The Evening Wrap: Global outrage continues over BJP leaders’ communal remarks

Even as the BJP suspended its spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expelled another leader Naveen Kumar over their communal comments, the global outrage over the controversy has not died down. After Qatar and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bahrain have reacted to the comments by the leaders. In a tweet, the Foreign Ministry of Saudi Arabia said, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses its condemnation and denunciation of the statements made by the spokeswoman of the #Indian Bharatiya Janata Party [#BJP], insulting the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him.” The Ministry has further welcomed the action taken by the government. The Bahrain foreign ministry has stressed the need for denouncing attempts to provoke religious feelings and incite religious hatred. Bahrain has also welcomed the government’s decision to suspend its spokesperson over the “insulting” comments. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has condemned comments by the spokesperson of the government and has urged the “Indian government not to allow such fanatics to insult the holy religion of Islam and provoke the feelings of Muslims.” Pakistan Foreign Ministry has summoned Indian Charge D’ Affaires to protest comments by BJP leaders, and has called the disciplinary action taken against them “perfunctory”. Meanwhile, India on June 6 slammed Pakistan for criticising it. External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the “absurdity of a serial violator of minority rights commenting on the treatment of minorities in another nation is not lost on anyone.” “The world has been witness to the systemic persecution of minorities including Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Ahmadiyyas by Pakistan,” he said. “The Government of India accords the highest respect to all religions. This is quite unlike Pakistan where fanatics are eulogised and monuments built in their honour,” Bagchi said. “We call on Pakistan to focus on the safety, security and well-being of its minority communities instead of engaging in alarmist propaganda and attempting to foment communal disharmony in India,” he said. Dr. Nayef Falah M. Al Hajraf, Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has “condemned, rejected and denounced the statements made by the spokesperson of the BJP against the Prophet. Qatar and Kuwait summoned India’s Ambassadors in Doha and Kuwait City respectively and demanded a “public apology” from New Delhi for the comments that were considered “Islamophobic”. Iran and a number of other Arab countries are understood to have informally conveyed their concerns over the comments to India. The BJP on Sunday suspended its spokesperson Sharma, and the Delhi unit of the party expelled its media cell head, Kumar, from the primary membership of the party following objectionable and communal statements by them on Prophet Mohammad and Islam. The disciplinary action against Sharma and Kumar comes after violence broke out in Kanpur and a diplomatic furore broke out especially in the Gulf countries. BJP’s bigotry isolated India and lowered her global standing, says Rahul The ‘shameful’ bigotry of the BJP has not only isolated India but also damaged her global standing, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Monday, while targeting the ruling party over controversial remarks made by its now sacked spokespersons against Prophet Mohammad. While the party’s official Twitter handle questioned why these BJP functionaries have not been arrested yet, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said “Nupur Sharma and Naveen Kumar were not the original creators of Islamophobia as they trying to be more loyal than the king”. Taking to Twitter, Gandhi said, “Divided internally, India becomes weak externally. BJP’s shameful bigotry has not only isolated, but also damaged India’s global standing”. The Congress’ official handle tweeted that the country will not apologise for the mistakes of the BJP, but the ruling party president should do so. “Instead of doing a drama of action against anti-social elements in the party who have defamed India at the international level, it should immediately arrest them,” it said with the #hashtag BJP_Defames_India. Echoing such a position, party spokesperson Pawan Khera said, “Why should the country pay a price for the mistakes of the BJP. Nothing can be more shameful than the fact that the Prime Minister is reminded by Qatar and Kuwait about his Raj dharma”. Khera said if the Prime Minister had reprimanded BJP supporters and TV anchor who indulged in regular hate campaign against a particular community, then the country would have been saved from the present embarrassment. Another Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said, “Our dapper External Affairs Minister got his spokesman to dismiss a U.S. government report on religious minorities in India as ‘vote-bank politics in international relations’. U.S. allies in Gulf are giving a reply”. In a series of tweets, party’s chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala called the BJP’s claim of respecting all religions a ‘sham’. “In order to get votes, the top leadership of the party creates a new vocabulary with words like Shamshan-Kabristan (cremation ground versus graveyard), 80:20, Bulldozer... ” Surjewala said. Suspension of spokesperson sets off internal churn in BJP The suspension of BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expulsion of the BJP’s Delhi media cell chief Naveen Kumar on Sunday amid a diplomatic furore between India and West Asian countries has created a major buzz within the BJP, not just in the social media ecosystem created immediately before and after 2014 but also within the party organization, over the manner in which the issue has been handled. The episode reflects an internal churn within the BJP on rhetoric, ideology, and rewards. Twitter hashtags like #ShameOnBJP trended after Sharma’s suspension, with many prominent BJP supporters, though not officially members of the BJP, expressing the sentiment that Sharma and Kumar had been abandoned by the party at a time when Sharma had also received death threats over her remarks. “On our internal groups she [Ms. Sharma] has received a lot of sympathy and many are questioning whether to support a party that is so pusillanimous in helping out supporters, even terming the official spokesperson of the party as ‘fringe’,” a young social media right-wing influencer said. The top leadership of the party and the government, which has only received accolades from such groups till now, has been roundly criticised for the first time. Office bearers of the party, speaking to The Hindu, acknowledged the nine-day interval between Sharma’s remarks and her suspension, and only after demonstrable protests in West Asian countries, showed the party in a bad light. “Basically that, till it became an international issue, we were not going to take any action. This depicts insincerity with regard to the reasons behind the suspension and that we can be steam-rolled,” a senior office bearer of the party said. The most interesting aspect of the churn has been an attempt at a pivot by the larger RSS parivar to be less agitational and reflect the fact that the BJP has now been at the helm for the last eight years. As reported in The Hindu earlier, at a “chintan baithak” of top RSS leaders in Haridwar in early April, a major discussion was held on the need to tone down confrontational rhetoric, not least because agitating for causes would lead to the most obvious question being asked — if your ideological fraternity is in government, why can’t it address your issues without agitations on the ground? RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s statement on the Gyanvapi controversy — that it should be resolved by mutual dialogue between both Hindu and Muslim communities or the law courts — came out of that meet. More interestingly, at a “prashikshan varg” or training exercise for the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) held in Dharamsala recently, resource persons from the party insisted that rather than concentrating only on ground mobilisation, BJYM members should also look into academic reading, writing articles for newspapers, etc. “It was the exact opposite of what we had been told in all the training programmes we had attended earlier,” a BJYM member said. At this, one member had a sharp question: “Why was it then that the party rewarded people like Delhi BJP leaders Kapil Mishra and Tajinder Bagga, known for controversial remarks, with party tickets during polls? Will riding motorcycles with the party flag get us the ticket or writing an Op-Ed?” This question reflects the churn within, with the party’s top leadership slowly trying to pivot to a different level, but eight years of modus vivendi for the rank and file, of leaders being rewarded for polarising rhetoric, will not go away so easily. The Nupur Sharma episode could well be an inflection point. A senior office-bearer of the party said that the situation with regard to all these instructions was similar to the situation on the ground where “the Congress can’t reconcile to being out of power, and the BJP can’t believe it is in power”. As ‘partygate’ outcry grows, British Prime Minister Johnson to face no-confidence vote Britain’s ruling Conservatives will hold a no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Boris Johnson, which could remove him from the post. Party official Graham Brady said he received enough letters from lawmakers demanding a vote on Johnson’s leadership to trigger the no-confidence vote. That happens if 54 Conservative, or ‘Tory,’ lawmakers write to Brady. If Johnson loses the vote among the 359 Conservative lawmakers, he will be replaced as Conservative leader and prime minister. If he wins, he will be safe from another challenge for a year. Johnson’s popularity plunged after investigations revealed he was part of rule-breaking parties held in government buildings during 2020 and 2021. At the time, UK residents bore the brunt of stringent COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions. Elon Musk warns of dropping Twitter deal if data not provided Elon Musk warned he may walk away from his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter Inc if the social media network fails to provide data on spam and fake accounts, the billionaire said in a letter to the company on Monday. The letter said Twitter was in a “clear material breach” of its obligations and that Musk reserves all rights to terminate the merger agreement. Earlier in March, Musk said he would put the deal “temporarily on hold”, while he waits for the social media company to provide data on the proportion of its fake accounts. “Musk believes Twitter is transparently refusing to comply with its obligations under the merger agreement, which is causing further suspicion that the company is withholding the requested data due to concern for what Musk’s own analysis of that data will uncover,” according to the letter. “Musk believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights,” the letter by Musk’s lawyers said. Twitter shares were down 5.5% at $37.95 in premarket trading. In Brief People can now book 24 train tickets in a month on the IRCTC website and app if their user ID is linked to Aadhaar, otherwise only 12 tickets can be bought, the Railways announced on Monday. So far, the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) allowed people to book six tickets a month if the account is not connected to Aadhar and 12 if it is linked. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow [logo] The Evening Wrap 06 JUNE 2022 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( Global outrage continues over BJP leaders’ communal remarks Even as the [BJP suspended its spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expelled another leader Naveen Kuma]( over their communal comments, the global outrage over the controversy has not died down. After Qatar and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bahrain have reacted to the comments by the leaders. In a tweet, the Foreign Ministry of Saudi Arabia said, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses its condemnation and denunciation of the statements made by the spokeswoman of the #Indian Bharatiya Janata Party [#BJP], insulting the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him.” The Ministry has further welcomed the action taken by the government. The Bahrain foreign ministry has stressed the need for denouncing attempts to provoke religious feelings and incite religious hatred. Bahrain has also welcomed the government’s decision to suspend its spokesperson over the “insulting” comments. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has condemned comments by the spokesperson of the government and has urged the “Indian government not to allow such fanatics to insult the holy religion of Islam and provoke the feelings of Muslims.” [Muslims hold placards demanding the arrest of Nupur Sharma, BJP spokesperson as they react to the derogatory references made by her, during a protest, in Mumbai on June 6, 2022. ] Pakistan Foreign Ministry has summoned Indian Charge D’ Affaires to protest comments by BJP leaders, and has called the disciplinary action taken against them “perfunctory”. Meanwhile, India on June 6 slammed Pakistan for criticising it. External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the “absurdity of a serial violator of minority rights commenting on the treatment of minorities in another nation is not lost on anyone.” “The world has been witness to the systemic persecution of minorities including Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Ahmadiyyas by Pakistan,” he said. “The Government of India accords the highest respect to all religions. This is quite unlike Pakistan where fanatics are eulogised and monuments built in their honour,” Bagchi said. “We call on Pakistan to focus on the safety, security and well-being of its minority communities instead of engaging in alarmist propaganda and attempting to foment communal disharmony in India,” he said. Dr. Nayef Falah M. Al Hajraf, Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has “condemned, rejected and denounced the statements made by the spokesperson of the BJP against the Prophet. Qatar and Kuwait summoned India’s Ambassadors in Doha and Kuwait City respectively and demanded a “public apology” from New Delhi for the comments that were considered “Islamophobic”. Iran and a number of other Arab countries are understood to have informally conveyed their concerns over the comments to India. The BJP on Sunday suspended its spokesperson Sharma, and the Delhi unit of the party expelled its media cell head, Kumar, from the primary membership of the party following objectionable and communal statements by them on Prophet Mohammad and Islam. The disciplinary action against Sharma and Kumar comes after violence broke out in Kanpur and a diplomatic furore broke out especially in the Gulf countries. BJP’s bigotry isolated India and lowered her global standing, says Rahul [The ‘shameful’ bigotry of the BJP has not only isolated India but also damaged her global standing]( former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Monday, while targeting the ruling party over controversial remarks made by its now sacked spokespersons against Prophet Mohammad. While the party’s official Twitter handle questioned why these BJP functionaries have not been arrested yet, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said “Nupur Sharma and Naveen Kumar were not the original creators of Islamophobia as they trying to be more loyal than the king”. Taking to Twitter, Gandhi said, “Divided internally, India becomes weak externally. BJP’s shameful bigotry has not only isolated, but also damaged India’s global standing”. The Congress’ official handle tweeted that the country will not apologise for the mistakes of the BJP, but the ruling party president should do so. “Instead of doing a drama of action against anti-social elements in the party who have defamed India at the international level, it should immediately arrest them,” it said with the #hashtag BJP_Defames_India. [Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. ] Echoing such a position, party spokesperson Pawan Khera said, “Why should the country pay a price for the mistakes of the BJP. Nothing can be more shameful than the fact that the Prime Minister is reminded by Qatar and Kuwait about his Raj dharma”. Khera said if the Prime Minister had reprimanded BJP supporters and TV anchor who indulged in regular hate campaign against a particular community, then the country would have been saved from the present embarrassment. Another Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said, “Our dapper External Affairs Minister got his spokesman to dismiss a U.S. government report on religious minorities in India as ‘vote-bank politics in international relations’. U.S. allies in Gulf are giving a reply”. In a series of tweets, party’s chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala called the BJP’s claim of respecting all religions a ‘sham’. “In order to get votes, the top leadership of the party creates a new vocabulary with words like Shamshan-Kabristan (cremation ground versus graveyard), 80:20, Bulldozer ... ” Surjewala said. Suspension of spokesperson sets off internal churn in BJP The [suspension of BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expulsion of the BJP’s Delhi media cell chief Naveen Kumar]( on Sunday amid a diplomatic furore between India and West Asian countries has created a major buzz within the BJP, not just in the social media ecosystem created immediately before and after 2014 but also within the party organization, over the manner in which the issue has been handled. The episode reflects an internal churn within the BJP on rhetoric, ideology, and rewards. Twitter hashtags like #ShameOnBJP trended after Sharma’s suspension, with many prominent BJP supporters, though not officially members of the BJP, expressing the sentiment that Sharma and Kumar had been abandoned by the party at a time when Sharma had also received death threats over her remarks. “On our internal groups she [Ms. Sharma] has received a lot of sympathy and many are questioning whether to support a party that is so pusillanimous in helping out supporters, even terming the official spokesperson of the party as ‘fringe’,” a young social media right-wing influencer said. The top leadership of the party and the government, which has only received accolades from such groups till now, has been roundly criticised for the first time. Office bearers of the party, speaking to The Hindu, acknowledged the nine-day interval between Sharma’s remarks and her suspension, and only after demonstrable protests in West Asian countries, showed the party in a bad light. “Basically that, till it became an international issue, we were not going to take any action. This depicts insincerity with regard to the reasons behind the suspension and that we can be steam-rolled,” a senior office bearer of the party said. The most interesting aspect of the churn has been an attempt at a pivot by the larger RSS parivar to be less agitational and reflect the fact that the BJP has now been at the helm for the last eight years. As reported in The Hindu earlier, at a “chintan baithak” of top RSS leaders in Haridwar in early April, a major discussion was held on the need to tone down confrontational rhetoric, not least because agitating for causes would lead to the most obvious question being asked — if your ideological fraternity is in government, why can’t it address your issues without agitations on the ground? RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s statement on the Gyanvapi controversy — that it should be resolved by mutual dialogue between both Hindu and Muslim communities or the law courts — came out of that meet. More interestingly, at a “prashikshan varg” or training exercise for the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) held in Dharamsala recently, resource persons from the party insisted that rather than concentrating only on ground mobilisation, BJYM members should also look into academic reading, writing articles for newspapers, etc. “It was the exact opposite of what we had been told in all the training programmes we had attended earlier,” a BJYM member said. At this, one member had a sharp question: “Why was it then that the party rewarded people like Delhi BJP leaders Kapil Mishra and Tajinder Bagga, known for controversial remarks, with party tickets during polls? Will riding motorcycles with the party flag get us the ticket or writing an Op-Ed?” This question reflects the churn within, with the party’s top leadership slowly trying to pivot to a different level, but eight years of modus vivendi for the rank and file, of leaders being rewarded for polarising rhetoric, will not go away so easily. The Nupur Sharma episode could well be an inflection point. A senior office-bearer of the party said that the situation with regard to all these instructions was similar to the situation on the ground where “the Congress can’t reconcile to being out of power, and the BJP can’t believe it is in power”. As ‘partygate’ outcry grows, British Prime Minister Johnson to face no-confidence vote [Britain’s ruling Conservatives will hold a no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Boris Johnson]( which could remove him from the post. Party official Graham Brady said he received enough letters from lawmakers demanding a vote on Johnson’s leadership to trigger the no-confidence vote. That happens if 54 Conservative, or ‘Tory,’ lawmakers write to Brady. If Johnson loses the vote among the 359 Conservative lawmakers, he will be replaced as Conservative leader and prime minister. If he wins, he will be safe from another challenge for a year. Johnson’s popularity plunged after investigations revealed he was part of rule-breaking parties held in government buildings during 2020 and 2021. At the time, UK residents bore the brunt of stringent COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions. Elon Musk warns of dropping Twitter deal if data not provided Elon Musk warned he may walk away from his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter Inc if the social media network fails to provide data on spam and fake accounts, the billionaire said in a letter to the company on Monday. The letter said Twitter was in a “clear material breach” of its obligations and that Musk reserves all rights to terminate the merger agreement. Earlier in March, Musk said he would put the deal “temporarily on hold”, while he waits for the social media company to provide data on the proportion of its fake accounts. “Musk believes Twitter is transparently refusing to comply with its obligations under the merger agreement, which is causing further suspicion that the company is withholding the requested data due to concern for what Musk’s own analysis of that data will uncover,” according to the letter. “Musk believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights,” the letter by Musk’s lawyers said. Twitter shares were down 5.5% at $37.95 in premarket trading. In Brief People can now book 24 train tickets in a month on the IRCTC website and app if their user ID is linked to Aadhaar, otherwise only 12 tickets can be bought, the Railways announced on Monday. So far, the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) allowed people to book six tickets a month if the account is not connected to Aadhar and 12 if it is linked. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow  Today’s Top Picks [[Watch | Opening today: This railway terminal in Bengaluru will provide airport-like facilities] Watch | Opening today: This railway terminal in Bengaluru will provide airport-like facilities]( [[Watch | Why is India exporting less sugar?] Watch | Why is India exporting less sugar?]( [[A timeline of billionaire Elon Musk’s bid to control Twitter] A timeline of billionaire Elon Musk’s bid to control Twitter]( [[A symbol of freedom movement is now a contested ideological ground] A symbol of freedom movement is now a contested ideological ground]( Copyright @ 2022, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. If you are facing any trouble in viewing this newsletter, please [try here]( If you do not wish to receive such emails [go here](