When words snowball into a controversy

Barring a few overtly communal statements, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has focused his campaign on attacking the ruling party, local issues in different regions and development.

But that has not stopped an assortment of leaders belonging to the BJP and the extended RSS-VHP family and the Shiv Sena to mount such communal and vitriolic campaigns, that it elicited a cautionary note from Modi on Tuesday.

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Modi said he disapproved of “petty statements by those claiming to be BJP’s well-wishers.” “I disapprove any such irresponsible statement & appeal to those making them to kindly refrain from doing so. Petty statements by those claiming to be BJP’s well-wishers are deviating the campaign from the issues of development & good governance (sic).”

The remark was especially seen to be targeting Pravin Togadia, the Gujarat-based VHP leader with whom Modi is not known to have a good equation. Togadia seemed to be under tremendous pressure to withdraw his comments. “This is a fraud, a conspiracy by the media,” VHP General Secretary Sampat Rai said. Togadia, on his part, claimed he had sent a legal notice to all the publications that printed his remarks. “My remarks were twisted out of context,” Togadia told

Togadia claimed that his comments were a response to “a group of around 1,000 people” who came to give him a memorandum about how their houses were purchased “under duress by some people.” Togadia said as a law abiding citizen, he advised this group to follow the legal process of writing to the local administration, the State government concerned, and approach the court if they felt that they are being forced into any selling of their houses. “We wish to state here emphatically that there was nothing socially or legally wrong in the above advice given by my client to the said group as mentioned above,” Togadia said in a legal notice he has issued.

The overt communal tone in Togadia’s case has invited censure, but there has been criticism from across the political spectrum of some remarks made by Modi himself.

For instance, at a public rally in Silchar, Assam, on February 22, Modi made a clear statement about India being a natural home for Hindu migrants, while demanding that Muslims from Bangladesh should be ousted.

“We have a responsibility toward Hindus who are harassed and suffer in other countries. Where will they go? India is the only place for them. Our government cannot continue to harass them. We will have to accommodate them here,” Modi said. 

He added that there were “two kinds of people who came from Bangladesh to Assam — those brought as a part of a ‘political conspiracy’ for vote bank politics of a particular party, and others who were harassed in the neighbouring country.”

Then again on April 2 in Nawada, Bihar, the home ground of the much-reviled BJP candidate Giriraj Singh who wants to send all Modi-baiters to Pakistan, Modi talked about the Opposition’s sympathies for those who slaughter cows, i.e. Muslims.

“The Union government does not want any kind of revolution but is only interested in a Pink Revolution. Those backing the UPA government (a reference to the Yadav leaders Lalu and Mulayam) should consider whether they want to back a revolution in which they kill livestock, or a government which cares for farmers and cattle grazers,” Modi said.

“There are many big slaughterhouses in the country. The government is not willing to provide subsidy to a person who keeps a cow, but if a person wants to set up a slaughterhouse, he gets assistance,” he added.