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After the capture of West Bengal, The Hindutva Brigade has successfully completed its  eastern expedition. On the very eve of the electoral victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it resorted to vandalism and violence against its political opponent Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Muslims. It also began renaming places named after patriotic Muslims with names of secular icons like Subhas Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagore.

Even the swearing in ceremony of the new BJP government was planned for May 9, the birth day of Tagore. His iconic poem, ‘Where the head is held high’ was given a communal colour by depicting that Hindus can hold their head high now. All this is a part of the BJP’s politico-cultural project to capture the Bengali society and its icons to its side. 

BJP’s victory is only the beginning

For the BJP and the Sangh parivar, this electoral victory is not the end but a new beginning since its agenda is not only the realisation of  Hindu Rashtra but also Hindutva Brahminical Social Order. Since it is a civilisational and historic project, the Sangh would embark on rewriting history and reconstruct historical personalities to suit their agenda. 

In this project, Aryan colonialism is depicted as indigenous and as a great epoch in Indian history while the rest is treated as colonialism, especially the medieval Mughal rule. In the history of Indian independence, all those who were opposed to the Congress, like B.R. Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh, or against Nehru post-independence, like Lal Bahadur Shastri or Ram Manohar Lohia, are rechristened as having sympathy for the RSS and BJP or its predecessor, the Jan Sangh. 

In fact, except Sardar Patel, neither Subash Bose nor Ambedkar had any sympathies towards the Sangh’s politics or ideology. While Ambedkar had warned a Hindu Rashtra is antithetical to democracy and a great menace, Netaji had actively persuaded the Congress to sever all links with the Hindu Maha Sabha and denounced the Hindutva project as a colonial conspiracy. 

Nevertheless, the Modi government has been trying to saffronise Netaji in its pursuit to breach West Bengal. 

For example, the BJP government began commemorating January 23, the birth day of Subhas Chandra Bose, as Parakram Diwas (“Day of Valor”) two years ago.

While parakram conventionally denotes courage or heroism, within the ideological framework of the Sangh parivar, the term has also acquired connotations of aggression toward vulnerable communities. In contrast, Bose was a leader who mobilised the oppressed and marginalized people against the powerful British empire and engaged in anti-colonial struggle at great personal risk.

Fake narratives will be peddled as history

Thus, the Hindutva organisations are attempting  to portray themselves as inheritors of Bose’s political legacy despite their historical distance from the anti-colonial movement. For example, during the Second World War, while Bose sought to organise military resistance against British rule through the Indian National Army (INA), Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Hindu nationalist groups encouraged Hindu participation in the British........

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