THE NEW CONFLICT TRAJECTORIES

THE HINDU-MUSLIM BINARY IS STILL A POWERFUL POLITICAL REFERENCEPOINT. THE BJP'S FAILURE TO GET A MAJORITY ON ITS OWN HAS NOTDEFUSED THE COMMUNAL RHETORIC, BUT THE RSS'S PUSHBACKAGAINST FRINGE HINDUTVA ELEMENTS IS A POSITIVE SIGN

- By HILAL AHMED

The outcome of the 2024 gen-eral election, especially the failure of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to secure a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha, was seen as an ideological defeat of radical Hindutva. A section of political observers even hoped the decline of one-party dominance at the national level would defuse the aggressive anti-Muslim communal rhetoric. The post-election political develop-ments, however, show that not much has changed.

The Hindu-Muslim binary continues to survive as a powerful political reference point. The ongoing debates on a few legally disputed Muslim places of worship, especially the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi and the Shahi Eidgah in Mathura, have intensified. A new set of petitions have been filed in various courts to evaluate the religious character of historic mosques, including the famous shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer. In fact, the Archaeologi-cal Survey of India's intervention in the case of the Shahi Jama Masjid of Sambhal led to violence in which four people died. The government also presented the contro-versial Waqf Bill in Parliament, which seeks to make seri-ous changes in Muslim endowment management in the country. The proliferation of these seemingly communal issues reveals that the nature of public discourse has not changed significantly after the 2024 election.

THE SIMPLE EXPLANATION IS THAT AGGRESSIVE HINDUTVA HAS NOT LOST ITS RHETORICAL VALUE, WHICH IS WHY THE FRINGE GROUPS KEEP AT IT