The Supreme Court refused to revise this judgement in 2016 too in reply to a petition filed by Teesta Setalvad.

Now coming to Raja’s first assumption that Hindutva is forging a monolithic Hindu identity is very far from reality. On analysis, one would see that Hindutva espouses the commonality which exists among all Hindus with enormous respect for their diversity. In fact, it goes beyond Hindus and finds the commonality among the adherents of other faiths in India too. Thus, it is not a narrow and myopic vision as Raja believes and wants others to follow suit.

Rather, it’s a vision which espouses the common strand running through the entire Indian society across faiths and communities. Hindutva understands that the diversities which the left keeps harping upon are nothing but the different manifestations of the same spirit in different contexts. It’s the string which holds the flowers of the garland together, the foundation upon which the people exhibit their enormous vivacity and diversity. Thus, it can rightfully be called as the Soul of Hinduism.

In his second assumption, Raja has blamed Hindutva for trying to subsume other faiths. This is a rhetorical statement at best when analysed factually. He alleges that Hindutva has led to attacks on minorities, tribals and dalits. However, he shies away from giving any statistics to support this allegation.

On the contrary, despite so many provocations in the name of caste and faith, the regime of the so-called Hindutva government has hardly seen any major communal clashes across the country. A comparison with the previous regimes under the self-proclaimed “seculars” on this matter will throw up many contrary results which Raja would detest. Not even going far back into history, if one looks back at the Congress-led UPA regime, two major communal riots happened under its watch. The Muzaffarnagar riots in UP and the Kokrajhar riots in Assam.

That several riots on smaller scales occurred in UP and other states only supplements this fact. The violence against dalits was not even reported in most cases in West Bengal under the Left rule. This has been stated by none other than Kancha Ilaiah in an interview reported in The Hindu where he says: “The Left, which rules India’s consciousness, has not provided enough space for movements of equality in West Bengal. That is why dalit movements have failed to emerge there.

Communist ideology there has kept other ideologies under its hegemony. Upper caste intellectuals failed to give space for dalit intellectuals to thrive. Media and other social forums need to intervene and report on the dalit situation there.”

What else needs to be sighted to show that Raja’s assumption is nothing more than a figment of imagination?

What prompts him to make such an allegation? It appears that the communists are irked or rather afraid that their facade built around fake secularism and sanctimonious attitude towards caste issues is falling to pieces. That Hindutva espouses people of all faiths to come together and forge a common destiny is totally antagonistic to the communist idea of India. Dr S Radhakrishnan’s views on Hinduism make this amply clear to a reader.

Hinduism, according to him, is not a religion, but a commonwealth of religions. He says: