The turmoil continues in India over police violence, over the attempts by the Centre to destroy Jawaharlal Nehru University, over the imposition of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) on an angry population, over the imminent invasion of the National Register of Indian Citizens(NRIC) and the National Population Register(NPR). There are protests across the country, regardless of brutal retaliation by various police forces and the hardened stance of the Government of India.

All this is part of the RSS dream to create a majoritarian Hindu state where every Indian who is not a card-carrying member of the Sangh Parivar will become a second-class citizen in their own land. In the face of enormous public anger, some governments try and reason, back down, wait. That is democracy. But the BJP and its owners do not want democracy. They want autocracy, or perhaps even their version of a fascist theocracy.

The tragedy for India is that none of this is new or unknown. It’s just that the gradual normalisation of the RSS and its bigotry has become institutionalised. At the same time, its biggest ideological opponent, the Left, has delegitimised itself. Barring Kerala, it has lost electoral strength and the mirror it held up to prejudiced India is now too ineffective. As the right-wing drumming has grown louder, other voices have got softer.