3 Apr, 2016
Back to the Hindutva basics – The Hindu
The BJP may have aggressively trained its guns on the Congress over the weekend at its first national executive meeting after its defeat in Bihar last year, but it is clear that its electoral setbacks and its failure to fix the economy are forcing it back to its basics of divisive communalism. There was a clear tension visible as the BJP sought to balance its development slogan with a return to its time-tested Hindutva line, though now clothed in the national tricolour. The political resolution adopted on the last day of the session described nationalism as an “article of faith”, and claimed that upholding the primacy of the slogan of “Bharat Mata ki Jai” was a “reiteration of our constitutional obligation as citizens”. The gap between pronouncements by Mr. Modi and those around him, as well in the wider Sangh Parivar, would suggest that either he is not in control or he believes that this Janus-faced, seemingly contradictory, approach will help him polarise political discourse to the BJP’s advantage even as he retains plausible deniability by remaining above the fray, ready to battle another day.
Read the rest: Back to the Hindutva basics – The Hindu
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