Return of the Mandir

Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 on the back of a blitzkrieg campaign against a “corrupt” Congress party. With the support of its global capital patrons, he also mesmerised people with his political rhetoric of achhe din (good days) and a clean India, both literally and metaphorically. However, in the past three years, public life has got corrupted and it may be difficult to recover from its effects, for many years to come. Socially, the emboldening of the saffron brigade in terms of enacting its fascist antics, unleashing terror on minorities, and spreading communal poison; politically, systematic erosion of democratic norms, undermining of parliamentary decorum, and saffronisation of institutions; economically, devastation of the informal sector due to irrational decisions like demonetisation, hasty implementation of the goods and services tax, and reversal of India’s economic growth rates have been the hallmark of his rule. Now that people are slowly waking up to reality, reflected in the decline of his party’s performance in recent elections, there is a clear indication of the revival of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) strategy of communal polarisation in the name of Ram Mandir.

Dirt of Communalism