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There’s an intriguing absence of outrage about the fact that an individual accused in a terror case is now the BJP’s Bhopal candidate. Pragya Thakur (‘Sadhvi’ to her followers) remains charged under UAPA, India’s main anti-terror law under which terrorism suspects are held. The announcement of her candidature was a media sensation — TV anchors rushed to record gushing interviews, channels are covering her campaign extensively. There’s little shock, no letter campaigns, almost no public protest by civil society groups. Either the middle class is by now numbed to extreme rightwing voices in politics, or silently endorses the advent of the Hindu Rashtra. The latter is more likely.
For the BJP to choose Thakur without waiting until she was cleared of terror charges signals a triumph of religious ideology over law and constitutional values. When PM Modi himself declared in Wardha that “never in history will you find Hindus involved in such (terror-related) activities”, he seemed confident that Pragya Thakur would only enhance BJP’s brand equity, not reduce it. Beyond a small protest in Mumbai over Thakur’s offensive comments on Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare, and a public condemnation from the IPS Association, there have been no protests over her. In fact, in times when the mainstream media regularly parades extremist religious voices, a right-wing terror accused as candidate can probably even be expected to create a frisson of excitement about a bold ‘New India’ rather than any anxiety about loss of democratic constitutional values.
A powerful sense of ‘Hindu victimhood’ and ‘Hindu grievance’, partly genuine, partly manufactured by media and politicians, lies behind the apparent public consent to figures like Thakur. Social media and WhatsApp are bombarding users with videos, fake news, memes and slogans about an imminent Islamic invasion of India. Any terror attack anywhere in the world, such as the recent Sri Lanka bombings, sends Hindu victimhood spiking upward with politicians and media quickly seizing the opportunity to widen religious differences and polarise the public. Hindu victimhood and sense of siege are not only encouraged by top leaders but also fanned by online and offline mobs.
On the ground, various militant senas, which seem to enjoy immunity from the law even in Congress-ruled states, fan ghettoisation of communities through violence, such as the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013. Those who accuse the Congress of “minority appeasement” are practising their own appeasement of Hindutva radicals.
But then, this is the era of Hindutva unbound. In the 1990s, K N Govindacharya, hardline ideologue of the Sangh was banished from his post for referring to then PM Vajpayee as a “mukhota” or a mask for ideology. Today’s Modi-led BJP has no need for masks. Ideological core agendas are government priorities. Where Vajpayee was constrained to once remind an audience that he was a swayamsevak, Modi’s a proud former RSS pracharak and party president Amit Shah wears “vichardhaara” on his sleeve.
That this unapologetic Hindutva-ness has wide support is seen in the electoral wins the BJP has regularly notched up under the Modi-Shah leadership. Bollywood celebrities are readily endorsing the flamboyant mix of politics and religion, a new political order in which “infiltrators” are publicly attacked, accused cow vigilantes are garlanded and “anti-nationals” openly identified.
In today’s BJP, an anti-corruption activist like Kirit Somaiya can be denied a ticket but a Sakshi Maharaj cannot be touched. Pragya Thakur’s open pride in the demolition of the Babri Masjid or absurd views on cow urine being able to cure cancer are barely challenged by political opponents who are themselves keen not to lose the Hindutva vote.
A recent CSDS opinion poll shows that 2014 onwards the support for Narendra Modi has grown dramatically in the 18-25 age group, up from 33% in 2018 to 40% in 2019. There’s barely any large-scale urban outrage over mob lynchings as there has been against corruption or crimes against women.
The Hindutva arc from Vajpayee to L K Advani to Narendra Modi to Yogi Adityanath to Pragya Thakur has dissolved the so-called divide between “soft” and “hard” Hindutva, carrying along with it, ever-increasing sentiments of Hindu victimhood. Additionally, as globalisation expands, the middle class’s nostalgic yearning for ancient cultural roots is channelling itself into support for intensely politicised state religiosity.
Today there’s nothing like too much kesar in the “nationalist” menu. The rise of terror suspect Pragya Thakur as BJP candidate shows that Hindutva doesn’t need to wear a mukhota anymore. The masks are off, signalling that this is India’s unabashed Hindutva moment.
