Prevention is better than cure: After Al-Jazeera clanger, Ram Madhav would do well to pay heed

In a country as huge as India, opinions are plenty and they are varied. This is what Ram Madhav, the National General Secretary of BJP, said at the beginning of his interview Head to Head with Al-Jazeera journalist Mehdi Hasan. The interview went south from there onwards. Madhav made many claims in the show — which has a high-tempo debate format and works on furious back-and-forths, no-holds-bared exchanges, and most importantly, plenty of high-decibel rhetoric, one of which was the reference to Akhand Bharat. “The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) still believes that one day these parts, which have for historical reasons separated only 60 years ago, will again, through popular goodwill, come together and Akhand Bharat will be created,” Ram Madhav said on the show. The senior leader was criticised for his comments which came at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to pay a ‘surprise’ visit to his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif. [caption id=“attachment_2563858” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Screengrab from the Head to Head interview.[/caption] Madhav clarified his statement claiming he was quoted out of context in an oped piece in The Indian Express, where he wrote, “I feel sad that my interview was used to diminish the importance of the PM’s path-breaking gesture. We in politics need to look at the immediate — at the most, the next three, four, or five years. Some of us, who have imbibed the generational vision of the RSS, tend to get trapped in political incorrectness.” This clarification did not cut much ice. Sanjay Singh of _Firstpost_ quoted RSS thinker and founder of India Policy Foundation Rakesh Sinha who rebutted Madhav’s statement in his tweets, saying that Akhand Bharat was a cultural, not a political issue for the RSS. “Neither Pakistan nor Bangladesh recognise the pre-Islamic cultural roots of the Indian sub-continent. Pakistan was created as a separate sovereign nation on religious lines,” writes Singh. An RSS pracharak, Madhav was the Akhil Bharatiya Sah Sampark Pramukh before he was deputed to BJP. His clout and rising stock within the party became apparent during Modi’s visit to the US. Madhav camped well in advance of the visit and mobilised the Indian-American community. Several reports claimed that he was in fact the man who played a crucial role for Modi and the BJP’s electoral sweep in the 2014 General Election before he was annointed as the general secretary for the party. Besides being a key person who facilitated end of European Union’s boycott of the Prime Minister, Madhav is also credited with organising the meeting of PM Modi with Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2014. Among media and political circles, Madhav was Modi’s “ outreach man”. While these accomplishments establish Madhav as a seasoned politician and a master strategist, it also makes it harder to fathom why a hardened politician would say what he did at the interview? That it aired on the day Modi visited Sharif soured the situation. However, an Oxford student, who was part of the audience during the Al-Jazeera interview seconded Madhav’s defence and told Newslaundry that the leader actually meant that if 20 nations of European Union can come together and East and West Germany can come together, why not India. "…Head to Head is (a) one of a kind combative format and judging either the guest or the host on the basis of just that interaction is not the best idea.  Indian politicians have had a long history of making ridiculous remarks. But, in this case, the outraged trolls remarking on this have been far more ridiculous than the politician in question," the student wrote. Madhav, in The Indian Express article, evokes Saadat Hasan Manto, cites the example of the time when Jesus was made to stand for trial and even briefly discusses the history of the origins of Akhand Bharat. In the article, where Madhav seems to be making an earnest attempt at explaining his clanger and elaborating on what he really meant. Instead, he should have been more responsible and not tried to expand on the RSS ideologies of a border-less India on a high-octane interview, never mind when it was expected to be aired. In times like these when the word ‘beef’ can be used out of context to lynch a man, political correctness, especially coming from a position of power, is a must, particularly at a time when the BJP government is being hounded for its “anti-minority” stand and Hindutva agenda.