Addressing the concluding session of the national executive meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Hyderabad, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, urged the rank and file to reach out to deprived segments among other — ‘non-Hindu’ — communities. This comment assumes importance when taken together with the remark by the Union home minister, Amit Shah, at the same event, predicting an uninterrupted reign of political dominance for the BJP. That is because the two messages converge. The political — electoral — dominance that Mr Shah referred to is unlikely to come to fruition without the BJP’s ability to widen its net, as it were. The urgency to be representative may not be real in a moral sense: the BJP’s commitment to the equality, welfare and uplift of minorities such as Muslims and Dalits has had to be taken with a generous pinch of salt over the decades. Mr Modi’s reign has witnessed perhaps the most egregious assaults on the lives and rights of minorities. However, it must be admitted that the BJP has made remarkable electoral inroads into such other constituencies as the other backward classes and the tribal people. This is evident from its resounding performances at the hustings. So what Mr Modi was espousing was the need to maintain the momentum and broaden the BJP’s acceptance among groups that are not associated with the party in the traditional sense.

The deepening of its imprint among new social groups is undoubtedly connected to the BJP’s desire for political hegemony. But this political goal can have interesting consequences for the party’s ideological fount. Would expansionism result in a tempering of its divisive vision that threatens the republic’s pluralist body politic? Would Muslims be accommodated in this template of welfareism? What kind of ideological perestroika would the BJP need to harmonise its political imperatives with its dogmatic philosophy? How would the BJP’s core — a reactionary ecosystem — react to attempted moderation? The results of perestroika may not always be pleasant for totalitarian regimes. The Opposition would also do well to take note of Mr Modi’s assertion. After all, the BJP’s opponents — the Congress being an example — have yielded ground on account of their failure to read the churn on the ground.