Declaring Rahul Gandhi Hinduphobic won’t fish out the ruling-right from troubled waters every time it finds itself targeted and trapped. Well, for the BJP, anything that has to do with Rahul — from his foreign trips to ancestry — brings the party quite closer to what actually it looks for itself to score and settle as the past few years of its rule has been a reminder to it, with Hindutva being deliberately confused and constructed for a Hinduism that acknowledges and appreciates the multiplicity of faiths.
Hinduism stands up for equality, tolerance and brotherhood. But for the Bharatiya Janata Party, this is about recrafting and rechristening caste affiliations and loyalties with numerically smaller groups that dominate the political visual as against the vocal caste groups who actively associated with a party like the Congress.
It is here where there lies a strain asking for rectification with the BJP trying what it all can to benefit from the spoils. Thus, people’s questions will stay far behind, tasking the opposition to think of prospects of cornering and countering the communal agenda and the hype it generates by sowing seeds of mistrust in minds of people.
From Rahul to Akhilesh, all have been victims of the BJP and its mechanisms, refusing to settle with what they see as a blotch on democracy. It is suppressing and sidelining voices critical of the ruling regime. But then, it becomes primary for leaders to distinguish between the two of evils. Be it bigotry or communalism, both are deeply injurious to the constitutional character of a republic, preserving the ethos of an argumentative Indian who is also a born dissenter born out of the politics of Gandhi and Nehru. All of them knew what brought them bindingly closer to each other.