BJP’s hypocrisy exposed: a party that betrays both culture and justice

 The Bharatiya Janata Party thrives not on constructive politics but on finding or manufacturing divisions that keep its communal engine running. Its latest outrage is directed at the Karnataka government’s decision to invite internationally acclaimed Kannada writer and Booker Award winner Bhanu Mustaq to inaugurate the Mysuru Dasara festivities. The BJP’s sole objection is that she is a Muslim. For a party with aspirations of leading the nation, such a stand is not just petty but deeply shameful.

Bhanu Mustaq is no stranger to speaking uncomfortable truths. She has enriched Kannada literature with a body of work that has won global recognition. She has consistently critiqued religious bigotry, including within her own community, and has lived a life steeped in the values of secularism. Far from being a token choice, she represents the finest spirit of Karnataka’s cultural and intellectual traditions. That the BJP chooses to reduce her to her religious identity shows its inability to look beyond the narrow lens of Hindutva.

What makes the BJP’s communal rantings even more hollow is its record when Hindus themselves were the victims of unspeakable crimes. In Dharmasthala, where hundreds of Hindu women and girls suffered rape and murder, the BJP not only failed to stand with the victims and their families but openly aligned itself with the very forces accused of shielding the perpetrators. Its leaders went on yatras to Dharmasthala not in solidarity with the oppressed but in shameless support of the oppressors. This is not the conduct of a party that can claim to represent Hindu pride. It is the behavior of a political machine willing to betray its own people for expediency.

By such conduct, the BJP has forfeited any legitimate right to project itself as the guardian of Hindu interests. Its Hindutva is not about protecting Hindus or upholding justice. It is only a convenient tool, wielded when it serves the party’s hunger for power, and discarded when it threatens to expose its links to entrenched interests. The hypocrisy is glaring: the same party that ignores Hindu victims of mass crimes suddenly discovers its “Hindu” conscience when a Muslim writer is chosen to inaugurate a state festival.

The people of Karnataka are not blind to this duplicity. The complete rout of the BJP in the Kadaba taluk panchayat elections is a telling sign of how voters perceive the party’s pro-criminal nexus. Far from commanding respect, the BJP’s behavior invites disgust. It pleases neither the people nor, as many would say, even the gods whom it claims to invoke at every step.

In the end, the contrast is stark. On one side stands Bhanu Mustaq, a writer who has brought honor to Karnataka with her words and her courage. On the other side stands a political party that reduces culture to communal arithmetic and justice to bargaining chips. By raising an anti-Muslim bogey over Bhanu Mustaq while shielding villains in Dharmasthala, the BJP has revealed its changing colors. They are not the colors of Hindu pride, justice, or culture. They are the colors of deceit and opportunism.