Remember how the nation is told at regular intervals that the Naxals and Maoists have an overground support structure which bats for their politics?If there is anyone who endorses a praxis of violence as opposed to one of peaceful mass mobilisation and democratic protest, I express my principled disagreement with them – and have done so in writing.What, however, remains the best-known secret of contemporary India is that their support structure, if it exists, cannot hold a candle to the ecosystem that makes protective excuses for convicted rapists and murderers of a particular persuasion who are released from jail before their time.And the power of that ecosystem may be gauged from the fact that the freedom of such criminals can be obtained even in the teeth of opposition from the all-powerful Central Bureau of Investigation and a trial court judge.The gods of the day, located in North Block, themselves shower benefactions upon them.What is a Maoist supporter next to an overground network of such magnificent clout?It also now turns out that the released rapists and murderers did not only enjoy a thousand days of parole during their incarceration, but had new FIRs filed against them for fresh assaults and promising more menace.Does that make a mockery of the claim that they were released on grounds of “good behaviour”? You and I may think so, but the ecosystem ensures that official claims of their “good behaviour” are spread far and wide through an obliging support structure embedded in the “nationalist” media.And here is the more significant and distressing aspect of the matter: the supporting ecosystem of these honourable convicts extends deep into the new social order. Perhaps the most nauseating sight of connivance has been that of other honourable members of the Hindutva order doing obeisance at the feet of the released conquerors and offering them sweets as ritual oblations.The message from this is clear: these convicted rapists and murderers are being propitiated because they are the committed vanguard of the new nationalism – out to make that political point, if need be, on the body of a 19-year-old, a five-month pregnant Muslim woman, and the corpses of her entire household.Also read: Two Faces of the Contemporary Indian State: The Benign and the VengefulThere, indeed, is the “Gujarat model”, in case you were not aware enough.And, such is the compelling force of that narrative now that even the noisily self-righteous Aam Aadmi Party, as it sets its eyes on electoral fortunes in Gujarat, is able only to echo what the Gujarat government has said officially about these convicts: namely, that their release was done according to rule.Foolishly, some moralists have supposed that the achievement of Vishwagurudom has to do with scaling heights of spirituality.While their naiveté is touching, all good “nationalists” know it has to do with lording it over the naysayers by means fair or foul.As to morality, have you seen the long-lasting Guru Ram Rahim, also out on parole precisely when elections are slated to happen in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, with scions of the ruling party making a beeline for his throne?And, through all this, have you heard the least squeak from any Women’s Commission with regard to both occurrences – the celebrated rapists in Gujarat or the convicted rapist (sentenced to serve 20 years in the slammer) showering blessings yet again in Haryana?Or any squeak from the thousands of pious warriors from the housing society middle classes who protested admirably, it must be noted, with relentless energy alongside hordes of those who today constitute the ruling party when what has come to be christened the unconscionably gruesome “Nirbhaya” rape happened?No sir.You see, “Nirbhaya” was not part of any Hindu-Muslim contention, and her real name certainly was not Bilkis.That indeed is how far the ecosystem of the right-wing exercises its influence, and how it lays down red-lines for the expression of Insaniyat.Pray, what is a discarded “urban naxal” to this imperial ecosystem which has the power to turn rapists and murderers into national heros?As for the CBI and the trial courts, they better not lose their patriotic moorings; they must at all times remind themselves of who they are authorised to go after or not.Did not the unforgettable Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing famously say “the law is an ass”?Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.