The wisdom of the adage, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’, underlining the utility of nimble adaptability, is not limited to the ancient world. It has many takers in modern polities; the Kerala unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad must count itself among its adherents. Recently, the ABVP raised eyebrows when Nathuram Godse, one of Hindutva’s patron-saints, fell foul of its young guns. Slogans were raised against Godse and his portraits burnt during a protest by the ABVP after a professor of the National Institute of Technology in Kozhikode had praised the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. The ABVP’s outburst was unusual. This is because the cementing of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the corridors of power in the last decade has witnessed a simultaneous project of rehabilitating Godse despite the fact that he had the Mahatma’s blood on his hands. Thus, paeans are periodically sung by BJP leaders — Pragya Singh Thakur and Giriraj Singh being just two examples — eulogising Godse. There is in this a deeper motive. According legitimacy to Godse is instrumental to the sangh parivar’s broader mission of establishing a republic that goes against the grain of a pluralist, even constitutional, India.

This does not mean that the ABVP has gone rogue in Kerala, one of the states that has, so far, resisted the saffron charge unfolding in the rest of India. This is most likely to be part of a well-thought-out strategy of the sangh ecosystem to ingratiate itself with Kerala’s political axis and public sentiments: several student organisations have been vocal about the professor’s remark and the ABVP cannot afford to be seen to miss out. This ability to be flexible about ideological spots is peculiar to the sangh’s siblings. Their foot soldiers will demonise — and murder — those they accuse, rightly or wrongly, of consuming beef in northern or western India; but the BJP will not dare to raise the bogey in the Northeast or in Goa where the meat is integral to the people’s choice and cuisine. Similarly, the BJP's zeal of imposing Hindi is markedly tempered in states sensitive to their own, non-Hindi, linguistic heritage. Incidentally, Uttarakhand has brought about the uniform civil code but the BJP has been careful to keep the tribal community outside its reach. The compulsions of politics often lead to the BJP fine-tuning its ideology. This reaffirms the fact that even for orthodox political outfits, ideology is a malleable entity shaped by the winds of politics.