Indian election campaigns have made hate speech and the politics of division the new normal

Politicians trading barbs at election time in the early 2000s has evolved into a vicious stridency in public discourse, even among ordinary Indians, that hinges on identity politics, fuelled by the right-wing vision of India as a Hindu nation

Samir Nazareth

Published: 10:00am, 7 May 2019

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The first rule of the Election Commission of India’s model code of conduct for political parties is “no party or candidate shall include in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic”. In other words, no hate speech.

However, identity is the lowest-hanging fruit for politicians because an Indian’s identity swings between religion, caste, place of birth and language. Communal rhetoric during elections revives the centuries-old schisms that democracy has been unable to heal.

Thus, election campaigns in India often focus on protecting or re-establishing community identity or on fomenting fear of its loss. While politicians in the 2019 national elections have not been sparing in their bigoted rhetoric, there has always been some caste and communal hate-mongering during elections.

The early 2000s saw vitriol traded between politicians only. For example, in 2004, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Narendra Modi, now India’s prime minister and then chief minister of Gujarat state, called Sonia Gandhi, then president of the Indian National Congress, a “jersey cow” in a reference to her Italian birth. In 2007, Gandhi called Modi a “merchant of death”, alluding to his alleged involvement in the 2002 Gujarat riots.

During the 2011 India Against Corruption movement, ordinary citizens began vilifying politicians, especially those in government. Soon, BJP politicians and their sympathisers were attacking those opposed to their sectarian ideology, labelling them “presstitutes”, “libtards” and “anti-nationals”.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during an election rally at Kathua district, south of Jammu city, the winter capital of Kashmir, on April 14. Photo: Xinhua

Lately, ordinary people have been parroting the monikers coined by political parties for their opponents. The BJP and its followers mock Rahul Gandhi, the current Congress president, as pappu, a derogatory term for someone inept. The Congress and its followers scorn Modi with the chowkidar chor hai (the watchman is a thief) epithet, pointing to his inability to prevent scams even though he has dubbed himself the “watchman” of the nation.

Thus, there has been a devolution and secularisation of hate speech – from the politician to the common Indian, and from the ideological to the personal. The ordinary Indian on both sides of the ideological divide, but particularly on the right, has imbibed the rabidness of political speeches. The widespread acceptance of the stridency of the right is because the BJP has successfully transmogrified its Hindutva ideology, which seeks to establish the hegemony of Hindu culture in India, into nationalism – a greater draw.

This transition fed off the undercurrent of animosity of many Hindus towards Indian minorities. In the Hindutva narrative, Christianity is linked to religious conversion and subservience to the British while Muslims are associated with Mughal rule, which brought almost all the subcontinent’s Hindu kingdoms under their suzerainty.

Hindu protesters, one holding a sword, chant slogans against the Muslim community during a rally in November 2018 demanding a Hindu temple be built on the site of a mosque in Ayodhya in northern India. Building a temple on the disputed site has long been a BJP campaign promise. Photo: AP

In 2014, Narendra Modi, in his first speech to parliament as prime minister, spoke of India’s 1,200 years of slavery, a reference to Mughal and British rule. Modi’s propensity to robustly hug international leaders, the government’s lobbying at the United Nations to create an International Day of Yoga and the construction of the world’s tallest statue were attempts to right perceived historical wrongs.

While Modi went about constructing the image of a muscular India at the macro level, there was a mainstreaming of the Hindutva agenda at the local level. The lynchings of Muslims and lower-caste groups known as Dalits ostensibly to protect the cow, revered by many Hindus, were attempts to re-establish Hindu might by putting Muslims in their place and also retaliation against the socio-economic ascendancy of Dalits.

Hindutva ideology has given many a sense of pride in being Indian. Adherents to this ideology believe that targeting minorities is a step towards restoring the country’s lost glory. Others choose to ignore crimes committed in the name of Hindutva or deem them a necessary evil.

There almost seems to be an attempt to instigate a Hindu catharsis nationally to undo the perceived injustices of the past and start “afresh”. Thus, voices in favour of the liberal and secular fabric of the country are now labelled anti-nationals and considered impediments to a resurgent India.

Those harassed barely find support from parties opposing the BJP. Given these parties’ own questionable records, supporting liberal and secular voices would only highlight their hypocrisy. For example, the Delhi High Court convicted a senior Congress leader for his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and a commission of inquiry found local party leaders were involved. That said, of the 174 members of the lower house of parliament who have been charged with crimes, which include murder and inciting communal violence, 92 are from the BJP.

Hate speech, especially during elections, shatters the comforting idea of various Indian identities cohabiting harmoniously. That political parties choose their candidates based on religion and caste is secular India’s dirty little open secret. Research has shown that politicians using communal rhetoric have higher chances of winning elections. The irony of Indian democracy is that politicians want to govern a nation that they do their best to divide during elections.

Samir Nazareth has worked in the development sector and writes on sociopolitical and environmental issues. He is the author of the travelogue, 1400 Bananas, 76 Towns & 1 Million People

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