Second, I believe your party members have not understood the impact of televised parliamentary proceedings. Endless disruption and shouting do not give the impression of sobriety and maturity that I am sure you would like to project. Your personal gravitas gets seriously eroded when your colleagues behave in a chaotic style. It would have been so much more sensible and also politically advantageous if your party members had demonstrated a measure of calm deliberation and allowed the Left and the Third Front elements in Parliament to behave in an anarchic manner which is their hallmark anyway.

As far as addressing the issue of future electability is concerned, it might be worth considering abandoning the expression “Hindutva” altogether. Your colleagues may argue endlessly that it represents nothing but cultural nationalism. The fact of the matter is that there are not many buyers for this line of thinking. Tony Blair was able to make his Labour party electable only after he explicitly and loudly abandoned phraseology which had a hoary 70-year usage in his party’s history. You can and should make an emphatic statement that you have given up Hindutva with all its connotations and are instead rooting for Bharat and all citizens of Bharat. In academic circles, the currently fashionable word to describe our civilisation is “Indic”. I would commend this word to you. In the ’50s, the Jan Sangh talked about Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan. If you had not quietly given up linguistic fanaticism for Hindi, your party would not have had the breakthrough it has had in Karnataka. In a similar manner, walking away from Hindutva can help expand your base.

... contd.