A rightward turn in discourse (and policy) is not surprising, had that turn been largely limited to the economic sphere. That shift could be explained by the assumption that the mandate of 2014, was, amongst other things, a corrective to the welfarist impulses of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). (That the economic behaviour of both parties when in government defies neat characterisation of Leftist Congress and Neoliberal Bharatiya Janata Party is best debated elsewhere). But what remains entirely unexplained - or at least not analysed enough - are the grounds for a concurrent spike in Hindu grievance.
Characteristically, the kind of heightened majoritarian anger we have been witnessing since May 2014 requires a propulsive moment of what the Right defines as secular double standards. For instance, the Congress government's capitulation to Muslim orthodoxy in the Shah Bano case was widely cited as amongst the key triggers for the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. A decade later, the perceived demonising of Narendra Modi in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots by a secular cabal made of journalists, NGOs and the like became yet another powerful node of right-wing anger. In both cases, the secular "crime" provided sufficient grist to Hindutvawaadis to dramatically, and successfully, shift the national conversation and indeed political dynamics towards the right.
The UPA was not short of foibles around which public anger could be mobilised: corruption, a general sense of drift, a weakened executive held captive to dynastic whims. But these are non-sectarian failings. Where during UPA I and II were examples of outrageous minority pandering, the mega-secular hypocrisies that would explain the intensity of the prevailing sense of Hindu anger?
To put it bluntly: there weren't. Which is perhaps why the current nodes of Hindu grievance are cleverly framed in more diffuse terms, leaping from one communal red herring to the next: this minute love jihad, that minute ghar wapsi, then on to cow protection. Even more than in the past, it has an air of forced agency, of retrofitting reasons to legitimise - and keep alive - an inchoate sense of a majority being wronged.
Some would argue that the reasons for the rise in the communal hum are not that inchoate; it is simply coterminous with the advent of Mr Modi, specifically the more divisive aspects of his legacy. The counter-argument, that he is chastened, has always been disingenuous, an assumption based more on the drop in number of communal no-balls bowled from his formidable armoury, rather than an active conveying to his support base that he finds it distasteful to be associated with an earlier, more divisive persona.
Standard-bearers of contentious legacies seeking reinvention may on occasion have to spell things out.
I recall the experience of L K Advani, who I trailed on the Maharashtra leg of his Bharat Uday Yatra in 2004, as he traversed the country in a bus emblazoned with inclusive symbols - for instance, the image of the freedom fighter Ashfaqullah Khan. The knots of party workers at roadside stops would inevitably greet him with Ayodhya-era chants like "Hinduon ki vaani, Advani" (Advani, the voice of Hindus). On each occasion, he would chide them: You must say Desh ki vaani (voice of the nation).
Mr Modi, as we know, has so far chosen what is described as a strategic silence, at least on such matters. What exactly the strategic gains are, when news reports of his party colleagues reviving the promise of a Ram temple at Ayodhya by the year-end shares the same page as tax breaks for Start-Up India, is anyone's guess.
The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7