The Folly of Soft Hindutva": How Congress Was Singed by its Patronage of the Bharat Sadhu Samaj," https://scroll.in/article/1028216/the-folly-of-soft-hindutva-how-congress-was-singed-by-its-patronage-of-the-bharat-sadhu-samaj Nikhil Menon.https://casi.sas.upenn.edu/iit/nikhilmenon. Scroll.in, July 14, 2022
The Bharat Sadhu Samaj had been created by the Congress. In 1989, the Sadhu Samaj—a child of the Congress—unsurprisingly rebelled and turned on its parent, allying itself informally to the VHP and BJP. By the end of the 1990s, the BJP had surged from single digit to triple digit seats in Parliament, largely on the back of this successful Ram Janmabhoomi mobilization.
In contemporary India—a Hindu nationalist India—even those opposed to the politics of communalization sometimes argue that religion is too powerful a resource to be left solely in the hands of the Sangh Parivar. The realistic path forward, they reason, is to parry the Hindutva thrust using Hinduism as a shield—either by making a display of Hindu faith and minimizing association with Muslim religiosity, or selectively choosing not to condemn Hindutva aggression. What this view underestimates is not just the theoretical “slippery slope,” but also the very real evidence of how such gambits have recently played out. Even when such a stance may seem tame by comparison to the viciousness of unadulterated Hindutva, it is likely to erode the ground under their feet. Also, less instrumentally, and much more importantly, it fails to come to terms with the true price of such a strategy—the daily fear and insecurity of millions of Indian Muslims.