An inexcusable gaffe

While the BJP has apologised for the “clerical error” that blighted its vision document for Delhi, terming people from the Northeast as “immigrants”, such a gaffe by a party with pan-Indian aspirations is inexcusable. The party has outgrown its moorings as a Hindi-belt outfit of traders with a middle-class bias, and it should have been more careful in vetting a key document released before polls in Delhi.

In some ways, today’s BJP is unrecognisable from its RSS roots, particularly since it made history last year when Indian voters, across the spectrum, gave a single party a clear majority after three decades. This was a major change in a country riddled with coalition politics ever since the late 1980s. The BJP may not have fared all that well in the Northeast or the extreme South, but it did make sizeable inroads in voteshare almost everywhere, and it now has to live up to its hard earned national billing.

It’s a pity then that some minor official of the party was given the job of vetting the vision document at such a sensitive time, with crucial elections ahead. The gaffe was bound to trigger protests in Assam and elsewhere, with the point being made about national parties having to grow up and stop giving the region some kind of second class treatment. There is also the risk that such alienation of a people could be catastrophic at a time when China has repeatedly laid claims to parts of the Northeast.