The last refuge

THE annual budget which India’s finance minister, Arun Jaitley, presented on February 29th would normally have been the big political event of the week. That is not how proceedings in Parliament in the ensuing days made it appear. Both chambers were disrupted by angry exchanges over issues close to the hearts of the more extreme Hindu-nationalist wing of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Yet again, an ugly strain of BJP politics is distracting attention from what was supposed to be the party’s central agenda in power: ensuring rapid economic growth.

The party’s own members provoked some of the most heated spats. This week two MPs from the BJP, including a junior minister, Ram Shankar Katheria, attended a rally in Agra, near Delhi, to commemorate a Hindu activist allegedly killed by Muslims. Inflammatory speeches at the rally called Muslims “demons” and warned them of a “final battle”. The two BJP men also spoke, leading to opposition calls for the minister’s resignation. But he was unapologetic, saying that, although he had called on Hindus to unite for their own safety, and for the culprits to be executed, he himself had not named any community.