We must turn to neuroscience to examine the Bharatiya Janata Party's boast that more and more Indians are making a rational choice in favour of Hindutva over competing ideologies. The truth, in fact, is to the contrary: The BJP projects itself as the sole saviour of Hindus, then scares them into suspending their rationality before every election, and hopes they will herd around it for protection. This strategy of the BJP is stark in its campaign for the Delhi Assembly elections.

Psychologists and neuroscientists, seeking to comprehend why fear is a powerful tool for mobilisation, say humans make decisions by using two parts of their brains, one of which works fast and the other slow. The faster part, as Sara Gorman and Jack M Gorman, wrote in Psychology Today magazine, is located "in the primitive parts of the brain like the limbic cortex" and is highly susceptible to emotions like fear, anger, sadness and happiness. The slower part, based in the prefrontal cortex, uses reason to make rational decisions.