INDIA is a linguistically diverse country with 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects. Politicians, like every other people, use these languages to connect to people particularly voters across regions. For instance, a politician may speak Hindi in the Hindi speaking belt while use Tamil and Telugu or any other regional language in the peninsular part of the India. When a politician uses a local language while expressing his views the targeted audience connects properly and understand the emotions and ideology of the politician behind those words.

However, use of derogatory language in Indian politics by the politicians has, unfortunately, become a commonplace in recent times. Politicians in their quest to power and polarize their support base, have resorted touseinflammatory language (particularly the use of ‘hate speeches’) which tends to target specific community/individual based on religion, caste, ethnicity or/and other groups. These words can be hurled upon opponents, and in some instances colleagues alike.
During elections various politicians have made divisive statement keeping in mind the religious demographics of India to stir up religious tension between groups. For example, politicians have made derogatory remarks against the minority community in recent election times to sway the discussion from the main topic of election like good governance, reservation, constitution to the old, tried and tested HINDU-MUSLIM vote bank politics.
India also has a wide and complex caste system and politicians have also tried to exploit this fault lines in between caste to garner support from the majority caste and secure their vote banks. In recent times, use of words like “CHANDALAM” in the state of Karnataka to please one group of caste, is both harmful and thought-provoking to the general mass that if all this is done to widen the fault lines and use it for personal gains.
One of the most infamous areas in which foul language is used is in personal attacks being hurled down at one another. Politicians have resorted to personal attacks against their opponents resorting to name calling, character assassination or spreading false information to discredit one another. A particular instance can be noted when, Rahul Gandhi while campaigning for the 2017 Gujarat Legislative Assembly referred to PM Modi as ‘chowkidar’ while later in 2018 infamously said that ‘chowkidar chorhai’. This drew sharp criticism from not only the BJP party but also the Supreme Court and later Rahul Gandhi had to submit an unconditional apology to the court. Although PM Modi countered this infamous slogan by campaigning with the word “chowkidar” added it to his name on X(formerly known as Twitter) and various other BJP leaders also followed their head.

If we compare contemporary Indian politics of recent years to that of early post-independence time (in the aforesaid context) , the politicians then were synonyms to freedom fighters who knew the importance of the hard fought democracy and had a clear understanding of the demarcation between freedom of speech and expression; and maintaining public decorum.The leaders of those time though had their differences and conducted civil discourse yet they did it with maintaining public order and decorum. While there were certainly disagreement, as normally would, the use of outright abusive language was less common.

One instance can be noted, that in a debate in the early 1970s in Prayagraj between the then UP CM and an opponent whose name had the word ‘Triveni’ in it. In the debate the CM both meticulously and clandestinely took a jibe at his opponent by saying that he was a ‘Saraswati viheen Triveni’ which has to be read in reference to the Triveni Sangam at Prayagraj. The CM could have used strong language in reply to the argument of his opponent but he used carefully crafted words to say that his opponent was lacking in knowledge in his arguments.
While one can only imagine where this would be leading in the present time where most the people would have not understood the meaning behind the sentences or it would have been too much of a hassle to explain to the general public.

The use of derogatory language in Indian politics not only reflects poorly on the individuals making such statements but also contribute to make the political environment more toxic. It erodes public trust, diminishes the quality of public discourse and sets a negative example to the society especially the youth who start to think that getting on the stage and abusing the opponents is all there is to debates and speeches. While there may be short term gains in terms of grabbing people attention and getting on the pages of print media as well as making headlines on digital media or appealing to a certain set of voters, in the long run, it undermines the fabric of democracy. There is a pressing need for political leaders to uphold higher standards of language and behaviour to foster a culture of mutual respect and civility in politics and public affairs.

Disclaimer:

This compilation of fact and evidences from various sources (Google, Newspaper, etc.) is done by Siddhant Upadhyay.
The views are personal and does not represent the views of Legal Ecosystem Envelopes (O.P.C.) Pvt. Ltd.