It’s the festive season, to be followed by the local elections. With it, Hindutva has become a hot property, being marketed in a style that may put the IIM-trained geniuses to shame. Hours after the BJP’s parent organisation, the RSS, underlined its Hindutva through the chief, Mohan Bhagwat, at the annual Dussehra rally in Nagpur, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray said that his party’s was the real Hindutva, which has been threatened by the neo-Hindus (in the BJP). Thackeray regretted that he may sound like an RSS critic and urged Bhagwat to admonish the ‘fanatics’ for disregarding the teaching of the chief of the parent organisation that was also responsible for bringing the Sena and the BJP together, before they parted ways.

Why does the chief minister of a secular Maha Vikas Aghadi government stick firmly to the right-wing ideology, and also differentiate between his party’s and BJP’s Hindutva? Is he doing so at the cost of upsetting the ruling partners, especially the Congress, and safeguarding the Sena against the BJP’s criticism of abandoning Hindutva?