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HakeshSingh
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True, there are many who have a foot in both the camps, but in the days and
months ahead, the contradictions between the Hindutva project and the economic
reforms project would become more evident. This is when the leaders in the government
and the party will try and force a compromise, and use the two sections in the service of
each other. Hindutva would, then, be politically sold to the aspiring middle classes as a
facilitator of reforms, and the reforms would be pushed down the throat of the
economically marginalised sections as a necessary adjunct of their political mobilisation.
But for those who want to rescue the BJP from regressive Hindutva politics, and
make it the foremost right-wing neo-liberal party of India, the challenge is to keep the
two sets of agenda separate: to isolate the religious lumpen elements and not allow them
to discredit the economic reforms. Politicians would rather not undo the yoking of these
two different programmes. Economic reforms are, after all, painful to push through. It is
for those interested in marketing the reforms as reforms, and not in some other guise, to
make the distinction clear: if the reforms are to succeed over the long term, they have to
be their own justification, and not ride on a communally divisive project.
Whether those involved with Swarajya will be able to do what the BJP politicians
are hesitant to undertake remains to be seen. Rearticulating the "Indian Right" point of
view to an India that is now considered the youngest nation in the world (70 per cent of
the country‟s population is said to be below the age of 35 based on the 2011 census),
with a growing and increasingly assertive middle class with, as they say, fire in its belly,
could well be an excruciating tightrope walk.
Steering this boat, when the socio-political milieu is more in sync with
discounting ideologies if not totally debunking them, and when concepts like nationbuilding
and national identity are sought to be constructed on a religious basis.2002