Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke what was an increasingly deafening silence on Thursday, passing an oblique reference on the mob-killing of a Muslim man rumoured to have eaten beef in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Modi’s call for Hindus and Muslims to unite and fight poverty, rather fighting each other, came a day after Indian President Pranab Mukherjee warned the nation not to forget its core values of diversity and plurality.
But the fact that the hyperactive and social-media savvy Modi took a week to react to the murder in Dadri — even as he enquired on Twitter about the health of a cricketer-turned politician among other things — hardly burnishes the credentials of a prime minister who is increasingly under scrutiny at home and abroad for a rising atmosphere of intolerance in India. The sudden obsession of banning beef across several Indian states, posturings by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-affiliated politicians to declare the cow as India’s “national animal”, the forceful cancellation of a concert by Pakistani gazal legend Gulam Ali in Mumbai and the thrashing in the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly of a lawmaker for merely serving beef at a party — all these incidents raise the spectre of Indian right-wing fringe zealots hijacking the national agenda at the cost of the country’s social stability and economic progress. It is a welcome sign that Modi has finally spoken out on the need to ignore hate speeches and remain united, but he is certainly capable of more eloquence on this issue. He must unequivocally condemn not only such primitive communal barbarity that killed Mohammad Akhlaq in UP, but also clearly demonstrate that he is intent on reining in the very mindset that fuels hatred towards others based on their religious or dietary choices.
