Opinion: In 2014, Modi ran on aspiration. In 2019, he is running on fear.
Supporters display a cutout of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a BJP election rally meeting in Bangalore on April 13. By Barkha Dutt Barkha Dutt Email Bio Follow April 15 at 4:06 PM Narendra Modi, India’s powerful prime minister, is seeking a second term. But in 2019, he is sounding less like the man who campaigned in 2014 and much more like his previous avatar — the abrasive, vitriolic and inflammatory chief minister of Gujarat.
There is little or no conversation about the performance of his government, the economy or jobs. A leaked report from the National Statistical Commission placed unemployment numbers at a four-decade high; a certain amount of deflection and changing the subject is political compulsion. Modi even delivered a speech with photographs of the men who were killed in the Kashmir strike forming the stage backdrop; he also asked young voters to dedicate their ballot to the military personnel who led the assault inside Pakistan.
Using soldiers as political fodder is bad enough. But even worse is the Modi campaign’s message to India’s 172 million Muslims. In the past few years, Muslim cattle traders have been repeatedly targeted by right-wing mobs on fabricated charges of trading in beef. During this campaign, the men charged with the 2015 lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq, a Muslim ironsmith in Dadri, were given front-row seats at a BJP election rally.
The final blow came from the BJP president, Amit Shah, Modi’s second in command and said to be the only person the prime minister trusts. Shah has vowed to create a national citizens’ registry that will “remove every single infiltrator from the country” unless they happen to be Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist. The official sanction of crude religious majoritarianism did not even bother to disguise its anti-Muslim bigotry.
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