Some Hindu saints moving to take a dip in the Ganga are allegedly beaten up by the Uttar Pradesh police, forcing their mentor, a Shankaracharya, to sit in protest. The administration’s response isn’t a humble apology but a humiliating query about the legitimacy of his stature as Shankaracharya.A young Manipuri girl who was gang-raped in May 2023 finally died earlier this month without getting justice.A Christian pastor was brutally assaulted in Odisha’s Dhenkanal; he was allegedly paraded with a garland of slippers, forced to eat cow dung and asked to chant Jai Shri Ram.A student who was found unconscious at a girls hostel in Patna, suspected victim of sexual assault, died a few days later.The Madhya Pradesh government is told off by the Supreme Court for not giving permission to prosecute a minister who defamed a Muslim army officer, Colonel Sofiya Qureshi.A Rajasthan BLO’s video goes viral on social media as he threatens to die by suicide, alleging abnormal pressure to delete the names of legitimate voters.A big water tank, constructed at a cost of Rs 21 crore, collapsed just before its inauguration in Surat in Gujarat.Bangladesh, a friend till the other day, refuses to play T20 World Cup matches in India.A grim scenario, when the nation prepares to celebrate its 77th Republic Day. What was Prime Minister Narendra Modi doing? Well, he was campaigning in Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala where the BJP is yet to capture power. He was explaining to the people of Bengal how they faced “maha jungle raj” under Mamata Banerjee’s leadership. He declared before a cheerful crowd, “the BJP has just stopped the return of jungle raj in Bihar.”Modi obviously wants Bengal to taste the fruits of a “double engine” government. The taste that the states grappling with those horrific incidents mentioned above are relishing. Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Odisha, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat are all governed by the BJP, where India’s prime minister never sees any problem.In Kerala, Modi said the Congress is more communist than Maoists and more communal than Muslim League.Gair ki sab hai khabar apna pata yaad nahin. Modi is ecstatic he stopped the return of jungle raj in Bihar. Forget the unprecedented unemployment; horrific crimes like rape and murder have become routine in Bihar.Just before the assembly election, a young woman, participating in the recruitment programme for home guards, fainted. She was raped in an ambulance on its way to the hospital. A few more rape incidents came to the fore after the Patna hostel horror. Now Lok Sabha MP Pappu Yadav is saying girls in many private hostels are vulnerable to sexual predators.But the prime minister is now hawking double-engine dreams in other states. Bihar is off the radar now. Will somebody explain to Modi the fundamental difference between the roles of India’s prime minister and the BJP’s campaigner?Learning is goodModi exhorted the BJP to safeguard itself from the ills the Congress is afflicted with. He insisted that the BJP can’t be defeated if mistakes committed by the Congress are strictly avoided.“Wo kaun si buraiyan Congress mein ghus gai jo aaj Congress ko tabahi ke kagaar par la ke khada kar diya hai. Hamen un saari buraiyon se bachna hai [‘What are those flaws that made their way into the Congress and put it on the brink of destruction? We [the BJP] have to avoid those flaws’]”, Modi said addressing party workers at the function to mark Nitin Nabin’s takeover as the new BJP president.The typical infirmities of a party that rules for decades – corruption, arrogance, dynasty, factionalism, conspiracies – doubtless gripped the Congress and the BJP has already imbibed these vices. Let’s examine what the BJP hasn’t learnt from the Congress and how its stubborn refusal to internalise those virtues has imperiled India’s democracy.The Congress refused to abandon secularism despite successive electoral setbacks. There is tangible evidence to show that the BJP’s strength multiplied because of its divisive majoritarian agenda. The temptation of misusing religion as a political tool did occasionally sway the Congress, but it avoided embracing the dangerous path of competitive communalism.The inexperienced Rahul Gandhi assumed the leadership of the Congress at the most difficult time but he stuck to constitutionalism, giving greater importance to the idea of secular democracy than electoral victories. The young leader deserves national gratitude for his strict adherence to ethical politics despite being in this dreadful and dark pit of political marginalisation.The BJP needs to learn from this sacred commitment to constitutional principles from this much-maligned “product of dynastic politics”, but it won’t. This throws up a vital question: Is Modi’s warning to the BJP to learn nothing from the Congress devoid of any moral content?The most critical lesson that the BJP didn’t learn from the Congress is the fundamental understanding that India can’t survive without being a liberal democracy. The party that imposed the Emergency lifted it within two years, showing that the aberration didn’t point to an intention to kill democracy.Despite occasional mistakes, the Congress didn’t plan to capture key institutions – parliament, the judiciary, the media, the executive. Even academia and the creative universe enjoyed autonomy. Union government agencies were not reduced to weapons for controlling and harassing political rivals. Accountability was viewed as a sacred principle; every minister who faced charges, serious or flimsy, faced the music. Rajiv Gandhi didn’t use his brute majority to deny a fair probe in the Bofors case. But the Rafale deal was not investigated.The BJP needed to learn this from the Congress in the interest of democracy and justice.The BJP’s ancestors didn’t learn from the Congress how to fight the British, how to respect India’s cultural and religious diversity, how to build a harmonious society. They didn’t understand how Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy was precious for humanity and Nathuram Godse’s path led to destruction. In fact, they don’t learn anything at all. They harbour fixed notions, like frozen anachronisms, and they blindly pursue those goals.Little wonder then that their prime minister didn’t learn from the Congress prime minister how to rebuff American bullying, how to tackle the guile of China or how to keep Pakistan isolated in the global community. Their prime minister also didn’t learn from the Congress prime minister that demonetisation is not economic reform, that acting as head priest is not in the constitutional spirit and that creating corporate monopolies isn’t in the business interest.It will be in India’s interest if the Congress steals energy from the BJP and the BJP picks wisdom from the Congress.Divided IndiaA knife cuts. It cannot stitch. Divisive politics, similarly, destroys whatever comes in its way. The train of trolls and vendetta has now picked up a Shankaracharya, the topmost in the hierarchy of Hindu seers.But he isn’t alone in that train. He has illustrious company. Intellectuals, professors, artistes, poets, journalists, actors, sportspersons and students – not criminal-minded students and not from C-grade universities, but scholarly boys and girls from the most respected universities. Activists, academics and politicians who are jewels of our public life. From Sudha Bharadwaj to Anand Teltumbde. From Rahul Gandhi to Hemant Soren. From Vinesh Phogat to Deepika Padukone.Those who thought only Muslims and Christians will come under the fire of bigotry and arrogance should discard their infantile notions.Who imagined that this perverse Hindutva politics would ultimately target the top proponents of Hindu religion? It was unthinkable that a section of saffron-clad saints would defend the brutal police assault on disciples of Shankaracharya Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, going so far as to make a public appeal to arrest him or throw him out of the “magh mela” in Prayagraj.This is not a tirade against an individual saint whose posturing against the chief minister may have triggered the administrative reprisal. The three other Shankaracharyas have extended support to Avimukteshwaranand, seeking a public apology from the state for mounting the attack on the highest institution of Hindu religion.Ironically, chief minister Yogi Adityanath made a lethal attack on the Shankaracharya by asking Hindus to rise against the hidden “Kaalnemi”, suggesting that the Hindu seer was conspiring to sabotage the religion from within. The calumny hitherto reserved for Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar is now casting the shadow on the flagbearers of Hinduism!Kaalnemi, a mythical monster, signifies deceit and conspiracy. A chief minister of the Sangh parivar, who himself represents the seers, is publicly attacking the Shankaracharya for internal sabotage. The same regime has patronised seers who indulge in thuggery, spread superstition and are in jail for heinous crimes like rape and murder.The message is clear: toe the line or face the music. Anybody – Hindu, Muslim or Christian – who dares to oppose is doomed. It’s not about religion. It’s politics. It’s about control.Sanjay K. Jha is a political commentator.