In extending this protection, the state is required to both prevent discrimination on grounds of religion and promote respect for all faiths. Jawaharlal Nehru pinpointed the essence of this duty when he declared: "If any man raises his hand against another in the name of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life -- whether I am in government or outside."

In short, it is not possible either as a citizen or a state to raise one's hand against another in the name of religion and still remain secular. A restatement of these rather obvious propositions is occasioned by the construction being given to areference in a recent resolution of the Congress Working Committee to the contribution of Hinduism to the nation's secular ethos.

Grammatically speaking, Hindutva and Hinduism mean the same thing. But what Hinduism means to the secularist is not what Hindutva means to the saffron brigade. Hinduism, as the oldest and most widely practiced religion of India has and has had a determining influence on our civilisational values. To say this, however, is not to belittle the contribution of other religions to the evolution of this ethos.

For the proponents of Hindutva, Hinduism is authentic, the rest an alien graft. For them, the concept of a composite culture is anathema. An Indian culture is a Hindu culture, the persistence of other cultures being a tribute to the tolerance of the Hindu. Indianisation is, therefore, Hinduisation. The freeing of Hinduism from polluting influences is seen as essential to the assertion of an Indian identity. Hence, the siege mentality, the emphasis on rescuing Hinduism from thehumiliations of its past, the paranoia over Hinduism being under threat. Hinduism is equated with nationalism. Secularism is then equated with Hinduism. What protects and promotes the Hindu flock thus becomes both secularism and nationalism. In the quest for this alternative discovery of India, a Hindu hegemony is sought to be established.

Hindutva believes in: demolishing places of worship; changing the character of places of worship; curtailing the right to propagate one's faith; abolishing minority rights; expunging the concept of minorities and enforcing personal laws which abridge faith, customs and usageNone of this is secular. None of this is Hindu either. Hinduism has an eclectic, tolerant tradition. It lives and lets live. But so do the injunctions of all other religions, certainly as practiced in this country.

The minority communities of India are avid champions of secularism because they see no contradiction between their faiths and the injunctions of the Constitution. To assert that Hinduismhas helped us become secular is, therefore, not to deny that the other religions of this land have also similarly promoted secularism. We are secular because all of us are secular, not because some of us are secular.

In practice, the champions of Hindutva have generally traduced the values they pretend to uphold and disgraced the religion they claim to represent. There have been physical assaults on the minorities, as detailed, for example, in the Justice Srikrishna Report. They have been intimidated and terrorised, as in the extraordinary increase in atrocities on Christians in states ruled by the forces of Hindutva, such as Gujarat, Maharashtra and UP, as also in south Bihar where the BJP did well in the last Lok Sabha elections. Life, limb and property have been threatened. Insecurity has been deliberately spread. Worse, in many ways, is the denigration of beliefs and tenets of faith, caricaturing these to misrepresent them, drawing attention to aberrations to portray them as the norm, provokingdisaffection, contempt and loathing. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Hindus do not subscribe to the philosophy of Hindutva. They see Hindutva as un-Hindu. They prefer a secular India to a Hindu India.

The Hindutva programme is still to become the programme of the Government of India. The ruling coalition has consciously rejected the Hindutva agenda; the BJP itself has put it on the backburner. And there lies the rub. For the biggest threat to the government comes less from the allies or even the Opposition than from the growing rift between the political rank and the ideological file of the Sangh Parivar. The Prime Minister has bought off his allies by threatening them with elections; and any alternative government seems likely to emerge only after an election. The government, therefore, looks more stable now and more long-lasting than at any time since it was formed. It is precisely this which stirs the ideologues to ask when their agenda will be coming into focus. After all, they argue, a BJPgovernment has not come into office to run a Congress government.

How will it turn out? A clue is, perhaps, to be found in the instructive contrast between the way Vajpayee answered the challenge from Nagpur at the Bangalore session of the BJP, and Advani's handling of the Shiv Sena over cricket. Where the Prime Minister in effect told the RSS to shape up or ship out, Advani went on bended knees to appease the Hindutva lobby. Each in his own way saved the government. Each also showed the ideologues that there are different ways in which contradictions can be handled.

The Advani way is bound to appeal to the ideologues; the Vajpayee way to raise their hackles further. Both the amplitude and frequency of differences will be sharper the longer the government lasts. More disturbingly, the more actively the Hindutva agenda is pursued in the streets, the sharper can the differences be etched. The ideologues, therefore, have every incentive to get on with their mayhem whatever the government thinks or does notthink. Thus, the kind of docile acquiescence displayed at Bangalore could well give way, within the Sangh Parivar, to a night of the long knives. That, on present reckoning, seems a more likely denouement than defection or opposition bringing down the government. It is, therefore, an apposite moment to remind everyone that Hinduism is not Hindutva.

Aiyar is a Congress party official, but these views are his own