The show’s anchor sought to correct him stating that Muslims constituted only 32% of Kairana’s vote share, while 68% population were still Hindus, Patra blurted out his party’s dangerous plan for 2018. He said, “When this will reverberate across India, then everyone will pause and reflect. When word will spread that 32% Muslims could unite, but where were Hindus? Islam won but why did Hindus lose, then everyone including Manak Gupta and Sambit Patra will be forced to think.”
His comments coincided with a dangerous social media campaign by BJP supporters, who falsely blamed the newly elected RLD MP, Tabassum Hasan, for saying that Kairana results were the victory of ‘Allah’ and ‘defeat of Ram.’ A shocked Hasan had told Janta Ka Reporter that she never made those comments and was contemplating filing a criminal case against the members of the Hindu Yuva Vahini for spreading the dangerous propaganda.
Sambit Patra is often termed as BJP’s loose canon while taking part in TV debates or flying the flag for his party in conclaves organised by TV channels. But, his stocks within the saffron party have skyrocketed in the recent months, particularly after he was made an independent director in the government-owned ONGC.
Another theory about Patra’s perceived loose talk in TV debates is that he says things that the higher echelon in his party would not publicly utter for the fear of reprisals. In other words, Patra’s seemingly bizarre utterances, according to many politics watchers in India, are prompted by a shrewd political design, to extract the much-needed electoral advantage.
Just before the last year’s Gujarat assembly elections, Patra was taking part in a conclave, organised by ABP news channel. For every criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his failure to deliver the election promises, Patra would pretend to get animated and utter repeatedly, ‘Sun raha hai na Gujarat? They (Congress) are making fun of Modi because he’s a Gujarati.” This was a clever move given that, for the first time, the saffron party had started to develop cold feet in its own bastion, a state that the BJP had first sown its Hindutva seeds so successfully. It was a dangerous but effective move to make it Gujarati Vs non-Gujarati by selling Modi’s credential as the son-of-the-soil to woo voters in order to ward off any potential threats to BJP’s survival in the western coastal state of India.
Post Kairana’s defeat, Patra’s party is facing an existential crisis not just in Gujarat but across India with a united opposition appearing determined to shatter Modi’s dreams for a second term in the prime minister’s office. The RLD’s decision to field a Muslim candidate in a predominantly Jat constituency and ensure her decisive win over the BJP candidate in Kairana also demolished a communally divisive plan that has always suited the BJP in the past. BJP had ridden piggyback on the growing anti-Muslim sentiments in Kairana in 2014 Lok Sabha polls after a bloody religious strife in the neighbouring Muzaffarnagar in August 2013. Then, a small fight had metamorphosed into full-blown communal violence killing more than 60 people in the Jat-dominated Muzaffarnagar.
Although Modi spoke about development in all his public rallies while leading the BJP’s campaign to wrest power from Manmohan Singh in 2014, that mask has been taken off long ago. Faced with a huge anti-incumbency, series of electoral setbacks in bypolls and unprecedented unity among the opposition parties have seemingly prompted the BJP to return to its age-old agenda of Hindutva and religious polarisation more explicitly.