Badri Raina 
A police order in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar requires food shops and vendors to display the names of their owners and workers.
During the days of the German Third Reich, Jewish houses and establishments were likewise marked, with the star of David. Thus Herr Himmler has come visiting the Gangetic plains where Lord Ram hath his forlorn abode.
The authorities say this is being done to save embarrassment to Kanwariya pilgrims out on their annual yatra, and, believe it or not, to ensure “equal rights” for Hindus. Do work that out as best you can.
Happily, not just the political opposition but the ever-faithful Shia-Muslim leader of the BJP, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, have expressed objection to such sectarian profiling as being inimical to constitutional and democratic principles of the republic.
This may be the first time that Naqvi has ever raised a voice against any of his party’s sectarian doings. Never too late.
It remains to be seen how the two major components of the NDA government, the Janata Dal (United) and Telugu Desam Party react to this most obnoxious requirement, given their secular orientation; should they not dissuade the BJP from taking this course?
The Indian National Congress has dubbed this move as being aimed at an economic boycott of Muslims. They could have said more.
Also read: Holy Water, Unholy Segregation: Uttar Pradesh’s Kanwar Yatra Controversy
Here is the larger and more sinister point:
Just the other day, the ruling BJP’s leader in West Bengal, Suvendu Adhikari, miffed at the losses suffered in the recent parliamentary elections, thundered at a public meeting to say “sab ka saath bandh karo; jo hamae saath, hum uske saath| (stop saying we are for the upliftment of all communities; let us be only for those who are for us — meaning, of course, those who vote for the BJP.
The enormity of this lies in the fact that this new unabashedly undemocratic and unconstitutional slogan flies in the face of the much-touted brand-promise of Prime Minister Modi, who has sought to draw great capital from the slogan ‘Sab ka saath, sab ka vikaas’, meaning he governs for all without discrimination.
That said, it is also the fact that to this day the country’s chief executive has never once lauded any non-BJP ruled state government for anything they have done, only lambasted most, or at heart forgiven those Indians who choose not to vote for the BJP. Indeed, under his watch, unconstitutionally, it has been widely propagated that only such states as elect the BJP can expect the bonanza that issues from a “double engine sarkar”
It is a sign of how the character of the state has come to be transformed that this gross abuse of the federal principle and rubbishing of the electorate that remains defiant against the ruling BJP has never come to be castigated as an unacceptable violation of the constitution.
Also read: Suvendu Adhikari Row Indicates ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’ is Just Another BJP’s ‘Jumla’
The sentiment behind both the “double engine ki sarkar” slogan and what Suvendu Adhikari has said is plainly subversive of the constitutional order, to wit, that the 60 or so percent of citizens who regularly do not vote for the BJP remain illicit and unworthy of even-handed governance.
An issue that should have been the worrying subject of many seminars, policy platforms, media debates and journalistic push-back has remained a silently accepted tenet of state policy.
This is important to emphasise because the bogey that Muslims alone do not vote for the BJP requires to be exposed if republican verities and rule of law are to be kept in place.
The current unraveling of the Sangh, in state after state, is in the meanwhile another historical proof of how totalitarian regimes and political formations come apart as they lose state power.
Touted claims of discipline come to be seen merely as owing to the glue that such power affords. Once that goes, the knives are out
Meanwhile, another canny reminder of what happens when man wants to be superman etc. has come from the chieftain of the RSS. We mere mortals have often enough rued the new cultism, but coming from Bhagwat now, perhaps heed will be paid.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.