Lower the temperature

All political parties must try to restore responsibility to debate

On Tuesday, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned as debate on the suicide of Hyderabad Central University research scholar Rohith Vemula led to disruption of the House. The suicide of Vemula, along with the arrests of several students of Jawaharlal Nehru University for sedition, cast a shadow over the success of the Budget session and over political discourse in India more broadly. It is incumbent on the government and the ruling party at the Centre, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to lower the temperature of the discussion sharply. This is necessary not just in order to increase the likelihood that urgent legislative business is carried out, but also to ensure that division and rancour do not spill over further into the streets across India. Hopefully, Opposition political parties would also take the cue and help facilitate responsible debate over policies and issues in Parliament and outside.

It is unfortunate that many irresponsible statements have been allowed to take over the airwaves, while the person most able to quell the problem, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has once again refrained from calming passions. Several BJP leaders and legislators have behaved in deeply problematic ways - one was caught on camera beating up a left-wing activist on the road outside the Patiala House district courts in Delhi, another called JNU a den of sex and drugs and meat-eating, and yet others have called for Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi to be killed for "supporting treason". One BJP national secretary even reportedly said that Communist legislator D Raja should have his comrades shoot his own daughter, a JNU student, for participating in protests on campus. Nor have the senior-most leaders of the government avoided making such statements. Home Minister Rajnath Singh himself, on the basis of apparently faulty information, said that the JNU protestors were being supported by Pakistan-based terrorist Hafiz Saeed.

While it may be tempting for the BJP to use hyper-nationalism to fire up its base, the dangers of this strategy must surely be apparent. Not only are free-speech principles at risk - an issue the BJP made a great deal of when it was in the Opposition - but as the prime minister himself has repeatedly stated, the success of the development agenda depends on peace and harmony within the country. It is therefore incumbent on all political parties to ensure that they refrain from statements which act against the promotion of peace and law-abiding behaviour. Sadly, Mr Modi's only apparent reaction has not been heartening. In a speech in Odisha on Monday, the prime minister said that "conspiracies" were being "hatched everyday" to "finish and defame" him. He blamed his government's crackdown on foreign funding of non-governmental organisations as a major reason for these conspiracies. This is not a heartening statement. Instead of speculating on conspiracies, the prime minister should prod his party into taking the lead in reducing the temperature of the national debate.