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An arrogance borne along on ambition and an ignorance that’s nothing short of incendiary — when married together, they bring only agony and ignominy. The unwarranted and unwise obloquies against Prophet Mohammed by the BJP’s rookie TV marshals Nupur Sharma and Navin Jindal have only served to put their party on the backfoot. These two spokespersons have embarrassed their government by exposing its flanks to fury from Islamic nations like never before.

Over a dozen Islamic countries, with many of whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi had established excellent relations, issued strongly worded statements. It was left to the Ministry of External Affairs to disown the comments made by the party’s foot-in-the-mouth footsoldiers. The MEA’s response, meant to be an apology on India’s behalf, was near-stenographic though — it called the slandering spokespersons “fringe elements”.

A diplomatically correct stance, perhaps, but a touch unconvincing, ideologically inconsistent, and riddled with all the signs of political panic. It did nothing to curb the world from reading the incident as a sign of growing Islamophobia in India, nor could it stanch massive Muslim protests and vandalism across the country. Nupur and Navin, in their misguided and context-ignorant zeal, have plainly endangered national security. Already, Islamist terrorists have threatened suicide attacks in India. A concerted project of vengeance has been activated — at least verbally — by those who never spoke for eight years.

Spokespersons greedy for a national face have brought us to this, not only causing the party to lose face but putting ordinary Indians in danger. These garrulous gunslingers have become cause celebres of communalism because of excessive exposure on media — which has no sense of long-term damage — as also disproportionate official patronage. With very little experience in politics and governance, these loudmouths were allowed to speak on any subject: from potatoes to politics. Instead of projecting their government’s towering track record, they behaved like hoary Hindu hoplites whose only raison d’etre was to convert every debate into an opportunity for minority-bashing.

Nupur Sharma, 37, is just a former ABVP activist whose sole claim to fame — besides raising decibel levels on unwatchable TV debates — is fighting the Delhi Assembly elections against Arvind Kejriwal in 2015 and losing. A post-graduate in law from the London School of Economics and a former president of the Delhi University Students Union, she was suddenly catapulted onstage as a national spokesperson in 2015, along with other new faces with communication skills. She is a party loyalist and otherwise articulate. Yet she was made to believe her future career in politics depended on her ability to hyperventilate against the minorities rather than put forward persuasive arguments about Prime Minister Modi’s achievements.

Nupur defines the new class of political motormouths whose mandate is to coarsely confront, not decorously debate with their adversaries on television. A selection of BJP’s image-makers survive and flourish through rhetoric instead of any understanding of ideology, governance, economics, international relations or religion. All political parties, including the BJP, have drafted in their spinmeisters from the fringe of their organisations — but they end up being macabre megaphones lacking logic or reason. Their only qualification is that they must make a good television story aided by TRP-driven anchors who have replaced news with nonsense. Since most senior party leaders, ministers and chief ministers rarely appear on TV debates, media organisations are left with no option but to invite talking heads who can keep prime time a toxic, entertaining extravaganza of verbal fights and posturing.

Sadly, this electronic media-led narrative is setting the national agenda. The current Prophet controversy arose from a debate where Nupur, an amateurish party pointsperson, either got emotionally provoked or charged by her political ambition. She isn’t alone in turning news television into a battleground for communal, caste and community duels. Almost all the BJP’s onscreen champions are psychologically programmed to convert every debate into a slander fest, either against a personality or a religion. Of the party’s 24-odd spokespersons, only four are MPs and three are former Union Ministers, like Rajyavardhan Rathore, Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Shanhnawaz Hussain. The three MPs are: Sudhanshu Trivedi, Bhubaneswar MP Aparajita Sarangi (who quit the IAS) and Anil Baluni.

Half a dozen others are defectors from other parties. Hardcore elements in the BJP are irked by the projection of paratroopers from other parties with no connect to the Sangh parivar, like Tom Vadakkan, Gaurav Bhatia, Shazia Ilmi, Shehzad Poonawala et al. Some youngsters have been chosen for their ability to make noise — relative freshers in the dirty school of Politics by Confrontation. Their high visibility has turned even these political pygmies into media luminaries. Since they are often seen defending the PM, they are feted by power-chasers, opportunists, civil servants and other such barnacles looking for access to the BJP’s aloof top leadership. This has led their tongues to get the better of their brains. Chief spokesperson and the BJP media cell in-charge Baluni, strangely enough, rarely talks to the media. A former journalist, he came into prominence when Amit Shah became the party president. Before that, he was an aide to former Gujarat Governor Sundar Singh Bhandari. Keeping himself away from the media glare,Baluni is the man who directs spokespersons and allocates personnel to
various news channels. But mystery surrounds the mechanism by which the line to take or the issues to be escalated are decided.

This is the gap in which things go spectacularly wrong. According to party insiders, its maverick media mouthpieces are neither monitored nor mentored by senior leaders. They are just driven by their insatiable lust for power and recognition, which they are in a position to attain without working hard for the party. But they can’t be totally blamed for the chaos and mess created by them. Soon after coming to power, the top leadership thought it was not advisable to place experienced and known faces as the party’s media marshals, enabling the PM, his ministers and social media experts to promote the good work done by the government. During the past eight years, ministers, CMs and office-bearers have been successfully using the media to grab maximum attention. But over a period of time, as complacency built up, they underestimated the power of a TV byte.

Recruiting rampaging rookies like Nupur stand in sharp contrast with the previous practice of placing seasoned leaders before the cameras. Before 2014, a senior BJP leader was always the media-in-charge. The BJP had giants like KR Malkani , Sushma Swaraj, Pramod Mahajan, Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh and Arun Jaitley as the party’s faces. They met journalists on a daily basis to discuss the issues to be projected through the press; an institutional framework for media handling was in place. The Congress’s powerful media persuaders, like VN Gadgil, Jaipal Reddy, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Veerappa Moily, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Pawan Khera rarely chose inappropriate words against opponents during press briefings. Nor did the older BJP pointspersons like Trivedi and Rudy.

Pampering loudmouths will get the BJP only short-term gains; there will be long-term pain in return. This time, it has given a credible handle to Muslims, already pushed to the wall by aggressive Hindutva, to speak of the Indian nation itself as having an anti-Islam agenda. For the past eight years, the Sangh Parivar has won the hearts and minds of lakhs of non-affiliated Hindus by focusing on the old history and amplifying the damage done to Hindu culture by the demolition of Hindu temples by sundry Muslim rulers. Raising issues like that relating to the Gyanvapi Mosque is getting the BJP a massive response from the middle class and even Hindus from the non-elite castes, thus helping the party polarise voters in its favour.

Nupur, with a single phrase, has neutralised the gains made by the party under Modi. The Prime Minister has successfully nurtured relations with the entire Arab world. He even got hardened criminals and terrorists repatriated to India from the Middle East, which never supported Pakistan on anti-India issues. Pakistan stood isolated within the Muslim world. It is this project — under which Prime Minister Modi was being successfully projected as the Vishwa Guru — that Nupur has damaged. At the moment, Modi is under attack from both hard-core Hindutva forces for MEA’s abject surrender and also friendly Arab nations thanks to the irresponsible inanities by its spokespersons. Scoring or piling up electoral triumphs ensures legitimacy for the leaders. But losing a war of perception minimises the moral authority required to deliver good governance.
Lesson: A solid and credible top with an unsound base will always be vulnerable.