It would be grossly unfair to hold the Prime Minister and the BJP president personally responsible for outrageous comments from lesser-lights (at times not particularly lowly) of the saffron community. Yet both of them would be worse than unfair to the positions they hold, and to the people at large, for their abject failure to initiate punitive and deterrent remedial action against the miscreants ~ be they political workers or RSS activists. There would be validity to the charge they have conveniently ducked their duty, thereby actually sending out a “green” signal to those advocating political and sectarian strife. And simultaneously have those leaders done little to curb politicised police from slapping charges of sedition, etc., even on those who opt for a pacifist path to deal with adversaries.

Things have come to such a sorry pass that someone might be dubbed a traitor should he applaud the proficiency of a sportsman or artiste from Pakistan, maybe even a good showing by a player from Kashmir could invite similar condemnation. There was, therefore, more than a grain of truth to Opposition leaders complaining to the President that a “reign of terror” had been unleashed: though what they expected Mr Pranab Mukherjee to do about it is a matter for speculation ~ particularly after his consistent calls for a tolerant and liberal society have been shamelessly spurned.

Clearly falling into the category of the “conveniently ignored” is the offer of a bounty of Rs 11 lakh from a leader of the BJP youth wing for the “head” of the chief minister of West Bengal ~ as legitimately elected to her office as Mr Narendra Modi himself. What appalls is that when the matter sparked off a furore in the apex legislature it was left to the political lightweights handling parliamentary affairs to “respond” ~ and they could offer nothing more than some meaningless words, and advising the state government to register and pursue a criminal case.

Their doing nothing more affirmative lends itself to interpretation as tacit approval of the death threat: not the first such threat to be sure. Is that the brand of discipline boasted by the BJP, the RSS and the Hindutva forces who now boast a chief minister from their ranks? The saffron community is intoxicated with its electoral successes ~ hence the unbridled terror spread by ‘gau rakshaks’, the equating of cemeteries with crematoria, and no distinction being drawn between the consumption of buffalo meat and cow slaughter. Not to mention the dubbing of people from the deep South as “black”, and frequent reminders about who have no right to dwell here. The Modi-Shah combine is so focused on winning elections that it is indifferent to the loss of India’s unique ethos.