By Eram Agha
A day before the second phase of polling in Jharkhand, an election video went viral on social media. The video, posted by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s official Twitter account, shows a large horde of Muslims, which included several children, moving into a middle-class house. At the entrance of the house is a flag of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. The video portrays the horde as uncouth, running amok in the house—much to the horror of the family living there. At the end of the video, two men tell the owner of the house that “these people” had been brought in by his party. “Why should just our homes be ruined?” they ask. The video ends with a slogan asking people to vote for the BJP.
The video encapsulates and crystallises the BJP’s shrill poll pitch in Jharkhand, where polling concluded this Wednesday. After receiving complaints, the Election Commission of India ordered the BJP to take down the video, but it has been shared widely on social media.
Land has been an emotive issue in the state, with concerns pertaining to land acquisition or the dilution of laws relating to land ownership finding resonance in past elections. Over the course of its election campaign, the BJP has made the selling of Adivasi land by “middlemen” one of its main poll planks. Crucially, it has claimed that Bangladeshi infiltrators were the beneficiaries of land sales and called the process an instance of “land jihad.”
The BJP has pushed this rhetoric despite there being no evidence to suggest that the alleged land transfers, have been to Muslims hailing from Bangladesh. The narrative seems to have stemmed from a dispute between an Adivasi and a Muslim family in Pakur district, both of whom have had land records dating back to 1932. This dispute has been referenced by BJP leaders during the campaigning: while kicking off BJP’s poll campaign at Jharkhand on 20 September from Sahibganj, Amit Shah, the home minister, said, “In Pakur district, slogans are being raised asking Hindus and Adivasis to leave Jharkhand. Tell me, does this land belong to Adivasis or to Rohingya and Bangladeshi infiltrators?” Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs lodged a formal protest with India’s Deputy High Commissioner in Dhaka thereafter, expressing “serious reservations, deep hurt, and extreme displeasure.”
At the heart of BJP’s campaign is Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam’s chief minister, tasked with managing handling the election campaign along with Shivraj Singh Chouhan, a former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Sarma, who has been credited with BJP’s return to power in Chhattisgarh in 2023, has been using the Bangladeshi infiltrator narrative in his home state for several years.
This story was originally published in caravanmagazine.in. Read the full story here.
