Misshots In The Dark

On International Yoga Day, two jarring tweets attacking Vice President Hamid Ansari left people wondering what forces were at play. The potshots came from the voluble Ram Madhav, rising star of the RSS, and Swapan Dasgupta, prominent right-leaning journalist. Both accused Ansari of skipping the yoga session on Rajpath led by prime minister Narendra Modi. They also attacked Ansari, who is chairman of the Rajya Sabha, for allegedly not having Rajya Sabha TV telecast the yoga function. But soon, the government said no invitation had been sent to the vice-president (nor to the president) because the prime minister, lower on the protocol list, was the chief guest and hence the president and vice-president could not have been present there. It also emerged that Rajya Sabha TV had in fact telecast the function live.

Here’s what the tweets said. Dasgupta: “All news channels showing Yoga Day, except India’s only taxpayer-funded Left channel: Rajya Sabha TV.” Ram Madhav, who was quick to delete this, said: “Two questions. Did RS TV dat runs on tax payers money completely black out Yoga Day event? While president participated d VP gave a miss (sic).” More significantly, the tweets were sent hours after the show was over. The jury is still out on whether the duo were misled, made a genuine mistake or released the tweets as a deliberate ‘hit and run’ attack to pile pressure and let loose the trolls on Ansari. And it does seem implausible that Dasgupta and Madhav, both considered sharp, would not have checked their information first. Moreover, they did not ask why President Pranab Mukherjee gave it a miss, hosting instead a separate yoga session at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Rajya Sabha MP Pavan Varma of the JD(U) calls the attack “illiterate, ignorant and motivated”. But there are those who see it as deliberate and malignant. Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, says it was an attempt at “communal polarisation”. “Ram Madhav is a knowledgable person, although he has the RSS baggage. But such a statement from him obviously indicates a design,” he says. Another Congress leader, Shakeel Ahmad, feels the controversy was aimed at sending the community a message.

“No one’s against yoga,” says Ali Anwar Ansari of the JD(U), who could not perform yoga that day as he was fasting for Ramzan. “The tweet was intentional and not unknowingly sent out.”

It’s no secret that the BJP and its affiliates are hostile to Ansari. When the UPA was in power, the BJP accused him of partisanship in RS proceedings. In 2011, during the Lokpal debate, Ansari had adjourned the House at midnight after the government submitted that it would not be able to sort out and respond to all 187 amendments moved by various political parties. Arun Jaitley, then Leader of the Opposition in the RS, said the government had dodged a vote with Ansari’s help: by rules, he said, Ansari could have extended the session. Jaitley again targeted Ansari in August 2013 for naming 20 BJP and two TDP MPs in the RS bulletin for disrupting the Upper House on the Telangana issue; he said MPs of the Congress and other parties who disrupted proceedings were not named.

On Republic Day this year, RSS men questioned Ansari’s patriotism for not saluting the national flag. His office was forced to clarify that protocol req­uired the vice-president to stand at attention when the president, who is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, takes the salute.

Madhav did withdraw his offending tweet and apologise. But the damage was done and the BJP’s antipathy for Ansari stands exposed. Someone in social media called it Madhav’s “foot in the mouth asana”. But the other view is that the BJP is sending signals to Ansari, who will soon preside over a discussion on the crucial land acquisition bill.