In recent times, political violence has become the norm in the country. And almost always, the victim appears to have saffron political inclinations. As West Bengal prepared for the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections. a BJP worker’s body was found hanging from a tree in Purulia district.
This was the third such incident in West Bengal’s Purulia district. Prior to this, two BJP workers, Trilochan Mahato and Dulal Kumar had also gone missing from the same Balrampur area last year during the Panchayat elections and were found murdered later. While Mahato’s body was hanging from a tree, that of Kumar was hanging from a high tension electric pole.
Similarly, in a single week, three people associated with the BJP were murdered in Odisha after the first phase of the Elections were completed. And such incidents have been happening for quite a while now.
Under such circumstances, when political violence is at an all-time high and BJP workers appear to be bearing the overwhelming brunt of it, Divya Spandana, social media head of the Congress party, retweeted a meme that appears to mock the victims of violence associated with the BJP.
The meme, which was originally shared by a Twitter user who tweets under the username @DaBlockheads, shows a man who is apparently wounded with blood strewn across his body. One of the people in the image asks his companion who the person is. The friend replies nonchalantly that the man was the BJP candidate.
That the meme, which was quite obviously in bad taste, was shared by a close aide of Rahul Gandhi reflects extremely poorly on the Congress party. However, it has increasingly become the norm. Rahul Gandhi, too, had decided on campaigning for a candidate from his party who threatened to chop Narendra Modi into piece merely days after professing his love for the Prime Minister.