Fighting with what one has.

Byline: Jawed Naqvi

INDIA'S right-wing rulers are riding the proverbial tiger, and they know it in their bones. Losing control of the reins would unleash dreadful prospects for them, potentially harsher than the commission of inquiry that Indira Gandhi faced for her emergency excesses followed by a day in jail and eviction from parliament.

Amartya Sen says the current rulers' singular achievement in the five years and seven months of socially divisive and economically disastrous rule has been to thwart all cases against them and securing the so-called clean chit from different levels of the judiciary. They have procured bail for their storm troopers too, facing trial or convicted of heinous crimes, while getting at least one of them elected to parliament.

As for their ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its leaders clearly see in the current regime a godsend to fulfil their carefully nurtured resolve, which they can't afford to lose sight of. The group sees the Modi-Shah rule as a window they prised open to shred and chuck out India's enviable constitution and replace it with mass ignorance and lumpen street power. While its industrial powerhouse drove Hitler's Germany, the Indian wannabe clone, however, seems predicated on mercantile capitalist clique of the most crony kind. The government appears to have exhausted its quota of tricks to keep people distracted, and now they have taken to the streets.

The RSS is not only severely allergic to Indian democracy, but represents an entrenched war of attrition against enlightened and syncretic Hinduism of Indian reformers since Ram Mohan Roy, Tagore, Gokhale and Ranade, of Periyar and Tukaram, of Gauri Lankesh and Kalburgi. Its members rejoiced in the murder of Gandhi and Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, and it encourages scurrilous propaganda against India's Nehruvian heritage of liberal ideals. Sikhs, Muslims, Dalit Buddhists and Christians have been in its cross hairs, an article of faith in a nefariously upper-caste worldview.

Opponents of the Modi regime happen to be politically varied. But they are handicapped also by a legacy of mutual suspicion.

Facing the formidable combination of state and street power is an even more powerful array of forces though they seem not to be aware of their prowess. Opponents of the Modi regime happen to be politically varied - as varied as India is. But they are handicapped also by a legacy of mutual suspicion.

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