By Rahul Devulapalli
Around two decades back, much before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power at the centre, a young Raja Singh was busy pursuing a two-pronged agenda which in later years became central to the mainstream Hindutva playbook.
Singh, whose recent resignation from the BJP raised several eyebrows, was among the first in Telangana to campaign on “love-jihad”. The term lacks any legal basis but is still used to allege that Muslim men lure Hindu women into romantic relationships to convert them to Islam.
As a member of Hindu Vahini, a right-wing group (not to be confused with Hindu Yuva Vahini founded by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath), Singh and his close followers in the older parts of Hyderabad in Telangana (then a part of undivided Andhra Pradesh) carried out awareness campaigns to dissuade inter-faith relationships painting young Muslim youths as predators with ulterior motives.
Devoid of any political affiliation, it was also the time when he was facing the full wrath of police crackdown (the state was ruled by the Congress). He also donned the role of a ‘Gaurakshak’ and as a cow vigilante, stopped vehicles with impunity in Hyderabad and its outskirts and seized cattle, mostly from Muslim traders alleging that they were being ferried to slaughterhouses. Between 2003 and 2009, despite repeated arrests and cases, these twin campaigns propelled Singh to a right-wing poster boy.
They were accompanied by fiery and inflammatory speeches, especially directed at certain sections of minorities and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). It won him a loyal base of supporters and eventually election victories, first as a corporator and then as a BJP legislator.
Today, Singh’s notoriety and popularity make him the most recognisable face of the BJP from the south of the Vindhyas. For observers, his radical style and focus areas tick all the boxes of a hardcore BJP follower, but for the party, its limits have been tested. The BJP has answered the question, ‘how extreme is too extreme’.
Singh too feels let down and believes he ought to be given his due. The party, which had suspended the leader once, has now unhesitatingly accepted his resignation after the three-time MLA resigned criticising the BJP’s new state leadership. “BJP doesn’t need a writer, it needs a fighter,” he told the media pitching his candidature against the new state president, Ramchander Rao, a soft-spoken lawyer. Despite the visible friction, the fact remains that a long umbilical cord exists between both the parties – Singh and the BJP.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
