Stealing credit: Video shows BJP trying to appropriate triple talaq verdict

Most of the country's political parties have reacted differently to the three landmark judgements that came this week. However, the response of the BJP, as the governing party, is particularly conspicuous.

The party was silent on the verdict against the rape-accused head of a religious sect whom party leaders have bowed down to.

It merely “welcomed” the Supreme Court's ruling that privacy is a fundamental right.

The only judgement it truly celebrated, hailing it as “historic”, was the one which struck down the practice of instant triple talaq among Muslims.

So enthusiastic was BJP's response to this judgement that it called this the beginning of a new era. To be fair, the party was not alone in singing paeans to the judgement as almost all political parties vied with each other in welcoming it.

However, what is indeed different about BJP's response are the party's efforts to appropriate the judgement.

On the day of the judgement, BJP chief Amit Shah thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the “BJP government” for putting up the case before the Supeme Court “wisely and fairly”.

It must be recalled that the government was not the petitioner, but a respondent in the case.

The party then started portraying the judgement as a part of “Modi's government's” efforts to secure “justice and equality for Muslim women”.

BJP even compared its imagined role behind the judgement as contrary to Congress government's act of rendering the historic Shah Bano judgement of 1986 null and void through legislation.

It seems that these efforts to appropriate a judicial pronouncement as government action were not enough as the party has now officially started saying that it is the BJP and Modi who got Muslim women rid of triple talaq.

On 26 August, the party released a video, titled, “Triple Talaq unconstitutional : Watch what delighted Muslim women have to say to PM Narendra Modi”. The video features a few burqa-clad women feeding sweets to each other and to a life-size cut-out of Modi.

Three of them speak to the camera and directly thank Modi for “taking this decision in the favour of Muslim women”. They are not cross-questioned, so it does not emerge clearly whether they are oblivious of the reality or have been prompted to speak these lines.

However, the fact that this video was produced and broadcast by BJP clearly indicates that the party itself wants to portray the end of triple talaq not as a court judgement but as a government order.

By doing this, the party is playing a clever game of appearing as a well-wisher of the Muslim community while pandering to its core Hindutva constituency. It is ironic that many average Muslims have not taken kindly to the verdict because they see it as a political conspiracy to meddle with their religion.