The Muslims, he says, slaughter cows. “Now, they can eat dogs, cats, horses, camels, elephants, snakes, or any living thing God and nature may have created,” he says with an air of superior disdain and disapproval. “But they should refrain from eating beef. Because the cow is our mother, and if somebody slaughters a cow, we will slaughter that b.....d.” Not only is this a bit much for the Limousine Liberals who are now campaign-hardened veterans of 11 elections, you also see some disapproving, embarrassed shakes of the head on the dais. But Rajnath Singh arrives soon enough to restore some degree of sanity.

HIS message is by no means a reflection of his party’s Nehruvian — ok, not even Gandhian — commitment. But you can see the desperation to move to the centre. Most of the abuse is reserved for Mulayam’s misrule, minorities are promised safe conduct even though there is no effort to seek their votes, and then some of his own party’s more divisive, emotional demands are painted in conciliatory colours. The issue of singing Vande Mataram, for example. Why communalise an issue on which Hindus and Muslims were united during the freedom movement, he asks, repeatedly invoking the name of martyr Ashfaqullah Khan, who “told his mother he would prefer to embrace the noose — of course while singing Vande Mataram — rather than submit to her entreaties to bring her the bahu she wanted so desperately.” Of course, the only other freedom fighter he talked about was Chandra Shekhar Azad and no prizes for guessing why. He is a Thakur, so is his candidate at Dhampur, and so was Azad. Trust the politics of Uttar Pradesh now to even divide the mostly leftist revolutionary streak of our movement also along communal and caste lines. But overall, Singh is searching for a justification for the BJP’s Hindu nationalism in the non-Congress part of the freedom movement and thereby a new definition of secularism. All this without once mentioning Savarkar.

... contd.