Narendra Modi has replaced LK Advani as the mascot of the Hindutva communal brigade, said CPIM) General Secretary Prakash Karat.
Pointing out that the BJP’s step to field its PM candidate from Varanasi was laden with an ominous political message, Karat said the BJP and RSS are signalling that aggressive Hindutva will underpin the election campaign.
Karat, whose party released booklets on Gujarat’s development model, corruption and inequalities, said the BJP’s reasoning that putting up Modi in Varanasi will benefit the party in the Lok Sabha elections in eastern Uttar Pradesh and the adjoining areas in Bihar is only a smokescreen.
“Modi is the new mascot of the Hindutva communal brigade, just as LK Advani was more than two decades ago,” Karat said in an article, adding that there was an effort by the ‘corporate media’ to project Modi as the inheritor and legatee of Varanasi’s syncretic culture.
“What is being overlooked or being deliberately swept off the picture, is the history of communalism and the brazen efforts to instigate violence and communal polarisation in Uttar Pradesh in which Varanasi was a main target,” the senior CPI(M) leader added.