The CD chakra

The Supreme Court of India, in its 1995 judgment that found Shiv Sena8217;s Bal Thackeray and Ramesh Prabhoo guilty of fomenting communal hatred during the 1987 Maharashtra assembly elections, ended with the 8220;fervent hope that our observations have some chastening effect in the future election campaigns8221;. It8217;s interesting to recall these words at the current moment when the BJP finds itself in a corner over allegations that a particularly offensive CD was part of its Uttar Pradesh election campaign. We don8217;t think the response should at all be that the BJP be de-recognised. De-recognition is a blunt instrument and is not useful in addressing the issues inherent in the present controversy. However, it would have been far wiser on the part of the BJP to have distanced itself decisively from that sorry CD 8212; something it had initially attempted to do 8212; and issued the necessary apologies, and moved on, rather than attempted to eke some political mileage out of the episode and cast aspersions on the credibility of the Election Commission.

For its own credibility the party has to be accountable to national institutions. The Representation of the People Act expressly forbids the 8220;promotion of or attempt to promote, feelings of enmity and hatred between different classes of the citizens of India on the grounds of religion, race, caste, community, or language8230;8221; The CD in question clearly invites censure under this clause, and leaders of a party that had once been in power at the Centre should have immediately recognised this fact. The party should now look within. A thorough inquiry into how such a CD 8212; and others of its kind 8212; came into circulation may in itself provide the necessary correctives.

Going back to the Supreme Court judgment on the Shiv Sena, the three-judge bench explained that communal electioneering was unacceptable, because it 8220;discarded the cherished values of our rich cultural heritage and tended to erode the secular polity8221;. Over the years, the best and brightest interpreters of the Constitution 8212; H.M. Seervai and Nani Palkhiwala to name just two 8212; have consistently argued that inflammatory writing or speech amounts to a serious subversion of the law and the secular foundations of the Indian Constitution. The BJP, as a national party, must internalise this sense of the Constitution. And the sorry CD story presents it with the right moment to begin this process.