Yati Narsinghanand, head priest of Ghaziabad’s Dasna Devi temple, out on bail after being booked for hate speech at the Dharam Sansad in Haridwar last year, spewed communal hate and venom again at a “Hindu Mahapanchayat” in Burari on Sunday. The organisers of Sunday’s event had been arrested earlier in connection with inflammatory anti-Muslim speeches made at a similar assembly at Jantar Mantar last year. That is, a line runs through Jantar Mantar, August 2021, Dharam Sansad at Haridwar, December 2021, and Burari, April 2022. The themes on Sunday — “ghuspaith niyantran (controlling intruders)”, “dharmantran niyantran (control of religious conversion)” and “devsthan mandir mukti (freeing Hindu temples)”, communal dog whistles all — are part of a larger and continuing pattern that remains unbroken, or is interrupted only perfunctorily by the kicking in of the law. In all likelihood, going by the indications so far, Yati Narsinghanand wears his arrest for hate speech as a badge of honour, and would not have a problem should he be arrested for it again. This dismal and recurring sequence frames a political failure and abdication.
Unfortunately, the emboldening of hate speech against minorities is becoming the other side of a spreading phenomenon of majoritarian assertion and both are seen to draw political sanction from the ruling establishment. It is true that Yati Narsinghanand and Co are not part of the mainstream, or not yet. But at the same time, they can no longer be described or dismissed as the fringe. The peddling of a Hindu sense of siege, and purveying of spectres of marauding Others, occurs too frequently and resonates too widely for it to be seen anymore as a mere sideshow. The BJP-RSS establishment needs to confront this reality, and address it. Or else, the BJP-led government at the Centre risks presiding over an increasingly corrosive climate of fear and insecurity that will only hold back a diverse democracy from stepping up to the challenges of complex transitions in changing times.
The BJP attributes its string of electoral successes to governance that, in the distribution of its benefits, is blind to differences of caste and community. Narsinghanand says just the opposite. An unambiguous message needs to be sent out that there are political — not just legal — penalties for promoting hate as he does. A red line needs to be drawn and enforced by the BJP’s top political leadership that it will not stand for the demonisation of the minority. It must do this because that is its responsibility and mandate — that’s what “sabka saath” means. And because the costs of not doing so are simply too high to pay.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on April 5, 2022 under the title ‘Yati & sabka saath’.
