India Remains A Social Mosaic: What This Means
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s strength has become its weakness. From being a peripheral party barely three and half decades ago, its leaders became dominant players though the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation, which as LK Advani famously stated, wasn’t ‘just for a Ram temple’.
In the course of the three decades-plus Hindutva campaign, the party grew by fostering a sense of oneness among various Hindu social groups who were made to believe that their unity was in pursuit of common good.
The bonding was cemented by attempts to shift to monotheism from polytheism, and by seeing Islam and its adherents as evil, out to destroy the nation or hamper its growth.
President Ram Nath Kovind quoted the Assamese (not surprising given the imminent assembly polls in the state) poet, Ambikagiri Raichaudhuri: “India’s grandeur is the ultimate truth. In one single consciousness, one thought, one devotion, one inspiration, let us unite; let us unite.”
It is…