Beneath the veneer, PM’s partisanship is clear

By blaming all Hindus and all Muslims, Narendra Modi in effect blamed none

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to comment on the lynching of a Muslim in Dadri while speaking at an election rally in Bihar more than a week after the crime, he must have been hoping to take advantage of both the time-lapse and the distance. Evidently, he felt no compulsion to dwell on the horrific nature of the murder, its immediate circumstances and context, and the motives of the perpetrators. Instead, he couched the references to the lynching in generalities and homilies, talking of the need for Hindus and Muslims to work together to fight poverty, and of the importance of communal harmony for the nation’s progress. By blaming all Hindus and all Muslims, Mr Modi in effect blamed none. By refusing to name the politicians who made inflammatory speeches and asking the people to ignore them, he made it appear that this was a general malaise with no cure. That many of his party men were among those who made incendiary speeches on this issue does not appear to have struck Mr Modi at all.

Clearly, Mr Modi is refusing to make the connection between the Hindutva campaign against cattle slaughter and the Dadri murder. In equating Hindu communalism with Muslim communalism, he appeared oblivious to the dangers of majoritarianism. All communalism is undesirable and reactionary, but the communalism of a majority group holds greater dangers for a democratic polity.