The BJP’s anti-Muslim outlook is acquiring a darker and more communally disruptive hue in India at the moment. Compared to the earlier relatively milder forms of harassment of the minorities such as the campaigns in favour of ghar wapsi (reconversion) or against love jehad (interfaith marriage), although there were also violent cases of lynching, the present targeting of Muslims has wider and more long-term implications. 

They are far more sinister than the controversies over the wearing of the hijab or consuming halal meat or using loudspeakers to call the faithful to prayer for the daily azaan or setting up shops at the temple festivals. 

It isn’t only the frightening prospect of the Taj Mahal or the Qutb Minar suffering the fate of the Babri Masjid which is worrying. What is no less unsettling is the plan to erase the names of the Mughal emperors which mark the heart of Lutyens Delhi. 

Rechristening zeal

At the root of this historical vandalism is the deep animus of the RSS-BJP-led Sangh Parivar against the Muslims. Wiping out the memories of the past with their association with the Mughal rulers is tantamount to in the Parivar’s mind to cleansing Indian history of the “taint” of its Muslim past and refurbishing the past with the names of Hindu heroes such as Rana Pratap Singh and others whose names will now adorn Akbar Road, Humayun Road and Shahjehan Road in Delhi. 

It will be a mistake to regard this wholesale rechristening as a continuation of the decolonization process which saw the elimination of the names of British rulers from the Indian streets. That was intended to mark the end of a period when India was ruled from a distant European island. The Muslim sovereigns were different because they made India their home, just as the Aryans did 3,500 years ago by pushing the Adivasis (original inhabitants) deeper into the hinterland. 

It is this aspect of India’s prehistoric past which negates the saffron lobby’s case of depicting the Muslims as the only group of aliens and which makes the Parivar describe the Adivasis as Vanavasis (forest dwellers), in addition to claiming that India is the original homeland of the Aryans. But it is not a theory which is accepted outside the Hindutva circles. 

Muslim invaders? 

The RSS-BJP’s line of thinking makes the group not only to regard the Muslims as outsiders, but also to demonize them by describing them as invaders who entered India only to pillage and plunder and enslave the population. There is no room in this tunnel vision of the concept of a compositive culture – the Ganga-Yamuni tehzeeb – which evolved as a result of the centuries of cohabitation of the Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent. It ignores the fact of the Muslim contribution to Indian art, music and architecture and focusses only on the conflicts between the Hindu and Muslim rulers. 

This jaundiced approach to history envisages the destruction of mosques, of which the ones in Varanasi and Mathura are seemingly the next targets after Ayodhya, and also gives Hindu names to towns and villages and the main thoroughfares of the national capital. 

The deletions are meant to tell the Muslims that they have no place in the country and are here by sufferance. As Guru Golwalkar (1906-73) decreed, “the non-Hindu people … must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture … or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges … not even citizen’s rights”. 

Second class citizens? 

Although India has not yet reached the stage favoured by the second RSS chief, there is little doubt that sizeable sections of the saffron crowd look forward to such reduction of the Muslims to second-class status. The country’s partition has reinforced the perception of the Muslims deserving such a humiliating relegation for having engineered the division of Akhand Bharat – a goal for which the RSS has set a timeline for attainment even if it means the destruction of Pakistan. 

As if to substantiate the rightwing view of Muslim perfidy, the Pakistan-inspired terrorists continue their acts of depredations in Kashmir although they have stopped their earlier attacks on various parts of India, of which the most deadly was the assault by the Pakistan-based jehadi “commandos” on Mumbai in November 2008. 

A mix of present-day Indo-Pakistani enmity and a twisted, politically motivated interpretation of the subcontinent’s past, have helped the BJP to depict the Muslims as demons against whom the Hindus have to wage a relentless battle. 

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