BJP’s communal polarisation poses huge threat: Former Minister Jairam Ramesh

The BJP is practicing a frightening level of communal polarisation in election-bound States and this is a huge challenge for the Congress, its strategist and former Minister Jairam Ramesh has said. In an exclusive interview to PTI, parallel to the Ram Temple build-up in Ayodhya on Sunday, Ramesh said for every Amit Shah, the BJP chief, there are 10 Amit Shahs of the RSS practicing covert polarisation.

He said the modern name of ‘tanashaahi’ was Amit Shah and that Narendra Modi was ‘not prime ministerial’ in his campaign as he indulged in ‘falsification of history and abuse of political rivals’. The senior Congress leader also noted that ‘false news’ was the biggest enterprise in ‘Make in India’ under the Modi government, as he accused the BJP of ‘manufacturing’ issues out of non-issues. 

The 64-year-old former Minister, who is a part of the Congress core group for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll planning, said there were two types of communal polarisation the BJP was indulging in across the country. “One is overt polarisation, which is the language used by Amit Shah and PM Narendra Modi. Then there is covert polarisation done by the RSS and its people through the word of mouth and house to house,” Ramesh said.

Ramesh said the Opposition ‘tends to miss’ overt polarization and also the seriousness of covert polarization. On a query about whether the Congress has managed to address the issue of polarisation, Ramesh said, “It is a huge challenge and it is not just an electoral challenge.” 
He said the RSS had taken years, decades to ‘infiltrate’ the tribal areas.

On why Congress leaders like CP Joshi continue to speak out of turn and make casteist remarks to aid the politics of polarisation, Ramesh said Congress chief Rahul Gandhi had come out very clearly against this. Blaming the BJP for making an issue out of it, he said, “The BJP is very skilled at creating issues out of non-issues, at manipulation of news.” 

By Sanjeev Chopra