Why Digvijaya Singh is no less dangerous than terrorists

Barely two days after Home Minister P. Chidambaram urged police officials investigating Wednesday’s bomb blasts in Mumbai not to speculate on the likely suspects without concrete proof, Digvijaya Singh, the loose cannon of the Congress, is stirring up communal trouble of the most dangerous kind.

Singh told an Indian Express reporter that the involvement of Hindu outfits could not be ruled out in Mumbai blasts.  The paper reports :

“Asked if he suspected the involvement of Hindu outfits in the latest Mumbai blasts, Singh told The Indian Express: “Nothing can be ruled out. We should allow the NIA and Anti-Terrorism Squad of Maharashtra to do their jobs. But we cannot rule out anything.” 

At first glance, it may appear that Digvijaya Singh foolishly fell into a classic journalistic trap – of having to respond to a leading question, and then see his response twisted to make it seem like he’d proactively said something inflammatory.

But in fact, Digvijaya Singh is no fool: he is a savvy media manipulator who has ever so often in the past used the media platform to amplify his words. In this case too, there’s reason to believe that he intended the message to go out exactly as he gave voice to it: to suggest the involvement of Hindu outfits in the Mumbai blasts, even if only in a tangential manner.

Were Singh a responsible leader who did not want to stir trouble, he would have responded to the journalist’s question, however provocative it may have been, in a vastly different manner. For instance:

Reporter: Do you suspect the involvement of Hindu outfits in the Mumbai blasts?

Answer: The Home Minister has urged investigating agencies not to speculate on the suspected terror groups. It would be irresponsible of me to comment on this, particularly since I don’t know the facts of the case. I would urge the media too not to give in to wild speculation, and to wait for the investigating agencies to complete their job.

But Digvijaya Singh used the reporter’s leading question to hold forth, as he’s done provocatively in the past, on the subject of “Hindu terror”. He even offered to testify in court on the involvement of RSS activists in terror-related activities.

At a time when we’re otherwise seeing a mature political and societal response to the Mumbai blasts (as Firstpost acknowledged here ), Digvijaya Singh’s pronouncements are dangerously provocative. It takes a perverse politician to stir up trouble of this kind with baseless speculation, when even the Home Minister – who too has in the past not been above playing politics with the “ colour of terrorism ” – has urged caution.

It is nobody’s case that there are no radical Hindu outfits in India;  and after the latest Mumbai blasts, the investigative agencies were wrong to rush to premature judgement about who was behind it. But Digvijaya Singh’s statement is just as wrong, the more so because he isn’t even in on the investigation process.

Digvijaya Singh’s motives in making such a statement are easy to fathom. The UPA government in the Centre and the Congress-led government in the State are feeling the heat of popular anger against the state’s inability to provide security against terrorist attacks.

As he’s done so often, Digvijaya Singh is looking to change the narrative with an outrageous statement, in the hope that the political sound and fury it will kick up will drown out the underlying public anger over the failure of governance.

It’s a perverse political game to play, and with his deliberately ill-chosen words that have the power to inflame, Digvijaya Singh has demonstrated that he is no less dangerous than the terrorists who set off the explosives.