With just four days left before campaigning for the 2024 Lok Sabha election draws to a close, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks, made at election rallies in Bihar, where he accused the Opposition of performing mujra (a dance form associated with courtesans) for the Muslim vote bank, has come under sharp criticism from the Opposition, with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge claiming that Mr. Modi’s comments belied his anxiety over the election results.
“Prime Minister’s language and seats of the BJP - both are continuously declining,” senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said in a post on social media platform X.
Mr. Modi made this remark at the Patliputra Lok Sabha constituency, where Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Misa Bharati is contesting against the incumbent two-time BJP MP Ram Kripal Yadav, and the PM subsequently repeated the remarks at other rallies in Bihar on Saturday.
The RJD’s senior leader Tejashwi Yadav said the PM’s language had been deteriorating as the elections proceeded. “PM Modi is using such language that even his supporters are not liking it,” Mr. Yadav said.
Mr. Modi also reiterated his remark that the State governments led by Opposition parties are splicing the quota meant for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Other Backward Classes (OBC), and diverting them to Muslims, who were carrying out a “vote jihad” in the elections.
Dismissing this charge, the RJD’s Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Kumar Jha pointed out that the Mandal Commission report, which was adopted in August 1990, already lays down the reservation policy for “non-Hindu” caste groups. He also pointed out that “backward classes of Muslims have been getting reservations even in Gujarat”, where the BJP has been in power for decades, with Mr. Modi himself as Chief Minister for three consecutive terms.
Mr. Kharge posted a video clip of his press conference in Himachal Pradesh on social media, along with a comment that while Mr. Modi remembered “mutton” “machli (fish)”, “Mughal”, “mangalsutra” and now “mujra”, he could not maintain the “maryaada” or the dignity of his position. “These are signals that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is getting anxious. I don’t think the country’s Prime Minister should be using such language. He makes divisive comments to instigate the voters, he talks about Hindu-Muslim division, and tries to drive a wedge between different caste groups,” Mr. Kharge said.
Countering Mr. Modi’s comments, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said that Mr. Modi’s speech was unprecedented. “Never before has an Indian Prime Minister deployed such a language,” she said at an election rally in Gorakhpur.
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat said that under Mr. Modi’s terms of the past 10 years, the rights of reservation had been severely diluted. “Words that the Prime Minister has used in his latest speech in Patna are highly condemnable. I don’t know where he gets such words from. Must be his ‘Sangh parivar’ culture. The substantive issue is that of reservations and the fact of the matter is that under the Modi government over the last 10 years, the rights of reservation have been severely diluted,” Ms. Karat said.
