BJP porn row: Hypocrisy of the Indian Right is not a secret now

This is the face of the Indian right wing that the BJP would have rather covered forever. But, unfortunately, it cannot as it lacks both, the moral rectitude and the strength of character, to do so. Forget all that grandstanding before television cameras. That is for public consumption.

There has been enough heat over two BJP legislators watching pornographic material on their cell phones while the Assembly was in session. The party will have to answer for it. It has been quick to remove the ministers but the action will hardly help undo the damage caused to the image of the party.

What is more interesting is the topic under discussion when the alleged act of the ministers was caught on camera. It was the Sri Ram Sene, a right wing outfit and the self proclaimed protector of public morality, notorious for having attacked women in Mangalore’s pubs for not behaving in ‘acceptable’ manner.

On 1 January, members of the outfit took down the Indian flag atop the tehsildar’s office in Singdai and hoisted Pakistan’s flag in its place. Singdai has a seizable population of Muslims and is known to be highly communally sensitive. The purpose was to set off a communal conflict by fanning rumours about the anti-India act by the Muslims.

It had the desired effect. There were angry protests from Hindu organisations, including Sri Rama Sene and the Bajrang Dal. The situation did not go out of control as the police acted fast and caught the culprits — six in all — and all Sri Ram Sene activists. The ruling BJP government, though embarrassed, had ruled out any immediate action against the outfit.

The Sene has been in the news for all the wrong reasons and a pain in the neck for the BJP, but the party has made no efforts to clamp down on it. The normally vocal central BJP leaders have been curiously silent about the outfit and its activities. The RSS, the ideological fount of the Sangh Parivar to which all these outfits claim to be loosely affiliated, has not come out strongly against the Sene too.

However, this particular outfit is just one of the rogue players in the Sangh’s extended family. Others jump in whenever they feel they are losing the media space. Although scattered across the country, the outfits share common character traits: they are illiberal and intolerant; they are not amenable to reason; they are prone to violence; and they would not mind manufacturing communal disharmony, which includes riots, when it suits them. All this, of course, in the name of protecting Indian culture and heritage.

The leaders of the BJP cannot be unaware of the damage these outfits are causing to the party. That it is yet to gain the confidence of people and is looked at with distrust among a vast segment of the populace across the country, despite being around for so long, is primarily due to the fact that it has failed to tackle the negative vibes its ‘friends’ routinely send out.

But the party seems helpless. It has little control over these elements since they don’t come under the party’s control and operate virtually independently. They could be controlled with threats of punitive action but at the risk of losing votes that the Hindutva plank fetches for the BJP. The party is yet to produce a leader — barring Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi — who could take a tough call on these elements.

If the party is thinking long-term, it has to think beyond being silent on the limited hate-filled agenda of these outfits. It must realise, if it has not already, that these groups are a nuisance, to the BJP and to the country. If it finds the actions of Muslim fundamentalist groups reprehensible, it should have the same sentiment for Hindu fundamentalist groups too. It has been trying to do a tightrope walk by indulging in clever semantics. It would help the party gain respect if came out strongly with a clear position.

Coming back to the porn episode, well, it is a new low in the democracy. But more than the conduct of BJP’s ministers it reflects the quality of people we have in our higher representative institutions. The Congress might be taking the moral high ground now but the fact is it could end up facing a similar situation in the prevailing low political culture. But the incident coming from the BJP, the party which spares no chance to claim its superiority in matter of ethics and public conduct, is a bit curious.

Both parties must go beyond partisan thinking to make the polity better.