India-Pakistan tension: Imperative Narendra Modi first addresses nation, holds all-party meeting; electioneering must wait

It’s been over 24 hours since Pakistan’s failed attempts at targeting military installations in India, and more than 48 hours after India’s surgical strike in Balakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi has yet to chair an all-party meeting. He has, since these two seminal events occurred, launched an app and continued to campaign for the coming Lok Sabha election. Far more worryingly, the prime minister is yet to address the nation about the surgical strike and the resulting Pakistani response. On Tuesday, addressing a rally in Rajasthan, all he had to offer was election rhetoric: The nation is in safe hands, he told his audience, before reciting a poem that had been used as an election song in 2014 and contained the vow that he would not allow harm to befall the country. In the aftermath of the Pulwama attack, the main political parties had agreed unofficially to suspend political activities, including their election campaigns, to present a united front to Pakistan and the world at large. And with stray exceptions, parties desisted from playing politics or running their campaigns. Not so, however, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Led by the prime minister and party president Amit Shah, the BJP used every opportunity to do precisely what the Opposition was refraining from doing. [caption id=“attachment_6143791” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Narendra Modi. Twitter @BJP4India[/caption] Before turning to the highlights of Modi’s political activities, mention must be made of something significant that happened, or did not for quite some time. In the aftermath of Pulwama, Kashmiris, mostly students, but others as well, living in other states began to be attacked. Unconscionably, just for being Kashmiris. Many leaders condemned the attacks. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh issued an advisory to all states and Union Territories to provide security to people from Kashmir. Some did, some didn’t bother. But it took the prime minister almost a week to speak up. It was only on Saturday, 23 February, that Modi said the fight was against terrorists and not Kashmiris and it was the ‘duty of every citizen of Hindustan to safeguard the children of Kashmir’. On the Saturday after the attack, Modi was being Modi in Maharashtra, where he spoke at several government functions, including the launch of several projects. At these programmes, he claimed his government had worked tirelessly for farmers and he personally had worked sincerely to fulfil his promises. Sounds like an election speech? Around 24 hours later, in Jharkhand, to pay homage to one of the slain Central Reserve Police force (CRPF) head constable Vijay Soreng and inaugurate three medical colleges, he once again resorted to electioneering. Rapid strides have been made in the state in the past four years, he said. Jharkhand had three medical colleges, now it has six, he added, before going on to pipelines for drinking water. After a day’s silence (filled by Shah), on Tuesday, Modi was back in campaign mode in Uttar Pradesh, where he inaugurated several projects. What stood out, however, was his invocation of Ravidas, the Bhakti saint, at the latter’s birthplace in Varanasi. After speaking about honesty — the BJP’s preserve apparently, LPG connections, hospital cover for the poor, irrigation facilities and subsidies for farmers, Modi said some people were spreading negativity about his claims. The people of Varanasi would, he added for good measure, give them a fitting reply. On Monday, 25 February, the prime minister used the inauguration of the National War Memorial, a solemn occasion if ever there was one, to attack the Nehru-Gandhi family, accusing it of criminal negligence in matters of national security and using defence deals to make money. But Modi himself is yet to reply to the questions that have been asked of him, by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and others, about the Pulwama attack. But the BJP is well insulated in its sense of righteousness and its penchant for overblown rhetoric. When the Congress broke its self-imposed silence and started asking uncomfortable questions about the prime minister’s whereabouts in the forests of Corbett National Park on the day the attack took place, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had this non-answer: At the time the whole country was united, the Congress was showing its true colours. The Opposition had the decency, by and large, to wait a week to let the country recover from a horrendous attack, but for the BJP and the prime minister it has been business as usual from Day One. Follow all the latest India-Pakistan updates here