My thesis is that the Indian state under Hindutva is incompletely communal. I have written about this before, but the principal argument is that Nepal’s inability, before 2008, to become a Hindu rashtra in the full meaning of the term — by legislating doctrine as described by the Smritis — also applies to us. This is a structural problem and is not resolvable. This is the reason why the musings of Guru Golwalkar on the ideal state of the nation are not part of the BJP’s manifestos.

This also means that the State, meaning the apparatus of government, retains an instinct to be secular and normal. How can we observe this? We can do so by looking at how the government behaves when it engages with the external world.

When our prime minister and foreign minister travel abroad to lecture the world and receive its medals, they do not use the same rhetoric as they do within India. They speak of vasudhaiva kutumbakam (the world is a family) and sarvadharma samabhava (respect for all religions). They do not tell the world that, inside India, their policy is bulldozers, beef lynchings, CAA, NRC and love jihad. They go to the United Nations and other fora under a Nehruvian carapace.

There is a creature called the hermit crab. It does not have a shell of its own. It takes the shell of a dead animal and uses it to protect itself. This is what the BJP does with Nehruvian secularism when it goes........

© National Herald