#dnaEdit: Agenda slowdown

The results of the Delhi assembly elections appear to have taught important lessons in the art of moderation to the leading proponents of the Sangh Parivar: the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). After months of watching the Hindutva brigade heighten the anti-minority rhetoric to a shrill pitch, Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his silence on the attacks against Christians and Muslims, and unequivocally reaffirmed his government’s commitment to religious freedoms. Not to be left behind, RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat has now snubbed BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj’s exhortation to every Hindu mother to give birth to four children. Bhagwat’s choice of words would come as a surprise to his progressive critics. His exact words were “our mothers are not factories; giving birth to a child is an individual choice”. The clarification is indeed welcome.

That the BJP and the RSS have closed ranks out of political/governance compulsions rather than choice is evident from the delay in which these rebuttals have followed. The church attacks and ghar wapsi events have roiled the country for over two months while Maharaj’s comments have also been in public domain for a while now. 

The comprehensiveness of the electoral defeat in Delhi has clearly left the Sangh Parivar confused. The BJP’s phenomenal performance in the Lok Sabha elections, with the RSS pitching in strongly, was conveniently construed as a thumbs-up to the Hindutva ideology. But as the Delhi elections have shown, people are worried about inflation, jobs, civic services and corruption rather than the narrow appeal of ideologies. Read together, the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2015 Delhi assembly results were clearly a reflection of the popular anger against the respective incumbent central governments in power, the Congress-led UPA in 2014, and the BJP in 2015. Of course, the RSS contributed significantly to the BJP victory in 2014 by lending its cadres for the campaign. It was only natural then that the Sangh Parivar would extract its pound of flesh from the new government. But the problem this posed for PM Modi was that the statements emanating from BJP hardliners and leaders of fringe outfits like Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal soon assumed rabid and intolerant tones. The unease amongst moderate Hindus and the media’s uncompromising stance against such anti-minority hate speech, which was calculated to polarise and hurt, was something neither PM Modi nor the RSS would have anticipated.

Even as PM Modi said he was focussed only on his development agenda, his silence on the RSS’ Hindutva agenda was in danger of being construed as consent. The Delhi results, in quick succession after US president Barack Obama voiced his apprehensions about growing religious intolerance in India, appear to have finally forced Modi’s hand. While Modi has been driven by the political imperative of being seen as a secular leader, both nationally and internationally, what might have convinced Bhagwat is the possibility that many people, especially women, and even Hindutva believers, were turned off by Maharaj’s statements. Even the deliberations with the PDP on government formation in Jammu and Kashmir hint at the BJP climbing down from its stated positions on repealing Article 370 and the Armed Forces Special Powers’ Act, and attempting to convince the RSS to do the same. So far, Modi has been willing to accommodate the RSS’ recommendations and reservations, as has been evident in the regular interactions between the respective leaderships. It is an encouraging development that the exigencies of assuming political power are forcing the Hindu Right to move closer to centrist positions. Modi and Bhagwat must understand that there is no other way to administer a country as diverse and complex as India.