If identity politics can strengthen and deepen democracy by giving voice to the unheard, it may also weaken the federal fabric when it assumes a majoritarian approach, or focuses less on community welfare and more on a perceived or imagined wound. When UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath confidently terms the forthcoming assembly polls to be a contest between “80 versus 20”, or when his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya claims that their government has got rid of “ lungi-chhap gundey, jaalidar topiwaley gundey (goons who wear lungis and skull caps)”, their intent and message is clear. Such politics may argue about reclaiming the lost dignity, but it actually rests on constructing a set of inevitable others to define one’s identity. If one face of identity politics appears on the streets, perhaps the more defining one is hatched and executed offstage. But note that a mighty government being run by RSS pracharaks was at the Centre, and yet the most powerful men of the country, whose primary allegiance is to their saffron flag, couldn’t openly hold their shakha at Gandhi Ashram. For an organisation that continues to face questions over Gandhi’s assassination, it perhaps marked their greatest psychological triumph over the Mahatma. “The significance of this meeting is that the RSS flag was unfurled and (Sangh) prayers offered at the place built after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi,” an RSS pracharak who attended the meet told this reporter days after the event. It was held at a public place in the national capital, but few got any wind of it. It was attended by some 100 senior leaders including sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, the then sahsarkaryavah (now sarkaryavah) Dattatreya Hosabale, former Union minister Murli Manohar Joshi and the then BJP general secretary Ram Madhav. In August 2017, months after a priest was made the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, top leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh held a shakha and unfurled its saffron flag at Gandhi Darshan, adjoining Mahatma Gandhi’s samadhi at Raj Ghat.
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