By Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar / The Wire
New Delhi: Why is it that many young Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, many of whom have been brought up in multi-religious and secular backgrounds, have started speaking the language of hate?
Is it because they somewhere feel compelled to use the tone and tenor which propelled senior party leaders to the heights they now command? Or have the political atmosphere and social divides in the country become so vitiated and deep that this is the only kind of language that they believe would appeal to the masses?
These are some of the questions which arise when one sees repeated utterances, amounting to or verging on hate speech, coming from these relatively young politicians.
The latest such episode involved BJP MP from West Delhi, Parvesh Verma who, along with several other speakers, has been accused of making inflammatory speeches at a Virat Hindu Sabha meeting organised in Northeast Delhi earlier this month. Incidentally, communal riots had taken the lives of 53 people, a majority of them Muslims, in the same part of Delhi in February 2020.
A murder case was used to breed hatred
The meeting, it was reported, was called to protest against the brutal murder of a youth, Manish, over what the Delhi police had termed an old rivalry. While six accused – Sajid, Aalam, Bilal, Faizan, Mohsin and Shakir – were arrested, right-wing groups tried to use the incident to breed hatred.
Verma did not name any particular community in his speech but called for the “total boycott” of “these people” – leaving little to imagination as to who he was referring to.
He was quoted as saying: “Wherever you see them, I say that if you want to set their minds straight … then there is only one remedy and that is complete boycott… Do you agree with this? Raise your hands if you agree. Say with me, we will completely boycott them, we will not buy any goods from their shops, we will not employ them”.
Though he later defended his speech saying he had urged only boycott of those who indulged in violence, several Muslim organisations – including the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind – had protested against the event and sought action against Verma and others who spoke therein.
The Jamiat had also stated that its delegation had visited the Delhi police and urged the special commissioner of police (CP) to make sure that a first information report (FIR) was registered against the speakers. The police, it said, had only registered a case under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against the organisers of the event for not taking permission for hosting.
Children of liberal leaders adopting a radical approach
While Verma, who comes from the Jat community, is known to be outspoken in matters of religion, what surprises many is how the son of former BJP Delhi chief minister Sahib Singh Verma could adopt such a radical approach.
Sahib Singh was never known to harbour any ill-will against minorities. In fact, when he won the erstwhile Outer Delhi Lok Sabha seat, it was the most populous in the country and represented 21 of the 70 assembly segments of the national capital – many of which had a large minority population.
This story was originally published in thewire.in . Read the full story here