This is scary. Following are excerpts from an opinion piece in Telegraph.

In retrospect, the violence in Kandhamal in Orissa last year seems like the first step in an electoral strategy, a strategy that can be broadly described as the Gujarat model. For those who don’t remember those events, starting in the last week of August, Christians in the Kandhamal district suffered a month and a half of systematic intimidation, killing and displacement. Figures released by the Orissa government put the figure at over 12,000 refugees, fed and sheltered in government camps. This doesn’t account for those Christians who fled their homes and sought refuge in places other than these refugee camps, so the overall figure for the displaced is higher.

The troubles began after Swami Laxmananda Saraswati, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader, was murdered by ‘Maoists’. The sangh parivar alleged that his murder had been organized by Christians and used his funeral procession to stoke murderous violence against Christians in the area. Having ‘cleansed’ Christians from their homes, Hindutva militants declared with impunity that they wouldn’t be allowed back till they re-converted to their ‘parent’ faith, Hinduism. There were reports of groups of Christians submitting to ritual ‘shuddhi’ ceremonies organized by these custodians of Hinduism’s integrity, to purge them of Christianity, that alien contagion.

The main accused in this campaign of carnage and killing was Manoj Pradhan. Charged with more than a dozen cases of murder and arson, Manoj Pradhan is currently lodged in jail in G. Udayagiri, a town in Kandhamal. The not-so-subtle irony is that Pradhan is also the Bharatiya Janata Party’s official candidate for the G. Udayagiri assembly seat in the approaching elections. B.B. Ramachandran Harichandan, the BJP’s leader in the state’s legislative assembly, offered a familiar defence: “he has been arrested under false charges. In any case, he is not yet proved guilty in the court of law. Let the people decide his fate”.

The BJP’s nominee for the newly delimited Kandhamal Lok Sabha seat is a former IPS officer, Ashok Sahu, currently the state president of the Hindu Jagaran Samukhya, who is notable for having declared without the inconvenience of evidence that Christian terrorists had killed Laxmananda Saraswati.

A pogrom is the first step in the Gujarat model. The object of the pogrom is polarization, specifically the consolidation of a Hindu majority. The third ‘P’ in this grim sequence is political victory at the polls. …

In a circumstance where, just over six months ago, dozens of Christians had been killed and thousands made homeless, … But the last word in this matter must be reserved for Ashok Sahu, the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate for the Kandhamal seat. He said, “What happened in Kandhamal is no reason to be ashamed about, at least not for me. Today Kandhamal symbolizes Hindu culture.”

The reason these contests in Kandhamal are of historic and of national importance is because they show us the BJP being true to its impulses, its gut beliefs. Over the last few years (with the exception of Gujarat), the BJP has been compelled by political and electoral necessity to abide by anodyne coalition manifestos. Now that the party doesn’t have a tiresomely ‘secular’ partner to alienate in Gujarat, it’s taking the opportunity to be itself.

… In recent times, majoritarian organizations in this country have tried to expand the domain of permissible violence. The Sri Ram Sena in Karnataka, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena in Maharashtra, and the BJP in Orissa and Karnataka have used thuggish intimidation in the name of a defence of culture. Their targets have been the vulnerable and the weak: young women, poor north Indian men and religious minorities. This election is a pointer to the likely political behaviour of the BJP parties were it to be sprung from the straitjacket of coalition politics. And should it win the Kandhamal contests, something ominous shall have been proved