Conflicting Narratives on the Right

Yet, my political intuition also tells me that the BJP/RSS junta is never going to win enough votes, seats and media influence to (a) first preserve these anti-speech and other such illiberal laws and then (b) somehow apply them more “consistently” or “fairly”. Therefore, even from a non-principled but more “realistic” point of view, the only way to stop such offenses against the “Hindu community” is to create deterrence. That is, if you want a community to discourage those members amongst them who offend other communities, then those communities need to know that the state will not be able to selectively “protect” them from offensive speech committed by those in other communities either.

On major issues like Article 370 and Universal Civil Code, liberal nationalists and the Internet Hindu crowd are on the same page. The Ram Mandir issue has almost been resolved by the courts. There may be some difference on relatively minor issues like cow protection, forcing people to sing Vande Mataram etc – but by and large there are no major problems. The Hindu right does not care about gay rights (or lack of them), abortion is not a major issue here, the feminism/sexual revolutions in India are proceeding in India in a mature and low-key manner, the Pakistan issue is not half as important for our globalizing and growing economy as it may have been a decade ago. Honestly, where are the substantive differences?