Amid the ‘rising intolerance’ brouhaha over the last couple of weeks, there was one telling comment from Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut that sums up exactly why Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot cure the mad cow disease afflicting his parivar. “It is indeed unfortunate for all of us that Modi, whom the world came to know because of Godhra, called both incidents [the Dadri lynching and the assault on Sudheendra Kulkarni] unfortunate,” Raut was quoted as saying.

Let’s face it: the reason Modi cannot rein in ‘the fringe’ is because he is the heartthrob of that fringe. And he cannot afford to lose the Hindu hriday samrat tag without being accused of hypocrisy by his most vocal fan base. In essence we have a prime minister who completely lacks the moral authority to stop this violent assault on India’s pluralistic soul, the Hindu Talibanistaion of India, complete with lynch mobs, thuggery and a hapless administration.

And the scariest part is that Raut is right. In the last few years, Modi may have found a more sophisticated, ‘development messiah’ voice helped by a formidable PR machinery, but to a lot of Hindu revisionists his real claim to fame remains his Muslim-baiting during and after the Gujarat riots of 2002. His incompetence to control the riots positioned him as the champion of the Hindutva cause, and became his stepping-stone to power in Delhi. For a while after the riots, Modi was shunned as the ‘fringe’, but he eventually leapfrogged ahead of ‘mainstream’ BJP leaders like Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Manohar Parrikar.

The Muslim-baiting of Sangeet Som or Sakshi Maharaj is inspired by Modi’s phenomenal success as a politician. In fact, even after becoming prime minister, Modi felicitated Muzaffarnagar riot-accused Som, while another accused, Sanjeev Baliyan, was awarded with a ministry. Modi owes his current designation in no small part to the likes of Som, Maharaj, Baliyan and Yogi Adityanath, whose rabble-rousing around the Muzaffarnagar riots polarised Uttar Pradesh votes and resulted in a landslide for the BJP.

So it is a little rich for some disillusioned Modi backers like columnist Tavleen Singh to say that they did not see this coming. A vote for Modi in 2014 was a vote for faster economic growth yes, but it was also a vote for sectarianism, a vote for Hindutva. Many of his supporters believed that Modi would concentrate on economic growth and keep a tight leash on the ‘fringe’. That was wishful thinking, and completely ignored the ground reality that this fringe is what really props up Modi.

His pro-market backers behaved as if these elements did not exist; they have also underestimated the disruptive potential of this group in dampening the investment climate in India. Most importantly, they completely ignored the dark side of Modi’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde persona.

The Bihar election results will now be crucial in how the dynamics between Jekyll and Hyde play out. On the positive side, a loss in Bihar for the BJP will now be blamed on the rising Hindutva menace, and will not be seen as referendum on Modi’s economic policies. This could actually be a boon for Modi: he could use the loss in Bihar to give an ultimatum to the Sangh parivar to rein in the rogues or risk further electoral defeats.

A BJP victory in Bihar in the present climate will only embolden the rogues.

This dynamic puts India’s economic progress in a bad loop. Normally, a BJP victory would have been good news for investors, as that would have signalled a positive mandate for Modi’s pro-market economic policies, and, crucially, would have strengthened the BJP in the Rajya Sabha, which would have enabled further economic reforms.

Now, even a BJP victory will come with the fear of the rogues. And a BJP defeat, after the rout in Delhi, would signal that the Modi story is on a steady and steep decline, as is the possibility of a BJP majority in the Rajya Sabha. That could well spook investors who had bet on him, which in turn would cripple the economy and further weaken Modi.

At the end of the day, Modi has only himself to blame for creating this vicious cycle for himself and the Indian economy. From felicitating the likes of Som and Baliyan, to his failure to unequivocally condemn the lunatics of his ideological brethren, Modi has failed as a leader. It would be a right shame for India, if the historic mandate of 2014 is lost to the leader’s cowardice over cows.

Sambuddha Mitra Mustafi is the editor of The Political Indiant; @some_buddha

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