That sinking standard of discourse again
Political parties build their campaigns more on the basis of the wrongs and negatives of other parties than on their own rights and positives. The negatives of the rival parties are mostly exaggerated or even invented just as their own strengths are exaggerated or invented.
This is more so during election campaigns, when truth is at a discount and the norm is falsehood and misrepresentation. The temptation to overstate and to make false claims and baseless charges against opponents has grown in recent years, and the trend has come to stay.
It is a moot question whether this is because the social media culture has taken over political conversations and exchanges, and are shaping the style and content of electoral campaigns. It has consequences that go beyond the immediate aim of influencing people and winning elections. It can distort politics and do harm to the country. All parties are guilty of this.
Some of the recent statements of Prime Minister Narendra Modi provide examples. Earlier this week he said in Jharkhand, which is one of the states heading for Assembly elections, that Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators are a major threat to the state and that the ruling JMM is helping them to usurp tribal lands.
The Prime Minister was actually talking about the presumed danger posed by Muslims, the way he talked about “ghuspaitias” before the Lok Sabha elections. He also said wrongly that “Ganapati has been put behind bars in Karnataka,” misrepresenting an incident in the state. He said the Congress party was angry with him for participating in a Ganesh puja, while the criticism was actually about his participation in a puja in the house of the Chief Justice of India. He and other BJP leaders have also alleged that the Congress wanted to give away the OBC (Other Backward Classes) quota to the Muslims.
These are statements of dubious validity, half-truths or misrepresentation, and accusations of support for or “appeasement” of Muslims run through them. When the Prime Minister himself, who should speak with responsibility, speaks so, others are encouraged to make worse statements.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi provided another bad example. It was wrong of him to pose in the US the question “Will a Sikh be allowed to wear a turban or kada (in a Hindutva-dominated India)?”
A comparison with political discourse and campaigns a few years ago will show how the standards have fallen. Communal postures have become brazen and common. Deliberate distortion and misrepresentation of actions and statements of leaders of other parties has become normal practice.
A politics based on falsehood, practised with the aim of vilification or elimination of other parties, cannot sustain democracy. It amounts to taking the people for granted and insulting them.