Pratap Chandra Sarangi was introduced to India as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician who leads an austere life in a mud house. We like such stories. We may aspire to huge houses and cars and foreign education for our children, but we admire those who sacrifice materialism for simplicity.

But who is Sarangi? For all that he lived in a mud hut, he is part of the large Hindu supremacist family of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). In his home state of Odisha, he furthered India’s sectarian divide, pushed the idea of Hindu supremacy and with that, violence against Muslims, Christians and other minorities.

In 1999, when Sarangi was head of the Bajrang Dal, a militant wing of the RSS, Graham Staines, an Australian missionary, and his two sons were burnt alive in Odisha, allegedly by the Bajrang Dal, although an inquiry found no evidence of no evidence of one group’s responsibility for the attack, and instead individuals thought to be “active sympathisers” of the Bajrang Dal and the BJP were charged. Is it mud houses that make you win elections and get ministerial posts? Or is it a murky past?

Indian General Election 2019 Show all 10 1 /10 Indian General Election 2019 Indian General Election 2019 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah (R) welcomes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) at BJP headquarters prior to a ceremony to thank the Union council of Ministers for their contribution in India's general election, in New Delhi on May 21, 2019 AFP/Getty Indian General Election 2019 An Indian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporter shouts slogans and holds the party flag as he celebrates on the vote results day for India's general election in New Delhi on May 23, 2019. - Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked on course on May 23 for a major victory in India's election, with early trends from the election commission showing a clear lead for his party. AFP/Getty Images Indian General Election 2019 Indian election officials count votes using electronic voting machines at a counting center for the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) election, in Jammu, the winter capital of Kashmir, India, 23 May 2019. The parliamentary elections, which began on 11 April 2019, were held in seven phases throughout India and are currently being tabulated. The Lok Sabha elections were held for 542 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, and a party or alliance needs 272 seats to form a government. EPA Indian General Election 2019 Indian supporters of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dance as they celebrate on the vote results day for India's general election in Siliguri on May 23, 2019. - Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked on course on May 23 for a major victory in India's election, with early trends from the election commission showing a clear lead for his party. AFP/Getty Images Indian General Election 2019 Indian supporters and party workers of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dance as they celebrate on the vote results day for India's general election in Bangalore on May 23, 2019. - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked on course on May 23 for a major victory in the world's biggest election, with early trends suggesting his Hindu nationalist party will win a bigger majority even than 2014. AFP/Getty Images Indian General Election 2019 Indian supporters and party workers of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dance and hold flags as they celebrate on the vote results day for India's general election in Bangalore on May 23, 2019. - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked on course on May 23 for a major victory in the world's biggest election, with early trends suggesting his Hindu nationalist party will win a bigger majority even than 2014. AFP/Getty Images Indian General Election 2019 An Indian member of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) shouts slogans and shows portraits of party president M.K. Stalin as she celebrates on the vote results day for India's general election in Chennai on May 23, 2019. - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked on course on May 23 for a major victory in the world's biggest election, with early trends suggesting his Hindu nationalist party will win a bigger majority even than 2014. AFP/Getty Images Indian General Election 2019 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters, wearing masks dipicting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, celebrate BJP's potential win in the the Lok Sabha election the Lok Sabha elections, in Amritsar, India, 23 May 2019. The Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, elections, which began on 11 April 2019, is having the results tallied today. The Lok Sabha elections were held for 542 of the 543 lower house seats, and a party or alliance needs 272 seats to form a government. According to initial polling Narendra Modi could retain the position of Prime Minister along with the Bhartya Janta Party. EPA Indian General Election 2019 A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporter wears a mask dipicting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he celebrates BJP's potential win in the the Lok Sabha election the Lok Sabha elections, in Amritsar, India, 23 May 2019. The Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, elections, which began on 11 April 2019, is having the results tallied today. The Lok Sabha elections were held for 542 of the 543 lower house seats, and a party or alliance needs 272 seats to form a government. According to initial polling Narendra Modi could retain the position of Prime Minister along with the Bhartya Janta Party EPA Indian General Election 2019 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters celebrate in their party's Assam state office in Gauhati, India, Thursday, May 23, 2019. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party have a commanding lead in early vote counting from the country's six-week general election. AP

In today’s India, after the return to power of Narendra Modi and his BJP with their huge mandate, violence has been let loose, with “Jai Shri Ram” – a slogan that roughly translates to “Hail Lord Ram”, a Hindu god – being used as a death threat instead of a salutation. In the last five years of Modi rule, we have had lynchings of Muslims and the lower castes across India by Hindu mobs, ostensibly for the “protection” of the holy cow. In his second term, we’ve shifted gears to forcing people, of whatever religion, to declare the glory of the god Rama and Hinduism. And when I say “force”, I mean kill.

Tabrez Ansari, 22, was caught by a crowd in the BJP-ruled state of Jharkhand on suspicion of stealing a motorcycle, on 18 June. He was tied to a tree and beaten within an inch of his life. And while he was being thrashed, the crowd established his religion – Muslim – and then began the demands for “Jai Shri Ram”. Ansari was then arrested, yes, arrested, and taken into judicial custody. On Saturday, June 23, he died in a local hospital after he complained that he felt unwell.

The BJP-ruled central government has been largely silent. Party functionaries who have spoken claimed that there was no connection with “Jai Shri Ram” and Tabrez’s death. And yet, there is video evidence, graphic and chilling, of a crowd filled with blood lust, violently beating Ansari and yes, of forcing him to say, “Jai Shri Ram” and “Jai Hanuman”.

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Since the BJP returned to power at the centre, Ansari’s plight, though the most brutal, became one of several stories. Here’s another: A Muslim teacher is attacked in a train in Kolkata, for being Muslim. He’s heckled to say, “Jai Shri Ram”, even if Ram is not really Bengal’s most popular deity from the enormous Hindu pantheon. He refuses, is beaten by the mob and forced to get off the train at the next station. And that’s not all. In the run-up to May’s general elections and after the results were declared, Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of Bengal, was constantly heckled by BJP mobs to shout, “Jai Shri Ram”.

Modi as prime minister had two options: to be the reformist PM he was sold as, or to take further the agenda of the party he belongs to, to make India a theocratic Hindu country. The last five years saw economic collapse and fraudulent claims. So now we are on to Plan B, or should that be Plan A, since the original plan of Hindu supremacists since the 1920s was that India should be a Hindu country? The constitution we adopted is of a secular India, but that is a total anathema to the RSS way of thought.

So, are we at the beginning of the end? Sarangi in his first speech in parliament asked why people who refused to chant Hindu slogans should be allowed to live in India.

As Ansari discovered with his life, these Hindu mobs who move around with apparent impunity, mean what they say. With an opposition in disarray since the election results, if civil society doesn’t wake up now, this will be the future.