Verbal aggression is never pretty. But when a chief minister is aggressive, it no longer remains a matter of aesthetics; it becomes an expression of his party’s attitude. When Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister of Assam, frankly abused his constitutional position by declaring that the Assam police will ‘prioritise’ going after the many “Hussain Obama” in the country, presumably before chasing the former president of the United States of America, he demonstrated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s propensity to lose no opportunity to threaten minority groups. Mr Sarma was responding to a tweet from a journalist — in itself undignified — who had asked whether the Assam police would rush off to Washington to arrest Barack Obama. Mr Obama had said that if the Indian government did not look after ethnic minorities, India might start pulling apart. The journalist was alluding to the Assam police’s habit of registering cases against dissenters anywhere in India. In February, they directed the Delhi police to arrest a Congress leader for allegedly mocking Narendra Modi.
Mr Sarma’s response was meant to show that the BJP considered members of the minority community offenders. It was a small irony that the tweet got Mr Obama’s name and his religion wrong. The greater irony lay in the fact that his threat to minority communities was made when the prime minister was declaring the lack of discrimination by caste, creed and so on in India on his official state visit to the US. He spoke proudly of diversity which had ‘one voice’ — the BJP’s perhaps? — but his description would suggest that the oppressiveness and fear that pervade his country are nothing but a mirage. Mr Sarma’s comment could appear to undermine Mr Modi’s claims. Was that a mistake? Or is it part of the BJP’s policy never to drop its guard? But it could also be a measure of the BJP’s confidence. Mr Modi is being courted by world leaders in spite of his party’s record regarding freedom of expression and of religion as well as minority rights, to say the least. The US president did not even bring up such matters; his country’s needs were more important. Mr Sarma’s comment emphasised this immunity from criticism from the world’s biggest leaders; why should the BJP tolerate it at home?
