The BJP-RSS combine in India seems to have gone into overdrive ahead of the 2024 general elections in order to further consolidate its electoral prospects. The recent Nuh violence in the Haryana state that shows the overt involvement of BJP people is a strong case in point.

The situation has clearly prove that both the ruling BJP state government and the same party’s government at Centre are responsible for causing deaths and destructions on a wider scale in a Hindu-majority district that incidentally also has a sizeable population of Muslim community. That triggering or fomenting violence is one of the useful tools of BJP is a fact.

Widening the gulf between Hindus and Muslims is one of the strategies aimed at garnering more and more votes in the scheduled general elections. The other implement in the BJP-RSS tool box is a revisit of history with a view to exploring, identifying and creating new Hindutva icons.

Lampooning and demonizing Mohandas K Gandhi and his legacy is another weapon in the hands of Hindu fundamentalists who is working day in, day out to transform India into a cent percent Hindu Rashtra. A number of Hindutva-leaning writers have been commissioned to advance arguments against the leadership of freedom movement, assailing Jawaharlal Nehru in particular and lionizing Nazi party sympathizers V. D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar.

Their desperation knows no bounds, so to speak. They have even declared one of pre-Partition India’s freedom fighters or revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, who born into a Punjabi Sikh family, as a Hindutva icon.

Little do they however realize that Bhagat Singh had identified or declared himself as an atheist months before he was sent to the gallows by the British people ruling the undivided India. “Why I Am an Atheist” is an essay that Bhagat Singh wrote in 1930 in Lahore Central Jail.

Sulaiman Akhtar Qidwai (Karachi)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023