Dial down rhetoric

BJP must demand greater responsibility from its members

Recent remarks by officials in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have become serious international embarrassments for the Government of India. Nupur Sharma, then a national spokesperson of the BJP, and Naveen Kumar Jindal, the party’s Delhi media head, made statements on television and on Twitter, respectively, about the life of the Prophet Mohammad, which unsurprisingly set off a great deal of controversy. At first the party at the highest level appeared to be backing the two leaders. But subsequently, as the statements went viral online and led to concerns being expressed by friendly governments in Muslim-majority countries in West Asia,