Narendra Modi and David Cameron, November, 2014. Wikicommons/ Narendra Modi. Some rights reserved.The defeat in the Bihar state assembly elections has caused dissensions within the BJP-led coalition. That is no news because a mutual blame game among the political partners always follows a setback. A bigger development is the strains developing in the coalition of communalism (sectarianism) and capitalism, the two antithetical forces that Narendra Modi miraculously yoked together to drive his chariot to victory in the national elections 18 months ago.
Before coming to that it is necessary to recall the sequence of events. The Modi Government contemptuously dismissed the writers protesting against intolerance and suppression of the freedom of speech through violence by vigilante groups. Prime Minister Narendra Modi stopped short of inquiring how many army divisions does Nayantara Sahgal (the eminent writer) have? But Finance Minister Arun Jaitley asked in disbelief where was intolerance in the country. He echoed a British politician. During Britain’s ‘winter of discontent’ the Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan said "Crisis? What crisis?”
The BJP’s top leadership believe that the pen being mightier than the sword was a myth of their own making and that the poets being the legislators of mankind is a fanciful statement. One former BJP leader pointed out that a minister had read no books for years.
