Unlike the diffident and risk-averse Manmohan Singh, Narendra Modi is unquestionably one of the most audacious politicians that India has seen. What is more, he seems to be able to get away with his derring-do. His most courageous gamble was demonetisation which has paid him handsome electoral dividends. Now, he has taken a hugely risky step by approving of the choice of the Hindu hardliner, Yogi Adityanath, as the UP chief minister.

If Modi can pull it off, he will be able to kill two birds with one stone. For one, he can expect a tough outlier who has been outside the “system” till now to crack down on the lawless elements so that the Prime Minister’s dream of making the state an Uttam Pradesh comes true. Secondly, if Yogi can do so on an impartial basis, it will mark the beginning of a new phase in UP’s and the Hindutva camp’s politics.

Most people will keep their fingers crossed on the second point. But judging from what the new chief minister told parliament – he is still an M.P. ~ and at a public meeting in Gorakhpur, where he heads a monastery, about his commitment to Modi’s  sabka saath, sabha vikas  mantra, he is likely to function in a non-partisan manner. Besides, no one can know better than Yogi that if he doesn’t, then all of Modi’s efforts towards vikas and a softening of the saffron brotherhood’s anti-minority image will go for a toss. It is this particular endeavour of the prime minister which will be in focus now. And who better to implement it than the former rabble rouser whose anti-Muslim and anti-Christian diatribes can fill pages of a Google download.

If demonetisation was a surgical strike against the parallel economy, the Yogi’s selection is directed against the RSS-led saffron brotherhood’s nine-decade-old project to convert India into a Hindu rashtra. That doesn’t mean that Modi wants to turn the majoritarian BJP into a carbon copy of the secular Congress.

But it does mean that the ideas which the saffron stalwarts of the past like VD Savarkar and MS Golwalkar advocated about making the minorities second class citizens will no longer enjoy official blessings.

Instead, what Modi wants to ensure is that the government will pursue raj dharma ~ the phrase which Atal Behari Vajpayee used in Modi’s presence in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots of 2002 to highlight the principle of a government’s neutrality.  And Modi presumably expects  Yogi to follow this path as well.

Only time will tell to what extent the latter will be able to suppress what can only be considered his natural, anti-minority instincts. But as a member of the BJP, he must be aware that any move which undermines Modi’s agenda will be politically fatal for the party.

Modi, on the other hand, seems to believe that if he himself can change from being a textbook fascist, as sociologist Ashis Nandy said, or “a modern-day Nero”, as the Supreme Court called him in the context of the Gujarat riots, or a killer of thousands, as Manmohan Singh alleged, to be “an avatar of modernity and progress”, to quote Congress MP, Shashi Tharoor, then so can Yogi. Only time will show whether such a metamorphosis can indeed take place. But any indication that Yogi is no longer an anti-minority hate-monger is bound to be deeply resented by the other hardliners of the Sangh parivar such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal. Even the Shiv Sena of the extended saffron brotherhood will feel uneasy for, if anything, the Yogi’s adherence to law and order will mean that the antics of these groups against courting couples on Valentine’s day will no longer be tolerated.

Already, Yogi has told the anti-Romeo squads in UP not to harass boys and girls if they are seen together. He has also said that he will follow the norms laid down by the National Green Tribunal on abattoirs.

These are some of the fallouts which will show whether the Yogi has really changed his spots. For instance, will the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the parivar’s student wing, be forced to check its physical intimidation of the “anti-national” Leftist students ? The views of the RSS are not yet known, but it is obvious that the Hindu supremacist outfit  will not be overjoyed with the possibility of one of its poster boys turning over a new leaf.

Modi is apparently following a two-pronged strategy. Even as he had clamped down earlier on Yogi’s ghar wapsi and love jehad campaigns about the reconversion of Muslims back to Hinduism and stopping Hindu-Muslim love affairs, he allowed the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, to address the nation on state-controlled media on Vijayadashami day and filled important institutional posts with RSS nominees who are generally regarded as being unqualified.

The so-called saffronization of education is also continuing apace with the Rajasthan University withdrawing foreign authors from the commerce syllabus and replacing them with the Vedas, the Bhagwad Gita, the writings of Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi and courses in yoga to “make the students aware of the great contributions made by the Indian scriptures, religious figures and Indian philosophy”, as a former head of the syllabus revision committee said.

The belief, therefore, that Modi represents modernity and progress is not wholly true. But he does seem to believe in law and order in order to facilitate investments, for which he deserves two cheers.

The writer is a former Assistant Editor, The Statesman.