Will the insidious rhetoric of our political class succeed?

The public is not happy with these comments largely because no one wants to see their lives being disrupted

- RASHME SEHGAL

For once the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, Ajit Pawar spoke sense when he spoke out against UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's "Batenge toh katenge" remark. Pawar, who finds himself caught in a cleft stick, pointed out that it was an outsider who had made such a remark given that Maharashtra was a state that had a history of maintaining communal harmony.

There is little doubt that some of the greatest movements of social and political reform during the 19th century were witnessed in Maharashtra. Six of the key makers of modern India came from Maharashtra including Jyotiba Phule, Lokmanya Tilak, Gopalkrishna Gokhale, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Tarabai Shinde and Hamid Dalwai.

But we cannot forget that Maharashtra is also the home of the RSS and its founding fathers, largely Chitpavan Brahmins, and it is this organisation from which much of this divisive propaganda is presently emanating.

But Yogi Adityanath is an exception even to the tradition of the RSS where doublespeak is tinged with some caution. Yogi is not one to exercise any such caution. His political career has been built around the naked acquisition of power and his governance record is peppered with extrajudicial killings and excesses combined with rabid rabble-rousing statements which are issued primarily to heighten a sense of anxiety and fear amongst the Hindus.

From the start of his career he has depended on his leitmotif of hate speeches to raise the pitch in every election.

His armoury comprises anti-Muslim speeches and this combined with his strong-arm tactics has seen him emerge as the poster boy of Hindutva whose rhetoric is always one step ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The attack on Hindu minorities in Bangladesh has helped reinforce this narrative of Hindu victimhood, exacerbating a sense of fear and insecurity amongst the majority community who are constantly being warned about impending attacks from the Muslim community.