A crass remark or provocative statement can change the outcome of a general election. In 2014, Congress worthy Mani Shankar Aiyar’s too clever by half witticism that Narendra Modi, the son of an OBC tea vendor at a railway station who had worked his way up the social and political ladder and served three successful terms as BJP chief minister of Gujarat state should be serving tea in Congress Bhavan, Delhi, instead of aspiring to become India’s prime minister, cost the Congress party millions of votes and contributed heavily to BJP sweeping General Election 2014.

But two-term prime minister Modi doesn’t seem to have learned the lesson of Aiyar’s monumental faux pas. Delivering an election speech in Rajasthan on April 21, Modi warned the audience that if Congress is voted to power, it will confiscate the wealth of the Hindu majority and distribute it to “people who have many children” and to Muslim refugees from neighbouring countries. Such crass demonisation of the minority Muslim community by an incumbent prime minister has dismayed not a few Modi supporters as conduct unbecoming of an incumbent prime minister with global acceptability aspirations. Certainly, Modi’s intemperate remarks are likely to cost the BJP votes in substantial numbers.

However, whatever electoral mileage the Congress may have derived from the PM’s shockingly divisive remarks, may well be cancelled by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s promise to revert to arid neta-babu socialism of post-independence India, and to conduct a national caste census.This irremovable Congress party leader also seems to have learned little from recent history.

Alas, in India’s cancel politics culture, the voter invariably has to choose the lesser evil.

Also read: Elections must reflect will of all people