In a recent debate in Parliament BJP MP from Bhopal Pragya Singh Thakur suggested that Nathuram Godse – Mahatma Gandhi’s murderer – was a deshbhakt or ‘nationalist’. Pragya’s Godse-bhakti has led to outrage. An embarrassed BJP has called her views ‘condemnable’. The party seems to have coerced her into giving an apology and she’s been dropped from a parliamentary panel on defence.
Yet the Pragya brand of strident Hindutva nationalism has been mainstreamed over the years. Large sections of voters endorse this way of thinking without realising the price they are paying in terms of their own personal liberties by doing so. After all, hard Hindutva brooks no dissent nor does it tolerate disagreement. It is focussed on a perpetual search Read More
