Controversial, ugly and bitter, Indian polls live up to the gripe

We are nearly mid-way through India's parliamentary election, and it's been ugly. I've heard several people say they would leave India if Congress President Rahul Gandhi became prime minister. A famous actor on the sets of the film I co-wrote said so to his co-star while the three of us were in script-prep. Then, a Mumbaikar with an attractive DP recently tweeted a threat to marry an NRI and leave the country if Rahul became PM. Such anxiety seems misplaced. Are they afraid that Rahul will hug them to death (as with the non-fatal hug he gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament last year that took everyone, including the man embraced, by surprise)? Are they afraid their names will be struck off the electoral rolls, as several voters in the first three (of seven) rounds have complained? Are they afraid of being lynched, an epidemic of the past five years?
The election's bitterness can be gauged by the rhetoric's downward spiral. Rahul apologised to the Supreme Court on Monday for linking it to his slogan, Chowkidar Chor hai (the watchman is a thief), in reference to Modi unduly favouring a litigation-happy failed industrialist in the multi-billion Rafale fighter jet deal with Dassault of France. Though the court has re-opened hearings into the allegations of corruption and crony capitalism in the deal, the re-opening is strictly speaking not an indictment of the PM. Hence the apology.
The Election Commission (EC) has temporarily gagged several politicians for their remarks to Muslims on voting. These include former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati and Punjab deputy chief minister Navjot Singh Sidhu. It put a gag order on terrorism-accused Pragya Thakur, out on bail in a case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for her role in the 2008 Malegaon serial blasts that killed several dozen and injured over a hundred. She was charged by senior police official Hemant Karkare, who then died during the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai; he found that her motorcycle was used for one bomb, that she attended a key conspiracy meeting, and that she had declared her commitment to violence. In the past week, Karkare's name has been dragged through the mud. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters harp on a false narrative that Karkare concocted "Hindu terror" case to denigrate Hinduism. Yet the EC's gag order on Thakur came only because of her claims to having been one of the demolishers of the Babri Masjid in December 1992.
No doubt more gag orders will come in the days ahead. This week, the Maharashtra chief minister said he would tie opposition leaders to missiles before firing them on terrorist camps; another dynast-politician from his state said she would tie Rahul to a missile and fire it across the border. It sounds cartoonish but it is meant to bolster the ruling party's image as tough. What it actually means is Maharashtra's leaders are jittery about the Opposition's prospects in India's second largest state.
While no one has had the courage to make predictions, the pattern emerging from the voting so far was that the opposition alliance in Uttar Pradesh was working well; the BJP, which won 73 of the 80 seats in 2014 could face a massive drop, though it is possible that it could still be the largest party in the state even if it loses 50 of the seats previously held. Two large states that seemed to favour the BJP were Bihar and Maharashtra. In Bihar, the upper castes were solidly behind the BJP, while in Maharashtra, which has suffered agrarian distress, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (led by strongman Sharad Pawar) seemed to be in disarray. Bihar has not yet seen any of the nastiness in the other states undergoing keen contests. The Maharashtra CM's and MP's comments betray that in their state, things are up in the air.
Two gentlemen who are unlikely to be gagged by the EC, however, are Modi himself and his party chief Amit Shah. Like Mayawati and Sidhu, Shah has repeatedly campaigned on religious lines: he promised to restrict refugees into India with exceptions to Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs. Modi was the first to say that Rahul "fled" Amethi in Uttar Pradesh to Wayanad in Kerala because the latter was dominated by minorities. Others in his party have since parroted this theme. Incidentally, Rahul is favoured to win both constituencies.
Modi has also commented on India's nuclear arsenal, saying that it's not meant for Diwali (the Hindu festival featuring fireworks), implying that other governments were too scared to use nukes. This has gone beyond the usual harmless election rhetoric. India has actively been lobbying to enter global nuclear regimes such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (China repeatedly blocks India's entry). We can't expect Western nations to take our claims of 'no first use' and 'non-proliferation' at face value if the PM makes flippant Diwali remarks. We also can't expect the Modi-appointed EC to advise Modi to tone it down; suggestions to dilute 'Brand Modi' would be unacceptable to the ruling party. Expect the rest of the campaign to sink further into a bottomless pit of polemic.
Aditya Sinha is a senior journalist based in India, and author, most recently, of 'India Unmade: How the Modi government broke the economy'