Why did the project of creating Narendra Modi take nearly a century to fructify? Why not earlier? And he also opportunistically uses Islamic metaphors of a caliphate when pushing for Pakistan. By the time Jinnah joins the Muslim League, he is firmly anti-democratic, in the sense he is anti one-person-one-vote. So, their entire politics was against one-person-one-vote. They realised that elections would doom them to a perpetual ‘minority’. On the other hand, the Muslim leadership, represented then by the landlords in the United Province, were sensing a loss of power and privilege. Equal voting suited them because they were a majority. As the British rule in India was making way for elections in the early 20th century, Savarkar and other Hindu nationalists welcomed elections, because their Hindu community was a social majority in India. The Hindu nationalist project of Savarkar, which is now a century old, is at its heart democratic in the sense of being founded on the acceptance of universal adult franchise and ‘one person, one vote’. I must strongly push back on this suggestion there was no jugalbandi between them.
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