As a nation we have reached a stage where nothing really surprises us. The phrase, ‘a new low’ has lost all meaning, because the depths we have plumbed stretch into the dark. Even so, by asking the daughter of a Congress leader to ‘move out’ because of her views on the Ram temple, the Residents Welfare Association of a Delhi neighbourhood has crossed a dangerous Rubicon. Or Sarayu, they might insist we say.

RWAs are supposed to look after the welfare of their residents in a colony. But over the years, many of them have become intoxicated with power and appointed themselves as the arbiter of not just rules but also morality. They decide what the rules of social behaviour are. In some neighbourhoods, RWA members have arrogated to themselves the right to interfere with the lives of young residents — especially single women — if they come home late.

But the RWA of Jangpura Extension in Delhi has gone much further. Last week, its office holders wrote to Suranya Aiyar, daughter of Mani Shankar Aiyar, that her video post on the consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, where she had said she would go on a three day fast to protest against it, had “created tension and hatred”.

They said she should apologise or move out. RWA president Kapil Kakar, who signed the........

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