Five-time lok Sabha Member of Parliament from Uttara Kannada in Karnataka, Ananth Kumar Hegde, a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and one-time Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activist, is often euphemistically called a "firebrand leader". Most of us knew very little of him and now he has become an expert at spewing Hindutva vitriol on and off. His newest disgusting comment is that "secularists" are like "people without parentage" who don't know their "bloodline". Hegde has unabashedly declared that the ruling regime - the Bharatiya Janata Party - intends to "change the Constitution", dubbing it as "Ambedkar smriti", in order to deal with the word "secular" from the Preamble. Remember, a number of times, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had urged the lawmakers to align the Constitution with "Indian value system" and to "fully integrate Kashmir with India"IJ
A cannier version of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Hegde is the face of the educated Hindutva bigotry that's currently holding the reins of the country and is fusing dogmatic majoritarianism with surgical strikes on the very law of the land. Is the fringe in the BJP becoming the mainstreamIJ We are afraid this cult could soon become the culture of the BJP. Not for this was Prime Minister Narendra Modi given the reins of the nation.