Hindutva’s main challenger was federal state identity. Has the fall of TMC and DMK ended that?

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Till the 1980s, it was difficult to imagine a Hindutva party in power, given the importance of secularism in Indian political life. But over the past four decades, the Bharatiya Janata Party has worked assiduously to wipe out this ideology.

Given the election results on Monday, something similar can now be seen to be happening with federalism.

In West Bengal, the BJP has, at the time of writing, taken a significant lead over the Trinamool Congress, a party that identifies with Bengali nationalism. And while the Hindutva party is not a major player in Tamil Nadu, it would be chuffed that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has seen crushing defeat. More than any other force, the DMK is the progenitor of federalism and state-based linguistic identity in India.

A new foe

After the demise of secularism in the 1990s and 2000s, federalism became the BJP’s main bugbear.

Part of the reason was electoral. For much of the Modi era, even as the BJP has been unchallenged at the Union...

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