The siren song of Hindutva: BJP’s Celebration of Federalism – Vikas Pathak

Federalism – the constitutional acceptance of diversity – is compatible with ideological acceptance of multiple cultures. It is here that the BJP’s celebration of federalism is at variance with its commitment to Hindutva. The latter is widely seen by social scientists like Christophe Jaffrelot, John Zavos and Jyotirmaya Sharma as an attempt at making the loose network of Hinduism monolithic, organised and regimented.

In this sense, Hindutva fits better with a unitary state with an all-powerful Centre. Little wonder then that Jana Sangh ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, who the BJP swears by till date, strongly advocated a unitary state in India. He wrote in his work Integral Humanism: “Our constitution needs amendment. We are one nation, one society. However, despite all this, we made our constitution federal. It runs counter to the unity and indivisibility of Bharat. Therefore, our constitution should be unitary instead of federal.”

The BJP can choose to move away from this position but there are indications that the party is on the horns of a dilemma. The NDA experiment made it embrace alliance politics, as with its sectional appeal it could not hope to come to power alone. This, ironically, made the party espousing Hindutva more open to adjustment with regional players, including Dravidian parties that have historically questioned Hinduism itself.

But the umbilical chord with Hindutva is not one to snap that easily.

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