New Delhi, India - The pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which led India's coalition government between 1998 and 2004, has mounted an aggressive challenge to the country's legal and electoral system.
It has defied India's election law by distributing inflammatory anti-Muslim material while soliciting votes in this month's elections to the legislature of Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state and the world's sixth most populous political entity after China, India itself, the United States, Indonesia and Brazil.
The material includes a compact disc (CD) which vilifies Muslims and seeks votes for the BJP by claiming it is the sole guardian of the interests of the Hindus, and hence of India. But the BJP feigns innocence and says it is not responsible for the CD.
India's statutory Election Commission has objected to the CD. The Commission, which is autonomous of the executive branch of government, is empowered to take disciplinary and punitive action against any political party. Its decision will have major consequences for the current assembly elections.
Uttar Pradesh accounts for 15 percent of all seats in India's Parliament. It lies in the heart of India's Hindi belt and plays a trend-setting role in politics. Of the state's 175 million people 18 million are Muslims.
In recent years, new political alignments have appeared in Uttar Pradesh, including the meteoric rise of parties representing the lower orders of society, including Dalits (former Untouchables) and middle and lower castes (called Other Backward Classes -- OBCs).
No government in Uttar Pradesh has completed its full term for 40 years. The current elections are also expected to produce a hung Assembly. Which parties can form the next government will be decided next month.
Many colourful personalities, including Rahul Gandhi, son of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, have entered the campaign with its hectic schedules and cross-country trips on appallingly bad roads.
The CD in question was released by the BJP's top leaders in Uttar Pradesh at a ceremony on Apr. 3, four days before the first round of polling in the seven-phase election, staggered over a month.
But the party's officials hurriedly withdrew it and claimed that they were not aware of its content and had not approved it; it had been unauthorisedly cleared and issued by an "over-enthusiastic" junior functionary who has since been removed.
However, the commercial firm that was commissioned to produce the CD says that top BJP leaders were consulted "at every stage" of its writing, modification and editing.
Campaigning based on hate-speech and on maligning a religious group is explicitly banned under Indian law. Just over 80 percent of India's population is Hindu. But India also has the world's second largest Muslim population and its Constitution is solidly secular.
The CD can cause a serious setback to the BJP if the law is properly applied. It depicts Indian Muslims as treacherous "anti-Hindu" citizens who will again divide India. It uses a series of dramatised fictional sequences with a script that says Muslims are duplicitous: they kidnap, forcibly marry and convert Hindu women; they deceitfully and illegally kill cows; they run "anti-national" madrasas; and are not loyal to India.
The CD's appeal for votes is unambiguously based on stoking hatred towards Muslims. It says: "(If) you don't vote for the BJP, disaster will strike this country. The country will be destroyed. The BJP is a party that thinks about the country. It thinks about the Hindu religion. à All other parties are agents of the Muslims."
"The CD is calculated to provoke a strong reaction from Muslims -- and possibly a Hindu backlash", says Achin Vanaik, political scientist and author of a book on Hindu fundamentalism, religion-based politics and threats to democracy. "The BJP probably hopes that this will prevent the erosion of its caste-Hindu support and win it some ultra-nationalist votes."
Adds Vanaik: "This is a familiar tactic of the BJP and its predecessor, Jana Sangh, which are both creations of the secret society-style Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The BJP has routinely tried to win votes by stoking hatred on religious grounds. It's now doing so brazenly and in a crude, rustic manner."
The CD is not the sole instance of such political abuse of religion. The BJP has also taken out lurid full-page advertisements in many newspapers in western Uttar Pradesh, where polling is due on Saturday.
These advertisements, emblazoned with the lotus (the party's election symbol) and chief ministerial candidate Kalyan Singh's picture, accuses the BJP's opponents of shielding anti-national terrorist forces, defending Islamicist-extremist education in madrasas, opposing the symbols and deities of "Hindu India", and appeasing Muslims.
The advertisement shows a neighbourhood with Islamic flags hoisted from every housetop, with a slogan that reads: "kya inka irada pak hai?" (Is their intention pure?) This plays on the Hindi/Urdu word pak (pure), which is also shorthand for Pakistan.
Hindu nationalists have always maligned India's Muslims, now numbering some 160 million, as more loyal to Pakistan. For them, Pakistan is India's main external enemy, just as Muslims are its main internal enemy.
Amidst large-scale violence and a major exchange of populations, Pakistan was created out of India on the basis of religion when the sub-continent was decolonised in 1947.
At the time of writing, the Election Commission has not taken action against this offensive advertisement, but may do so.
It is currently hearing the BJP's argument on why it should not be de-recognised as a political party for violating the election law and the Indian Penal Code, which forbid appeals to religion to gain votes, and prohibits/punishes the use of inflammatory communal material.
Several sections of the Code prescribe severe punishment for trying to create enmity/hatred among religious communities and using inflammatory campaign material -- on pain of disqualification of the concerned candidate. India's Election Commission also prescribes a ‘model code of conduct', which disallows such practices.
The code's violation can lead to disqualification or attract other punitive action. De-recognition of a party by the Commission means it cannot contest elections. At the very least, it cannot use the symbol allotted to it by the Commission.
"There can't be the least doubt that the BJP is guilty on all these counts in the present case," argues Tanika Sarkar, a modern Indian historian, and author of several papers on Hindu-nationalism, propaganda and violence. "The CD is typical of its propaganda methods, of spreading fear and hatred, and fomenting violence."
The BJP produced a similar CD this past December, during a meeting of its national office-bearers in Lucknow. This too vilifies Muslims. This was handed out to journalists in a media kit. The party says it owns it up fully, but duplicitously disassociates itself from the new CD.
"Double standards come naturally to the BJP", adds Sarkar. "That apart, the CD uses idioms and images that are the trade-mark of the Hindu-nationalist movement. This movement has shrewdly, and effectively, used audio-visual material for more than 20 years to spread its message. It uses such means to a far greater extent than any other party."
Confronted with the Election Commission's notice at a critical juncture in the electoral process, the BJP has resorted to two tactics. It has self-righteously pleaded innocence and claimed it is being victimised. Secondly, it has tried to turn the tables on the Commission by personally targeting one of its three members, Naveen Chawla.
It accuses Chawla, a highly-placed retired civil servant, of prejudice against it and of sympathies for the Congress party. And it demands that Chawla recuse himself from the hearing. The Commission has not yet decided the recusal issue.
"These are low-level intimidatory tactics", says Vanaik. "One can only hope that the Election Commission does not cave in to the BJP's bullying and sticks to the law by de-recognising it. The BJP got away with murder in the past because India's establishment failed to apply the law of the land and pandered to Hindu majoritarianism."
Adds Vanaik: "This happened after the BJP and its cohorts razed the 16th century Babri mosque at Ayodhya in 1992, unleashing further violence. It again happened during a pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat five years ago. The BJP has never been disciplined or punished for any of these illegalities and its assaults on democracy. It must not escape punishment now."
Millions of Indians await the Election Commission's verdict as the second phase of polling in the seven-phase election approaches. At stake is India's character as a plural, multi-religious, multi-cultural society. Whatever its content, the EC's decision will have profound consequences for the future of politics in the world's largest democracy.