The tragedy of the regime's co-travellers

They are called upon to defend the government, even as its actions become increasingly tough to justify

- G. Sampath

Recently, in a televised debate, former student leader Kanhaiya Kumar asked a BJP politician to clarify whether or not he was “Godse-virod-hi” [against Nathuram Godse]. The BJP veteran, who had earlier parried Mr. Kumar’s charge that he was a “fascist” by asserting that he was actually a “nationalist”, eventually admitted, “No, I am not against Godse”.

If this banal exchange was interesting, it was only because of the ease with which Mr. Kumar was able to demonstrate that for today’s self-proclaimed nationalist, it has become a risky proposition to even publicly disown the man who killed the Father of the Nation. Seven years ago, the risk would have been the other way around — of appearing to endorse the man who killed Mahatma Gandhi. But now, BJP spokespersons can be seen as supporting Godse without fear of being thrown out of the party.

At another level, with every passing day, life is getting tougher for the average BJP supporter, who is discovering that she is faced with the same binary that the party likes to impose on everyone else: either you are a Modi loyalist or you are an anti-national.

The non-ideological supporter

There is a tendency to paint all BJP supporters in the same shade of saffron — that would be a mistake. The party’s core base consists of two kinds of saffron: those sympathetic to the Hindutva ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and those who identify with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But beyond this dual core processor that drives BJP politics, there are a great many who, for various reasons, including those of political expediency, professional advancement, cultural capital or material benefit, chose to throw in their lot with the BJP. Their ideological past may have been hostile or indifferent to the Sangh agenda, but they nonetheless ventured to publicly climb on to the Sangh/Modi bandwagon.