A floundering Narendra Modi, facing a tough election campaign in his home state of Gujarat, has fallen back on his old favourite tactic of using Pakistan as a bogeyman. All it took was a Facebook post by a former director general of the Pakistan Army hoping for a Congress victory in the elections for Modi to weave a convoluted conspiracy theory. The Indian prime minister claimed that Congress leaders met with the Pakistan high commissioner to India, a former foreign minister and former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh as part of our supposed interference in the Gujarat elections. The allegations are, needless to say, absurd and a Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson has also immediately denounced Modi’s allegations as a fabricated conspiracy. If there was any proof of Pakistani involvement in Gujarat, Modi would not have hesitated to expel our high commissioner. That he has not done so yet shows that he is just whipping up nationalist sentiment against Pakistan for political gain. The tactic is similar to how he claims Pakistan is behind the liberation movement in Kashmir. He hopes to take away from the legitimacy of a genuine freedom movement by tainting it as terroristic and supported by an enemy country. The absurdity of his allegations regarding Gujarat should undermine his equally pernicious accusations about Kashmir.

In fact, Pakistan has been just one plank of the communal campaign Modi has run in Gujarat. He has continually accused Congress of being pro-Muslim and has also brought up the Babri Masjid case. Modi’s intention seems to be to distract attention from the unpopularity of his government, which has been hurt by the imposition of the GST and the demonetisation campaign. His name alone is no longer enough to guarantee an election win in Gujarat especially with the emergence of activist Hardik Patel as a Congress leader in the state. Modi’s entire political persona has been based on the demonisation of Muslims, beginning with his role in the 2002 riots in the state. It is no surprise that he is once again relying on that to scare the voting public in Gujarat from going for a change. Modi may have lost some of his aura in Gujarat. It is now up to Congress to show that fear-mongering of this kind can no longer work.