South Asia Citizens Web

Following scattered defiance of the Taliban earlier, a new wave of students is now heading for education in schools and colleges across the troubled north of Pakistan.

Kagal, lies at the border of Karnataka and Maharashtra and has enough presence of Hindutva supremacist organisations there. And Karnataka itself has been witness to activities of rightwing Hindutva groups who are found to be keen to make the state an experimental lab for furthering their politics and establish its anti-secular agenda.

The BJP, after all, is a highly ideologised political entity. It is a member of a volatile family, the “Sangh Parivar,” which is “nurtured” by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological or conceptual brain directing family affairs. To represent intra-familial relationships in this right-wing communal formation, there is no need to go to any external source. Here is how the History section of the BJP’s official website, www.bjp.org, presents the relationships: “The Bharatiya Janata Party is today the most prominent member of the family of organisations known as the ‘Sangh Parivar’ and nurtured by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)…History is the philosophy of nations…the Sangh Parivar has a very clear…conception of Indian history…[The RSS] has no doubt about Hindu identity and culture being the mainstay of the Indian nation and of Indian society.”

As India enters its 2014 general election to constitute the 16th Lok Sabha, the spectacle of prominent commentators adjusting their views towards the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi unfolds before our eyes with escalating frequency and vivid clarity. These adjustments — to use a term that is more descriptive than judgmental, at least for starters — take a variety of forms, and come from a range of observers, analysts and experts.