Saudi Arabia Condemns the offensive statements insulting the Holy Prophet (saw)

The suspension of BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma for offensive targeting of Prophet Mohammad is a victory for civility. That the government was forced to suspend its spokesperson and disown her in the wake of reprimands by Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran is a reminder that targeting minorities with impunity, and hate speech with official sanction, will have repercussions for India’s global reputation. It was not human rights lectures from great powers like the United States, but the power of illiberal states like Qatar, that humiliated India. The sheer cretinism of the BJP was called out and how.

To understand why this tactical reprieve should not make us complacent, we have to understand the BJP’s long-term strategy. It is what might be called a “heads we win, tails you lose strategy.” The strategy is this. Say things with impunity about minorities, show your toughness by baiting Islam. Convert tractable political disputes into a whole-scale ideological attack on Islam or Muslims. If you get away with it, you claim credit for showing the strength of Hindus, for a kind of tough bravado. If, on the other hand, there is a reaction of any kind, a push-back, you turn around and claim victim status. If impunity succeeds, you gain power. If impunity fails, you convert that into fodder for a feigned victimhood on which Hindutva thrives. And that is exactly how the BJP will play this humiliation in the broader poisoning of civil society.

The easiest way to grow Islamophobia globally is by using speech about Prophet Mohammad either to claim that defenders of free speech are hypocritical, or provoke some kind of violent reaction, as happened in Kanpur. That was the script the BJP intended.

Almost all turning points in generating anti-Muslim sentiment, from Rangila Rasool to Satanic Verses, from Charlie Hebdo to the Danish cartoons, have played out to the same script. And the reaction, each time, paradoxically both weakens liberalism and strengthens Islamophobia simultaneously. There is nothing about the current national humiliation that will change this script.