A Right Wing Wrap Around Nationalism

Sangh Parivar’s attempt to neutralise dissenters by portraying them as anti-nationals is a deliberate ploy to reap electoral rewards. 

- KN Ashok

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel — Samuel Johnson

The nation is witnessing such an unprecedented situation these days that the ruling party’s ideological fountain-head RSS and other affiliated organisations are zooming in on places such as educational institutions, news rooms and even court rooms, and mobs are teaching violent lessons of nationalism.

As many point out, the very idea of India and its pluralistic culture is facing major threats from these organisations. Will the BJP government succeed in the plan to weave a Right-wing narrative around the concept of nationalism?

Priyamvada Gopal, writer and academic at Cambridge University tells Tehelka, “The Sangh Parivar has succeeded in taking an existing Right-wing narrative of a Hindu nation and bringing to the mainstream its most vicious, exclusive, bigoted and violent aspects.”

Apart from the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, the sudden rise of its affiliates such as the ABVP, the Hindu Dharma Sena, the Durga Vahini, the Adhivakta (lawyers’) Sangh, the Dharma Jagaran Samanwaya Samiti and the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti are examples of it.

The result of this blooming of outfits was evident in the statistics the government recently released in the Lok Sabha which revealed that communal violence witnessed a 17 percent rise in 2015.

The poll-bound Uttar Pradesh witnessed 155 communal incidents and Karnataka, where Sangh Parivar has a strong base, is in second position with 105 incidents.