50,000 people, both Hindus and Muslims.
While the BJP has projected itself as a secular party since the 2014 general elections, playing the growth and development card, with this comment PM Modi seems to have unravelled a thread from the fragile fabric of peace in a state where incidents like Muzaffarnagar riots, and Dadri mob violence over rumours that a man ate beef, can easily take place.
While BJP president Amit Shah or others did focus on how the Hindus had to "exile" themselves in certain Muslim majority districts in the state, it was not expected from PM Modi to talk the same language. His position, after all, makes him the spokesperson for the Centre. Is the Centre then discarding whatever garb for secularism it had donned so far?