The election to the Delhi assembly is heating up. It is a three-way battle between the AAP, the BJP and the Congress. As the election campaigning is heating up, the leaders are also making all sorts of provocative speeches. Union minister Anurag Thakur was caught on camera at an election rally in Delhi on Monday, provoking the crowd to chant to the slogan, “Shoot down the traitors who betray the country.” This took place even as the protest against the CAA and the NRC are being given a communal colour by the BJP and its supporters. It is shocking to hear a union minister urging a crowd to raise a highly disturbing slogan.
Anurag Thakur is a young minister and is considered to be suave and modern. The BJP often portrays leaders like him as the future of the party and the nation. Therefore it is deeply disturbing to hear a young leader with a bright future making his supporters raise slogans of threat to shoot down ‘traitors’. Though they have not named any person or group, it is evident that the BJP often calls its political opponents ‘traitors’. In recent days, the party has made similar allegations against those protesting against the CAA and the NRC. The protest at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh against the CAA/NRC by women has especially riled the BJP. It is now using every trick to portray those protestors as anti-India and Pakistan supporters. This is where the slogan of “shoot down the traitors who betray the country” assumes significance. Their lives are at threat. Such kind of deadly communal politics may yield results for the BJP in the election, but it only harms the social fabric of the nation.