When senior BJP leader and national general secretary of the party Ram Madhav decided to appear on Al Jazeera’s popular Head-To-Head Tv programme, he unwittingly put himself in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons and courted controversy.
Madhav had agreed to be part of the segment titled, ‘Is Modi’s India flirting with fascism?’ and he was there to defend the government against such allegations. It was a bad move by every standard. Not only was Madhav unable to make any viable points during the debate but most of his statements had the audience in splits.
However, during the course of the interview, Madhav said “your ISIS” to Mehdi Hasan, the Muslim anchor, while defending his point about the terror group acquiring nuclear weapons.
The moment my latest @AJHeadtoHead guest, the BJP’s gen sec, referred to me & ISIS with the line ‘your ISIS…’ (!) https://t.co/HWY8B4wdNy
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) December 26, 2015And that wasn’t the end of it.
Madhav also said the RSS ideology is for the supremacy of India and the organisation is neither fascist nor aggressive. On the controversy over returning of awards by writers and intellectuals, he said, a small number of people do not represent the entire country’s views and there were a very large number of intellectuals who did not support this award.
Madhav said they were doing it “to defame the government and in turn to defame the image of India” and termed as wrong their method of protest.
After the show, Hasan faced a barrage of abuse on twitter and he wasn’t amused.
Over the past 48 hours, Hindu nationalist trolls have tried to smear me as a closet Islamist, a Pakistani and an ISIS supporter. Sheesh.
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) December 27, 2015I guess the interview must really have hurt. Why focus on what their guy said when they can just attack the host, right? Classic evasion.— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) December 27, 2015
The past 48 hours of abuse have taught me that EDL’s, Likud’s & Trump’s supporters have got a lot to learn from the ‘Hindutva’ crowd online.
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) December 27, 2015You can watch the entire Head-To-Head episode below:
If nothing else, then this episode must open Modi’s eyes. The BJP has to send out the right kind of people to represent their government on such shows. Otherwise, no matter how hard they try to showcase their secular side, they will continue to fail.
