Double standards for double engine govt by hook or crook

The ongoing election season ends this week with the declaration of results on December 3. Soon, the drive for the general elections will begin. Rahul Gandhi will launch his Bharat Jodo-2, the case against Mahua Moitra will continue and the BJP will harp on Modi’s ten years blaming Nehru for the economic mess that the Modi regime inherited

Come election season, political speeches always touch low levels of standards. But now the statements seem to be breaking all barriers of decency. To top it all, we have the election commission which is accused of adopting double standards by serving highly publicised notices to the Opposition while ignoring the complaints against the BJP.

Even when no one complains, there are many cases of which the EC could have taken suo moto notice. For instance, the use of trying to whip up religious sentiments when Home Minister Amit Shah declared free darshan at Ayodhya’s Ram temple if BJP comes to power. The Home Minister even described the Gehlot government as anti-Hindu!

The Congress leaders by far seem to have been maintaining a certain element of decorum in their speeches even while referring to industrialists who get allegedly undue favours from the government. There is, of course, nothing new in the government favouring business houses. We have seen many cases of such favours in both the Congress and BJP regimes.

But this is probably the first time that the point has been made an electoral plank. In fact, Rahul Gandhi has been harping on this right from his Bharat Jodo yatra. He says he got punished for raising it in Parliament.

But surprisingly, he crossed the line when he referred to Modi as Panauti (bad omen) during an election rally which, as expected, invited the EC wrath. Rahul did not start the controversy on his own. He just picked up the word from the crowd which he could have avoided. Remember, that was the day #Panauti was trending on social media after Australia beat India in the ICC World Cup final at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. Modi critics have referred to his presence in the stadium as a bad omen that caused Team India’s defeat.

Instead of the BJP’s IT machinery fighting it out on social media, the party conveniently picked up on Rahul and targeted him for his “deplorable” remarks against the Prime Minister. The Godi Media joined the bandwagon.

The worst in the Panauti series was when the Assam Chief Minister Himanta Sarma claimed that India lost the World Cup final because it was played on Indira Gandhi’s birthday.

Sarma has also requested BCCI – incidentally headed by Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah – not to fix any matches on the birthdays of any of the Gandhi family members. I have no words to describe this kind of public behaviour by a 54-year-old man holding a constitutional position.

The BJP also targeted Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi for alleging that the Prime Minister has given away big companies to his friendly businessmen while ignoring local employment problems. EC served a notice on her as well.

Most of the media did not find it wrong when PM Modi described Rahul Gandhi as Moorkhon Ka Sardar - the lord of the stupid community. In the same vein, Modi abused non-BJP Chief Ministers – Gehlot, Baghel and KCR - as the most corrupt. Neither the EC nor any major media house or journalist found fault with these remarks. On the contrary, the media ran debate deriding the “corrupt Congress”! Modi even asked the voters to press the Lotus button so hard that the corrupt will be hanged!

The height of the BJP’s hatred for Congress was clearly noticed when Modi blasted the Baghel Government in Chhattisgarh for, what he said, making the youth blow money in gambling on Mahadev app. He asked the Congress to explain as to how much money the CM got and how much was sent to Delhi (implying the Congress headquarters) in the Mahadev app scam. The BJP elsewhere blasted the Baghel government for the Rs 500-crore scam after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) claimed that it found a man, one Asim Das, who ‘admitted’ to be carrying money to be paid to the CM.

The ED also went to the media with the photographs of the wads Rs 5 crores allegedly seized from the accused Asim Das. This happened just days ahead of voting in the Chhattisgarh legislative assembly.

Baghel described this as an election stunt by the ED at the behest of the Centre and BJP. In a dramatic development, jailed Das wrote a 10-page letter to the ED chief with copies to the Chief Justice of India and others backtracking what he allegedly confessed to the investigating agency. The Congress described the entire episode as a conspiracy to mislead the voters and grab power by hook or by crook. Not surprisingly, the Godi Media, which forms a major chunk of the journalists today, did not cover Das’ backtracking but continued to hammer Rahul Gandhi on his Panauti remarks. The same media described Modi’s comment against Rahul as a jibe but did not like to call the Congress vice-president’s remark as another jibe.

We also heard the BJP leaders including Modi and Child and Women Welfare Minister Smriti Irani criticising the Congress governments for crimes against women while not uttering a single word about continued anarchy in Manipur. We also heard and read about BJP leaders felicitating rape accused and facilitating murder and rape convict Gurmeet Ram Rahim on parole for the fifth time in 17 months. The BJP has literally gone to town using the murder of a tailor Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur for the Rajasthan assembly election campaign showing how a Hindu has been killed by a couple of Muslims. The Election Commission did not take note of it!

The Congress criticised the BJP for trying to whip up communal tensions ahead of the election.

As I said in the beginning, exchanging barbs and jibes has been part of the electioneering in the country. It was seasonal. But over the past 10 years, this has reached, rather gone down to, low levels. With the Prime Minister campaigning for even local level elections, the game of hurling charges and counter charges has only intensified multi-fold. So, abusive speeches have become the order of the day irrespective of Parliament sessions where members (read ruling party) enjoy immunity.

The ongoing election season ends this week with the declaration of results on December 3. Soon, the drive for the general elections will begin. Rahul Gandhi will launch his Bharat Jodo-2, the case against Mahua Moitra will continue and the BJP will harp on Modi’s ten years blaming Nehru for the economic mess that the Modi regime inherited.

There is no harm in BJP, or for that matter any party including the Congress, aiming to capture power. But breaking decency levels and getting down to personal attacks is not good for democracy.

As it is, the social media is full of filth and muck and the leaders at the level of CMs and Union Ministers are only spreading it, instead of trying to contain it. These leaders, the IT cell team included, have families at home. Will they like abusive communication at their homes on even the smallest of small is disagreements? Well, they do not seem to think of these perils of hate communication.

But as a responsible media community, we will do our bit to maintain the decency of democratic behaviour pointing out dangers that our social fabric faces. Remember, double standards can strike back at you.

(The columnist is a Mumbai-based author and independent media veteran, running websites and a youtube channel known for his thought-provoking messaging.)