The writer is former editor of Businessworld.

The disappearance of inflammatory communal slogans from political speeches suggests development is the agenda for 2014. But beneath this whitewashing lies a darker reality – that BJP continues demonising minorities and Congress and regional parties continue playing caste and community cards. They are just doing it more surreptitiously.This insidious new brand of politics is known as ‘dog whistle communalism’ and is something voters should understand before they get manipulated by it. The term comes from dog whistles, which are silent to human ears but alluring to canines. Just so, dog whistle politics is the coding of communal messages such that they sound innocuous while stoking voters’ latent prejudices.“Think about a term like welfare queen,” says Ian Haney López , author of Dog Whistle Politics. “On one level, like a dog whistle, it’s silent about race. But on another, it has a shrill blast, like a dog whistle, that can be heard by certain folk. And what the blast is is a warning about race and a warning about threatening minorities.”Take Narendra Modi’s implication that Sonia Gandhi let the Italian marines go back home. It deftly rakes up Sonia's foreignness by suggesting she protects Italian Christians more than Indians. Just so, Modi branding Rahul a shehzada may look like an attempt to dismiss the young Gandhi as an inept princeling. But for that the Sanskritised Hindi words yuvraj or rajkumar would also suffice.Modi deliberately chooses the Urdu shehzada because he knows dabbing Rahul with an Islamic brush will make him that much more foreign, un-Hindu and despicable to those with inherent prejudices. Add to that Modi's standing from Varanasi, where one attains moksha or liberation, in this case from Congress rule, and his use of dog whistle politics to put himself in perfect political and communal opposition to the Gandhis is clear.Not that Congress is above dog whistle politics. Consider Rahul's declaration that “India has witnessed Samrat Ashok, Akbar and Aurangzeb. Ashok is famous for integrating people; Akbar too worked in this direction but Aurangzeb is known for other reasons. On the same lines, Congress is working toward national integration and inclusive growth for everyone."How clever to cast an Islamic shadow on Modi himself. What divine irony to allow the bigotry of India's most intolerant mogul to reflect on him. How chilling to suggest Modi is a religious despot who believes more in the divine right of kings than democracy.Of course, both Modi and Rahul could deny all this. “Plausible deniability"is the central hinge of dog whistle politics, López says.Overt communalism is increasingly unacceptable, especially to undecided voters interested in bread-and-butter issues. But even as the rational side of voters leads them to parties promising governance, subliminally they remain captive to myriad social assumptions and prejudices.Caste and religion have been the primary forces shaping society and determining which groups have received privileges denied to others. Naturally, this has led to entrenched views about which groups are patriotic, law-abiding and good and which are not. This is where crafty dog whistles come in. They don't expressly say anything prejudiced; they just invoke and build on the existing stereotypes.When more campaign speeches are examined in this light, they show how politicians manipulate the dichotomy between voters' rational concerns (which most parties feel ill-equipped to address) and their sub-conscious biases (that parties know are easily provoked).After caste rallies were banned in UP Mayawati nimbly asked why “communal rallies"by RSS and BJP were allowed, implying the decision was another example of the privileged using state machinery to discriminate against Dalits while protecting their own prejudices. BJP's claim that Nitish Kumar “is not prepared to act tough against militants"is really an assertion that he protects terrorists to appease Muslims.Congress's mocking of Modi as a tea vendor really becomes a Machiavellian manipulation of his low caste, which the PLU crowd suggests disqualifies him from ruling India. Claims the Aadhaar card is abused by illegal immigrants are really accusations that Nandan Nilekani is endangering India's security and demography by giving illegal Bangladeshi migrants voter cards. Likewise, labelling AAP as anarchist frightens voters away from a new party by suggesting it's extreme and comprised of riff-raff.Such sleight of hand is why López calls it a "dark magic". This is not to suggest Modi and Rahul are the Voldemorts of politics and that voters should seek out a Harry Potter who can end communalism with a spell.A great failing of India has been the attempt to sweep very real hostilities and distrust under the carpet with sermonising, censorship and denial. No matter how much people seek development, it will be a long time before politics is shorn of tribalism.Learning to recognise parties that claim to eschew identity politics but manipulate emotions with dog whistles is only a crucial step in that process. In the end, more than wizards with magic wands or politicians with platforms, what India needs are more people like Ashok Mochi and Qutubuddin Ansari . For it is only when we, the people, can sit down like the most infamous assailant and the most pitied victim of the 2002 Gujarat riots and engage in what Nelson Mandela called truth and reconciliation that the fires of history will begin to be doused.