Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

 

BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi was hit by the cruelest of torpedoes on April 13. It was launched by his own party's senior leader Murli Manohar Joshi who stunned everybody by saying that there was "no Modi wave" in the country but only a BJP wave.

Joshi did not stop here only, but twisted the knife by coming up with three more damning remarks: that Modi is a representative of the party as a PM candidate and thus it was a representative wave in favor of the party, not a personal wave in favor of Modi; that the so-called Gujarat model, a pet theme of Modi, would not be implemented as a model scheme of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) if the NDA were to come to power next month, and that the decision to deny a party ticket to senior party leader Jaswant Singh, now expelled, from Barmer, Rajasthan, was not a collective one.

Joshi, a former cabinet minister who was the chairman of the BJP's election manifesto committee, has been seething for weeks since he was forced to vacate the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency in favor of Modi and move to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

Joshi has not taken this forced exit from Varanasi too kindly, as he is on slippery ground in Kanpur where the "outsider" tag may well cost him this crucial election.

Moreover, Joshi's outburst has come at the worst time for Modi as well as the BJP, because the all-important state of Uttar Pradesh still has a few rounds of polling left.

Western Uttar Pradesh was rocked by bloody communal riots in September 2013. The BJP was accused of inflaming the communal passions during riots in Muzaffarnagar, while Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party (SP), which is ruling the state, was accused of apathy and inaction.

Muslims constitute more than 30 percent of the electorate in most of these constituencies, which include Amroha, Moradabad, Bareli, Nagina, Bijnore, Rampur and Pilibhit.

Joshi's remarks, made in an on-record interview to Manorama News, a Malayalam TV news channel, are bound to reverberate not just throughout the state but the entire country.

Joshi has given a stick to rival parties like the Congress, SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to beat the BJP and Modi with.

Unsurprisingly, BSP leader Mayawati is leaving no stone unturned to wrest the Muslim vote from her archrival Yadav.

She has played her cards well and put up as many as 19 Muslim candidates in the state, most of them in western Uttar Pradesh.

Her party cadres have constantly been telling the Muslim voters that during her last five-year tenure as chief minister of the state, not a single case of communal violence was reported.

The BJP's top leaders Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley attempted a bit of firefighting on April 14, by "clarifying" Joshi's remarks.

Singh said "You can't see the BJP and Modi separately," while Jaitley remarked "Modi is leading the BJP campaign. So, where is the question of any controversy on whether it's a Modi wave or a BJP wave? It's a wave for our campaign, which is a Modi-led BJP campaign."

The BJP clarifications are hardly convincing. The damage has been done. If the BJP emerges unscathed from Joshi's comments and Modi becomes the Indian Prime Minister, one thing can be said with certainty: Joshi will be in the wilderness.

The writer is a New Delhi-based political commentator who tweets @Kishkindha. bhootnath00@yahoo.com