As someone who does not believe in religion or god, my views on the controversy over the now suspended Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s comments about Prophet Mohammed are not guided by any partisanship. Also, as someone who was denounced as “pseudo secular and communist” to his face over three decades ago by a leading BJP ideologue, I have zero stake in what the assortment of the BJP members believes in. I suppose that lends credibility to what I am about to say.
Sharma’s suspension from the party’s primary membership is gratuitous because she merely articulated a distilled version of the widely held views within the party and the extended Hindu right family. If she is suspended, then I suppose a vast majority of the BJP membership too should be suspended. The honorable thing for the party leadership to do would have been to stand by her and say it is her freedom of expression, an idea which the party as an institution supports without concurring the specifics of her views.
The government of India, as an entity distinct in theory from the BJP, has had to scramble to contain some terrible diplomatic fallout in Islamic countries from Sharma’s comments. To minimize the transgression some Indian diplomats have described her as “fringe elements” which is rather weird because if she was “fringe elements”, how was she a party spokesperson and if she was a party spokesperson, how can she be “fringe elements”? There cannot be any credible explanation for this dichotomy for the simple reason that, like I said, she articulated a distilled version of the widely held views within the party and the extended Hindu right family.
The scramble comes only a couple of days after India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar went chest-thumping over how independent India’s foreign policy is. Qatar, a country about 284 times smaller in its size and with a population of less than three million, which is about 0.21 percent of India’s, manages to push the latter on the defensive over Sharma’s comments. It is pathetic.
As someone who does not believe in religion and god, I do not feel even remotely offended by the perceived insults against any religion and their deities such as they are. To that extent, Sharma should be immediately reinstated. In the same breath though, the BJP should also stop getting offended by any perceived slight against Hinduism and its pantheon. If you are the kind who believes in the non-sense that religions are words of god, then you should hardly feel threatened or offended by what mere mortals say.