End of the road for Hindutva?

Thanks to the emergence of the BSP factor - bijli, sadak and paani as one BJP functionary so memorably put it - in these elections, opinion-makers have rushed to bury the ghost of Hindutva .
Maybe, just maybe, we should remember what they said after Narendra Modi’s phenomenal victory around the same time last year. Indeed, the chorus in the media only a year ago was that the country had irrevocably gone saffron.The haunting imagery was of a besieged India swamped by trishul-brandishing Bajrang Dalis. And of its citizenry inevitably acquiescing in this frightening transformation.
For the pundits, it is always one thing or another. One moment, the BJP is wholly, unalterably Hindutva. The very next, it is the epitome of progress and development. Like all political parties, the BJP has one principal aim: To capture office and by whichever means. To assign to the BJP a change of heart with respect to Hindutva is to willfully overlook both the party’s complex past and its political character, the latter shaped largely by its association with the RSS.
Remember, the BJP needs the RSS cadre to fight elections. The party’s second rung of leaders, for all their energy and intelligence, are mostly men and women without ground support.
Whenever and wherever BJP bosses detect a groundswell of opinion for Hindutva (or its variants), there they will use it. They will also use it when Hindutva becomes the only means available to convert defeat into victory. Gujarat is an obvious example of this. Narendra Modi had just about scraped through his own by-election, when Godhra and its horrific aftermath elevated him to icon status. But elsewhere too this has been the case.
Having lost to the opposition by one vote in the Lok Sabha, the NDA government was on a shaky wicket in February 1999. Kargil changed that and how. Though Kargil was not Bajrang Dal-brand Hindutva, it was nonetheless a proud manifestation of Hindu nationalism, which the BJP used to the hilt.
True, governance, and not Hindutva, was the issue in these elections. But that could well be because there was no public sentiment in favour of Hindutva. In Madhya Pradesh, Uma Bharati tried to whip up emotions around the Bhojshala but to little effect. In Rajasthan, Togadia’s trishul-distribution drive brought no dividends. Development, on the other hand, was a major issue, especially in MP. It would have been foolish of the BJP not to use that to advantage.