‘Mutton, Mughal, Muslim’. Modi is casting the Opposition as un-Hindu & anti-Bharat

Modi likes to paint his political rivals as meat-and-fish-gobbling quasi-Muslims who present 'Muslim' manifestos, appease Muslims, and can’t hope to represent India.

Representational image | PM Narendra Modi | ANI

Sawan ke mahine mein mutton banane ka mauj le rahe hain’ – in the month of Sawan or the period of Navratri, they are cooking meat and having fun, Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently pronounced, pointing fingers at the Opposition. Modi also accused the Opposition of possessing a “Mughal mindset.” And when the Congress released its manifesto on 6 April, he declared that it bore the “stamp of the Muslim League.”  The Muslim League, founded in the early part of the 20th century by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, is held responsible for the Partition of India in 1947.

Thus, in the Modi worldview, eating mutton is somehow against the interests of Indians. Eating fish is similarly anti-national, as was evident from the PM’s reaction to a video of Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav eating fish. Not only is eating mutton and fish anti-Hindu, but the Congress party itself,  is, for some reason, akin to the Muslim League.

‘Muslim symbols’ are hate objects

The messaging here sounds patently absurd but is, in fact, cunningly communal. Come election time and Hindu-Muslim polarisation becomes reflexive for Modi, a politician whose career has been built on religious name-calling and polarisation. Accusing the Opposition of eating non-vegetarian food during Navratri and calling the Congress manifesto similar to that of the Muslim League is designed to “other” the Opposition and cast it as un-Hindu, anti-Bharat, and anti-national while stigmatising it as somehow ‘Muslim’.

The assumption here is that Hindu society or the “majority” is a homogenous group that remains “pure vegetarian” during Navratri, while Modi’s political competitors are meat-and fish-gobbling quasi-Muslims who present ‘Muslim’ manifestos, appease Muslims, have a Mughal (read Muslim) mindset, and thus can’t hope to represent India. The pitch is that Modi is a true Indian and true Hindu because he eats vegetarian food during Navratri. The others are a pack of anti-Indian non-vegetarians who are the enemies of Bharat.

This narrative again reveals the BJP-RSS’ frenzied and constant search for enemies. The BJP-RSS political project requires an enemy a day. One day ‘Urban Naxals’ are the enemy, the next day the ‘Tukde Tukde Gang’ is the enemy, the third day the ‘Khan Market Gang’ is the enemy (never mind if BJP leaders themselves are regularly spotted in Delhi’s Khan Market) the fourth day ‘Khalistanis’ are the enemies, and the fifth day the ‘libtard sickularists’ are the enemy. Now, non-vegetarians are also ‘enemies.’

Muslims are the perpetual enemy, and all “Muslim” symbols such as the Mughals, biryani, and the Muslim League are hate objects that need to be constantly vilified to keep the Hindutva flock galvanised.

There is nothing in the Congress manifesto that remotely resembles the Muslim League’s politics of campaigning for an Islamic homeland. It does not refer to Muslim separateness at all. The only Muslim reference is to a Maulana Azad Scholarship, and that’s about it.

Why impose a narrow-minded food sanskriti?

The suggestion that Hindus are supposed to be vegetarian or that only those who eat vegetarian food during Navratri are true Hindus without a “Mughal mindset” is ludicrous, sly, manipulative, and certainly not constitutional.

First, large sections of India, such as West Bengal and parts of South India do not observe Navratri rituals in the same way as North India. In Bengal, for example, devotional occasions are often accompanied by non-vegetarian feasts such as the Jora Ilish (a pair of hilsa fish) during Saraswati Puja and mutton curry during Vijaya Dashami. Second, a 2006 State of the Nation survey on food habits conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for Hindu-CNN-IBN found that only 31 per cent of Indians were vegetarian. A 2021 India Today survey deduced that more than 70 per cent of Indians ate non-vegetarian fare. The BJP’s first PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee was famously non-vegetarian and when researching my biography on him, I found no evidence that he ever observed Navratri or periods of vegetarianism. So why is a pan-Indian narrow-minded “food sanskriti” being sneakily imposed as a cultural standard across India?

The answer is simple. Because it is election time and in the quest for votes, Modi’s doing what he always does: stoking religious and cultural divides for a political objective. If BJP’s “Abki Baar 400 Paar” (we’ll clinch over 400 seats this election) push requires casting “non-vegetarians” and the totally irrelevant and practically non-existent Muslim League as the “enemy”, then that is what a politically ruthless and hyper-ambitious politician like Modi will do.

During election campaigns, Modi repeatedly plays the politics of the dog whistle. Modi uses “Muslim” and “Mughal” terminology to paint the Opposition as “anti-Hindu”, “anti-Bharat” and thus unpatriotic, to consolidate the majoritarian nationalist vote.

The BJP-RSS has always used the ‘Muslim-as-enemy’ rhetoric for political mobilisation and tapping into the ‘Hindu vote’. In their quest for power, the BJP-RSS encouraged the rise of the “angry Hindu”. In the late 1980s, the Sangh publicised provocative slogans like “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan, Mullah Bhago Pakistan”.  Mainstream Sangh Parivar politicians keep using such language. During the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath referred to the polls as a game of “80 per cent vs 20 per cent”. While Yogi said that the 80 per cent figure demarcated the voters happy with his government’s security agenda and the 20 per cent referred to critics, his remark can be considered a polarising one. After all, nearly 20 per cent of voters in UP are Muslims, while the majority consist of Hindus.

In 2019, Modi attacked Rahul Gandhi’s candidature from Kerala’s Wayanad, referring to the seat as one where “the majority is the minority.” During the 2019 Jharkhand polls, Modi went after anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protesters: “People who are setting fire to property can be seen on TV. They can be identified by the clothes they are wearing,” he had said. During the 2017 UP Assembly polls, Modi harangued crowds about kabristaan (Muslim graveyard) shamshaan (Hindu cremation ground) Ramzan, and Diwali. During the 2015 Bihar assembly elections, home minister Amit Shah declared that if the BJP lost by mistake, celebratory crackers would go off in Pakistan.

During the 1999 elections, Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray was banned from voting or contesting in elections for six years because he had used polarising language. But today, such brazenly communal references to religion and culture come from none other than the Prime Minister.

Yet, India’s survival as a democracy depends on building bridges between communities. In a democracy, all citizens are equal, whether they eat meat or fish or observe Navratri or not. Politicians expounding on food choices (or any other personal choices from marriage to dress to choosing partners) or dictating who should eat what at what time is extremely dangerous and draws us closer to theocracy. Politicians come armed with the coercive power of the state. Thus, when politicians seek to dictate personal choices, it smacks of coercion and threat. Constant demonising of the Muslim has led to a chilling statistic: Today, in the ruling BJP consisting of 303 MPs, there is not a single Muslim MP. Is this how the world’s largest democracy wants to define itself to the world?

The writer is MP (Rajya Sabha), All India Trinamool Congress. She tweets @sagarikaghose. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)