indianexpress/article/opinion/editorials/brute-forces/ EDIT IE 24JUL2014 Brute forces Shiv Sena MPs may have acted true to party form. BJP government must take exemplary action against them. Over the last few decades in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena has refined a politics of bitter nativism and bigotry towards outsiders, using public violence as a performative strategy. The culture of lumpenism appears to have seeped in so thoroughly that even its members of Parliament evidently think nothing of lashing out with force on a fellow citizen, a hapless employee of the IRCTC who was supervising food at the Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi. As first reported in this newspaper, unhappy with the dinner on offer, a group of Sena MPs force fed a caterer, a Muslim who had been observing the Ramzan fast. When the story caused uproar in Parliament, Sena MPs first tried denying its veracity. Then, after a video surfaced to back up the allegation, they claimed they were only trying to feed him the chapati to show him how tasteless it was. Even that excuse makes it evident they think nothing of violating another citizen’s bodily space. But this is not about the swagger of power alone. While the Sena MPs now also insist that they did not know he was Muslim, the tag on his uniform and the name by which others addressed him would seem to puncture that claim. The Shiv Sena will, in all probability, continue to stand by its boorishness. But the onus is now on the Shiv Sena’s senior alliance partner, the BJP, to take exemplary action against these MPs. While senior leader L.K. Advani has agreed this act was “not right”, there has been no official word from the government so far. Given the anxieties that the BJP’s massive mandate could encourage displays of majoritarian triumphalism, it is crucial that the government publicly and visibly distance itself from the Sena’s action. The BJP has been known to maximise its appeal by switching between vocabularies. It has often, in the past, winked at the excesses of the Shiv Sena and appeared tolerant of those at the fringe of the party and parivar who have used Hindutva as a cover to stoke minority insecurities and flout the law. Most recently, however, on its way to a decisive mandate, it propagated the philosophy and slogan of “India first”. Now that it is actually leading the most powerful government in decades with a majority of its own, it is time for the BJP to prove that it does indeed put India first. This is a moment for it to demonstrate that constitutional values trump coalition considerations.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 07:39:26 +0000
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