An exponential rise in Covid-19 cases compounded by a shortage of vaccine and medicine hasn’t stopped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from quietly pursuing its core Hindutva, or Hindu nationalist, agenda. Its latest step is to legally challenge the legitimacy of a Varanasi mosque which was built by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1669 on the ruins of an ancient temple, as a petitioner has claimed before a local court. In response, the court has asked the Archaeological Survey of India to ascertain whether this is indeed the case.

Irrespective of the legal outcome, what is obvious is that the BJP is preparing the ground for another communal confrontation on the lines of what happened when a similar claim was made about how Mughal emperor Babur was responsible for destroying a temple in Ayodhya in 1528 and building a mosque in its place. While the Ayodhya case has been done and dusted, with the Supreme Court allowing the construction of a temple on the spot where the ancient temple supposedly existed, the BJP now evidently wants to traverse the same tension-ridden path to rectify the “misdeeds” of another Muslim ruler.

New issue to further Hindutva agenda

The switch from Babur to Aurangzeb is perhaps necessitated by the fact that the BJP believes that it has extracted whatever electoral advantage it can from the Ayodhya event and, therefore, needs another issue to bolster its pursuit of the Hindu cause. The political motive of these endeavours is obvious. Just as the Babri Masjid episode enabled the BJP to mobilise its Hindu supporters from the 1990s onwards and move from the margins of national life to centre-stage, the Varanasi chapter of the party’s pro-Hindu agenda is expected to further consolidate its base of support. Varanasi, incidentally, is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency.

Although the party is now politically far stronger than what it was in the 1990s, it apparently still wants to ensure there is no slippage in its hold on the Hindu mind. And what better way to achieve this objective than by keeping the communal pot boiling by threatening Aurangzeb’s mosque with the same fate which Babur’s shrine met at the hands of the Hindutva storm-troopers in December, 1992, when the Babri Masjid was demolished.

Arguably, it is a feature of extremist politics, whether of the Leftist or Rightist variety, that the proponents of the dogma, which depicts the non-conformists as the enemy, cannot ever afford to let down their guard. Theirs is a constant battle against the suspected unpatriotic elements in their midst to ensure the aliens can never take advantage of the democratic principles to secure the same footing as the rulers of the day who are running the country in accordance with their majoritarian ideology.

History is witness to how the nature of the adversary can change for those who hold the whiphand. If the affluent were the targets of the Communist rulers of the former Soviet Union, the Jews felt the brunt of the wrath of the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany. Medieval Europe also saw religious wars between the Catholics and Protestants while America was torn between the whites and the blacks before the civil war and even afterwards. As is obvious, faith, class affiliation, ethnicity, colour of the skin have all been grist to the mill of the extremists.

Belief in Muslim perfidy

Today, in India, Muslims are the primary targets in this regard. Although the Modi government formally adheres to the principle of development for all – "sabka saath, sabka vikas" – the ground reality is different since the message of brotherhood does not seem to have percolated down to the Hindutva rank and file. Nor is this surprising since they have been reared in the belief that the Muslims are to blame for all of the nation’s ills, starting from their invasion of India, and destruction of temples in medieval times to partition in the modern period.  

It is this deeply ingrained belief in Muslim perfidy among the BJP’s followers which constitutes the base of the party’s electoral support. However, the party needs incendiary material to keep this flame burning. From the founding of the Jan Sangh in 1951 to that of the BJP in 1980, the Hindutva brigade switched from one vacuous ideology to another – Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s Integral Humanism and Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Gandhian socialism – till it chanced upon the idea of destroying the mosques which had been built by the Muslim conquerors to humiliate the Hindus in medieval times. Now, it was payback time for the guardians of the Hindus.

Three of these mosques had been identified – in Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura. Having accomplished the mission of destroying the Ayodhya mosque – incidentally, the BJP is the only party in modern times after the Nazis, who burnt Jewish synagogues, to target the shrines of a “rival” faith – the Varanasi mosque is in the BJP’s cross-hairs. In all probability, Mathura will be the next.

Since there is little chance of the BJP desisting from its pursuit of religion-based politics which places the surmises, predilections and objectives of the party’s Hindu followers above those of the minorities, the country will have to brace itself for a prolonged period of Hindu-Muslim confrontation.

No challenge to BJP 

The difficulty is that there is no immediate challenge to the BJP's dangerous ideological agenda. The so-called secular parties in India are too organizationally weak and ideologically confused to take on the BJP. The latter’s cynical use of the religion/nationalism plank invariably gives it the upper hand. The taming of the bureaucrats into being “caged parrots” - as the Supreme Court once said - about the Central Bureau of Investigation is another advantage for the BJP.

The only hope lies in the good sense of the people, or the Supreme Court upholding constitutional and legal principles overruling the lower courts that admitted these stray petitions. The BJP’s electoral setbacks last year in Delhi, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana provide a ray of light. If the BJP loses in Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the next few days, and also perhaps in West Bengal, it will give an indication of popular sentiments.  The voters saved India from Indira Gandhi’s dictatorship in 1977 - and can do so again against a majoritarian political agenda. 

(The writer is a current affairs commentator. Views are personal)