His inflammatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad outraged the Muslim world and sparked a diplomatic outcry, but provocations by Nupur Sharma, until then spokesperson for India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party, are not new.
Aged 37, she regularly participates in television debates, posing as a zealous and combative defender of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s program.
Its influence has grown with the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the past decade, which has established itself as the dominant political force in India by defending Hindu identity.
But last week, during a televised debate, by criticizing the Prophet Muhammad’s relationship with his youngest wife Aisha, Nupur Sharma sparked a global reaction.
Several Muslim countries in the Middle East quickly summoned their Indian ambassadors to protest. His remarks sparked violent clashes in India.
Ms. Sharma, whom AFP could not immediately reach, had to apologize publicly, claiming to have subsequently received death threats.
The BJP handled this crisis by suspending Ms Sharma for “expressing views contrary to the position of the party”.
“The BJP strongly denounces any insult to a religious figure or religion,” he said in a statement.
Until then, Ms. Sharma had been a rising star in a party which, according to observers and critics, stigmatizes the country’s Muslim population, 200 million strong but a minority.
“Spit on him”
In 2008, while still a student, she became involved in the youth of the BJP before being elected president of the student union of the prestigious University of Delhi. She had led a crowd of students there to attack a seminar organized by a Muslim academic, wrongly charged with a terrorist attack against Parliament and acquitted in 2005.
The same day, in a television program, she had vehemently defended her actions and those of a classmate who had spat on this teacher.
“I’m not going to apologize,” she said, “I’m going to take a stand. The whole country should spit on him. Who invited him to college to talk about terrorism?”
She studied at the London School of Economics to become a lawyer, before standing unsuccessfully for the BJP in a national election in 2015.
By suspending it, the party sacrificed a scapegoat against the backdrop of a broader political culture that has long used anti-Islamic rhetoric, experts say.
“The party uses these hotheads to advance its agenda, but when they go too far, they are forced to withdraw,” Delhi-based analyst Parsa Venkateshwar Rao told AFP.
“It’s a cat and mouse game they’re playing,” he adds, “top party brass allow spokespersons to turn up the heat and act when they feel it’s getting out of control” .
“Crisis management”
Since coming to power in 2014, Mr Modi’s government and the BJP have been accused of advocating a discriminatory policy against Muslims.
The prime minister has proposed a controversial law granting Indian citizenship to refugees except Muslims while BJP-controlled Indian states have passed laws making it harder for Muslims to marry someone else, for example religion.
Party leaders have also remained silent about attacks on Muslims accused of slaughtering cows, a sacred animal in Hinduism.
India brushes aside criticism from abroad accusing it of religious discrimination. Its foreign ministry issued a statement last week reaffirming the country’s commitment “to religious freedom and human rights.”
Ms. Sharma’s sidelining does not illustrate the party’s beliefs, said Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor of Caravan magazine, her comments on Islam just “overshot”.
“It’s just a bit of crisis management. The type of Islamophobia on which they base their policy will not change.”
