Nupur Sharma Fiasco: Why Modi, BJP Leadership Must Communicate More With Its Support Base

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• The real problem is India’s best communicator has not communicated enough on difficult issues with both critics outside and inside his own voter base. This needs fixing.

• Nupur Sharma Fiasco: Why Modi, BJP Leadership Must Communicate More With Its Support Base

• The Narendra Modi government has shot itself in the foot over the Nupur Sharma affair, where it has simultaneously dented both its own credibility in the Muslim world, especially in West Asia, and angered its core Hindu voter base in India.

• Sharma’s provocative comment is not the real issue; she was emotionally responding to attempts by Hinduphobes to mock the Shiva Linga

• Prime Minister’s lack of communication with his own party people and voter base on what to expect from his government

• The core voter base expects steady forward movement towards protecting Hindu interests, and a directional and definitional guidance on “Hindu Rashtra” — what it should mean and in what timeframe the government expects it to be achieved.

• But the Prime Minister — or, for that matter his party and Sangh affiliates — have said nothing useful in this matter

• Sacrificing Nupur Sharma in order to fire-fight the blowback against India is one thing, not telling its own party and voter base what to expect needlessly allows extreme or actually “fringe” elements to precipitate a crisis that nobody wants

• One, is the BJP committed to its Hindu base and protection of Hindu interests in “secular” India, or will it head in the same direction as other “pseudo-secular” parties in order to propitiate the Muslim voter?

• Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas is okay as a slogan, but is not enough in a democracy to win elections

• core base will seek another party that can better articulate its aspirations

• Two, while no government can promise a Hindu Rashtra tomorrow, the government needs to answer a simpler question: why is it that eight years in power, it is not able to do the simplest things that the voter base is asking for? Among them, a comprehensive rewriting of history books, or providing funds and support for Indic organisations and groups to fight for their causes

• Why is it still supporting Hinduphobes like William Dalrymple and other “secularists” in global fora, when it should be doing the opposite: starve them of government funding

• Why is prioritising Muslim appeasement through exclusive scholarship programmes and other kinds of funding so important when the reality is the BJP is never going to win a significant chunk of the Muslim vote even if it crawls in front of masjids and offers madrassa students free Qurans and computers

• Three, why is the party not counselling patience to its cadres, when an expansion of economic and military power needs to be stressed over the next decade, and India has to become a $8-10 trillion economy

• Why is it so difficult for the party to ask its cadres to not make statements that will disrupt the economic programme, and wait till size and scale are achieved before becoming more assertive on Hindutva? Did China not keep quiet for three decades, pretending to be a peaceful country, till it became the world’s No 2 economy

• Why can this simple point not be explained to the party’s eager young beavers, who want Hindutva today, tonight, this instant? Hindutva depends on India becoming an economic superpower, and not vice-versa

• The BJP should learn from its own growth, where Mandalisation and economic empowerment of the OBCs preceded the growth of Hindutva

• Four, can the party not explain a simple number on why inflammatory statements are not needed right now

• About 95 per cent of all global Hindus live in one country; but there are 153 Christian-majority nations, and 51 Muslim-majority ones, according to Pew Research