Vinay Katiyar, like Pravin Togadiya, is a flavour that has gone out of season—even for the BJP. Both leaders were high- profile proponents of the Ram temple in Ayodhya in the 1990s but Narendra Modi now stands tall in the BJP and the party seems to have no need of foot soldiers past their prime who bring nothing new to the table and do not realise their utility is over. But Katiyar’s Rajya Sabha membership is coming up for renewal and although the BJP has ample number of MLAs in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly to have him elected along with a few others, he is not sure he will even be nominated. So what does he do? Hate is a great attention catcher, thus he not only calls for the destruction of the Taj Mahal, India’s most exemplary monument and one of the seven wonders of the world, he also calls for Muslims in the country to exit to Pakistan or Bangladesh. It is clear he is culling favour with UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, if not the central leadership of the BJP. For the Yogi’s views have been not much different—since his ascension, the UP government dropped the Taj Mahal from its tourist brochure and, in his previous avatar, Adityanath had made nasty remarks about dead Muslim women. But here is why both Katiyar and others who think like him are wrong through and through. During the recent Kasganj violence in Uttar Pradesh, Muslims preparing to hoist the national tricolour, were disrupted by saffron flag-waving miscreants at the Abdul Hamid square. Now Abdul Hamid is an immortalised name that every Indian of Katiyar’s generation should be familiar with. He was a grenadier in the Indian Army who single-handedly destroyed three Pakistani Patton tanks as they were advancing towards Indian territory in the Khemkaran sector, uncaring of their combined fire power.