The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has vehemently criticised the BJP National spokesperson’s article on the Bilkis Bano Case, where she had distanced the BJP government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi from those who had felicitated the now emancipated Bilkis Bano Case convicts, while at the same time alleging that the latter belonged to VHP.
The said article was published in The Indian Express. VHP has denied any association with those who had honoured the Bilkis Bano Case convicts and has sought clarification from the BJP, asking whether the expressed views were Ilmi’s personal views or that of the party’s official stand.
The Controversial Article
The article, written by the BJP National spokesperson, expressed anguish at the remission of the convicts of such a heinous crime.
She conveyed that her “personal sense of justice got betrayed” and that she was “appalled” that the guilty could get away with a sentence of “mere 15 years.”
However, at the same time, she argued that the decision to remit the guilty was solely taken by the Gujarat State Government and that the Centre had no role in it.
In her article, Ilmi also highlighted the history of acrimony between the BJP and VHP. She expressed, “To attribute this (the felicitation of the convicts) is particularly strange given the intense acrimony between Gujarat BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on one hand and VHP on the other hand.”
VHP Angered Over The Statement
VHP has taken exception to this very reference of Ilmi’s. VHP National spokesperson Pravesh Kumar Choudhry said that Shazia Ilmi’s article is a “conspiracy to defame VHP”.
He further said, “She (Ilmi) belongs to the elite section of Lutyens Delhi, infamous for creating false propaganda. She is unaware of the Sangh Parivar’s ideology, especially the VHP, which has done tremendous work for Hindu culture.”
Choudhry further claimed that Shazia Ilmi is unaware of the support the BJP has received from VHP, particularly under Narendra Modi’s leadership, and that she cannot comprehend the philosophy of Hindutva.
The convicts did not belong to the BJP, and the office, where the infamous event was held, also “does not belong to the VHP,” clarified Choudhry.
Ilmi’s Clarification
Shazia Ilmi took to Twitter late on Saturday night to tweet that “if the VHP had not felicitated them (the convicts), then I stand corrected and apologise for the same.”
She also clarified that her reference to the said “acrimony” between the two organisations (Modi’s BJP and VHP) was about what had happened in the past when the Prime Minister was serving as the Chief Minister of Gujarat and Pravin Togadia (Former International Working President) had publicly ridiculed the “Sadbhavna” rally in 2011. Later, Pravin Togadia went on a hunger strike against the Modi government in 2018.
Ilmi further clarified on Twitter: “I did not at all refer to anything going on in the present.”
Starting from the tenure that Modi served in Gujarat as the Chief Minister, the VHP and BJP under Modi are known to have a famously strained relationship. There have been unresolved simmering tensions on a number of issues. It was this unending conflict that paved the exit of Pravin Togadia from the VHP.
BJP’s response
No BJP spokesperson reacted to the matter in an official capacity. But one leader of the party, on the condition of anonymity, expressed that the BJP’s National Spokesperson openly writing against the VHP “does not send the right message.”
However, there were other sections of leaders who opined that Ilmi’s article distancing the BJP from the remission of Bilkis Bano Case convicts and their infamous felicitation could prove to be fruitful for the party as “both the BJP and Prime Minister Modi came under attack” over it.
The Sparring Undercurrents of the Indian Right Wing
This event is of much political significance because it brings to the fore the sparring undercurrents of the Indian Right Wing, which otherwise project a unified face in the popular media.
There has been a widening ideological divide within the BJP, as an organisation, regarding the ideology that it is trying to follow, and the Hindutva narrative that the hardliners want it to adopt. Presently, the BJP finds itself increasingly caught in the crosscurrents of these two sections.
This unease might explain the deafening silence of the BJP’s leadership, especially in the noisy outrage and condemnation over the Bilkis Bano Case convict remission and their felicitation.
The apprehensive dissent surfaced for the first time when a senior BJP leader and Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister, Devendra Fadnavis, openly expressed that the honouring of the convicts was objectively wrong.
“The convicts served their sentences and were released as per a Supreme Court order. However, honouring any accused on their release is wrong. A convict is a convict and they cannot be honoured,” said Fadnavis in the Assembly.
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