Now, the BJP has come unhinged on another issue: governance in “Hindutva laboratory” Gujarat, where it's entrenched deeper than anywhere else. It's shielding Minister of State for Home Amit Shah who brazenly evaded arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case, before surrendering himself. The BJP hysterically claims the “partisan” CBI is framing Mr Shah at the behest of the Centre with trumped-up charges, including plotting the cold-blooded killing of Sohrabuddin, a petty criminal, his wife Kauserbi, and eyewitness Tulsidas Prajapati. The Gujarat government has admitted to the Supreme Court that Sohrabuddin was killed in a fake encounter.

The BJP is substituting ill-tempered rhetoric and abuse for facts and logic. It's not the CBI that initiated the Sohrabuddin investigation, but the Supreme Court. The BJP has itself demanded any number of times that the CBI investigate recent scams, including the telecom scandal. The Sohrabuddin investigation, based largely on evidence collected by the Gujarat police, led to a proper chargesheet holding Mr Shah complicit in the killings.

This at minimum demanded that Mr Shah, tasked with defending the rule of law, submit himself to it by facing arrest. But he chose to subvert the rule of law and evaded arrest for two days. The BJP is defending him in what will go down as an exceptionally shrill campaign. No party barring the Shiv Sena has stooped to such depths in shielding a gravely indicted leader. Nobody in charge of a state Home department has behaved as defiantly towards Constitutional legality as Mr Shah.

The BJP's campaign will attract great ridicule if former Deputy SP NK Amin demolishes Mr Shah's defences as an approver, as is expected. Amin was a member of the police's “encounter specialist” gang, who witnessed the crimes in question and claims to possess further damaging evidence.

Consider the facts of the case. In November 2005, the Gujarat police abducted Sohrabuddin—a small-time extortionist who often collected money for Mr Shah and Vanzara—and his wife Kauserbi. They falsely claimed he was a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative who planned to kill Mr Modi.

Evidence with the CBI suggests that notorious “encounter specialists” DG Vanzara and Rajkumar Pandian killed Sohrabuddin in cold blood. Sohrabuddin had become too inconvenient for Vanzara's extortion racket. Branding him a terrorist would help glorify Mr Modi. Kauserbi was killed because she had witnessed his murder. Prajapati knew too much and had to be eliminated.

The CBI claims it has unimpeachable evidence that Mr Shah was complicit in these killings, including records of cellphone conversations between him, Vanzara and Pandian. (Pandian has publicly said that whoever killed “terrorist” Sohrabuddin deserves a national award. Such are the law-abiding Indian Police Service officials now being let loose on the citizenry!)

Whatever the truth in the charges against Mr Shah, it's indisputable is that he recommended/ organised the transfers of key police officials, including Vanzara, so “encounters” could be staged. Gujarat reported 17 “encounters” between 2003 and 2007, for some of which 14 policemen are in jail. It's equally indisputable that Mr Shah, Vanzara and Company ran a large-scale extortion racket. The CBI has testimonies of people who paid them Rs 75 lakhs and Rs 25 lakhs in bribes to have rivals killed or get trumped-up charges dropped.

Gujarat's own Criminal Investigation Department had recommended a CBI investigation into Mr Shah's role in the Madhavpura Bank scandal after finding strong evidence that he helped notorious stockmarket scamster Ketan Parekh jump bail for a bribe of Rs 2.5 crores. Parekh had cheated the bank of Rs 1,030 crores. Mr Modi buried the CID report.

It may be a pure coincidence that Mr Arun Jaitly, now at his strident best in attacking the CBI, was Parekh's lawyer. But what's pertinent here is the totally indefensible nature of the BJP's pro-Shah campaign. Even if the charges against him are framed, Mr Shah must stand trial and disprove them. He has every right to due process of law. But he did his utmost to subvert that very process. No Home minister could have set a worse example before the public, police and judiciary.

By defending the indefensible and hysterically attacking the CBI, the BJP has once again proved that it's the Odd Man Out of Indian politics, with its uniquely sectarian Hindutva project; its rejection of India's multi-religious, plural and secular character; and its proclivity to take unreasonably and obstreperously contrarian positions by claiming it's a victim of the system.

The BJP's appetite for contrived victimhood is limitless. When faced with serious, reasoned criticism from secular commentators in the media, the BJP would for decades accuse the press, in particular the English language press, of being viscerally hostile to it. It nurtures victimhood even when unleashing violence or insult and calumny against the religious minorities, which it falsely brands invaders and aggressors. Indeed, there's an intimate connection between manufactured victimhood and physical and verbal anti-minority violence, seen as “well-deserved” retribution for aggression.

This is key to understanding why the BJP rushed to defend “Sadhvi” Pragya Singh Thakur, Lt-Col Shrikant Purohit and Abhinav Bharat activists involved in the Hindutva terrorist network responsible for numerous bomb explosions at Muslim places of worship, including Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid and the Ajmer dargah (2007), Malegaon (2008), and possibly, the Samjhauta Express (2007).

A well-ramified and highly organised Hindutva-inspired terrorist network has clearly crystallised, with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh members and former members at its heart, including Ramchandra Gopalsingh Kalsangra, Sunil Joshi, Pravin Mutalik, Dayanand Pandey, Rakesh Dhawade, Sameer Kulkarni, Sudhakar Chaturvedi, Ramesh Upadhyay and Lokesh Sharma, besides Thakur and Purohit. They made, transported and systematically planted explosives with the aim to kill ordinary Muslims, spread fear in the community, and eventually establish a Hindu rashtra.

The network is ruthless towards its own members. The CBI believes it murdered Mhow-based RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi in 2007 just when investigators were closing in on him and his associates, having found that the explosives used in Hyderabad and Ajmer were similar to those Joshi wanted to deploy against a Muslim congregation in Bhopal in 2003.

This network is certainly as dangerous as the jehadi outfits who have killed innocent people in “retaliation” for the harassment and persecution of hundreds of Muslims since the 1993 Mumbai blasts. Indeed, what makes the Hindutva network even more pernicious is its claim to “nationalism” (read, blatant Hindu majoritarianism) and its infiltration into the police, and perhaps, the military.

This Hindutva network must be ruthlessly exposed and brought to justice. The BJP, the RSS and their cohorts are its most brazen apologists and the biggest obstacle to its prosecution. Their senseless defence of it is as condemnable as the BJP's pro-Shah campaign.

The real reason why the BJP shamelessly defends Mr Shah is that the prosecution of the Sohrabuddin case and the subsequent cover-up would eventually implicate Mr Modi himself. It's he who finally executed the police transfers that Mr Shah recommended. Mr Modi is indispensable to the BJP. He is not only its longest-serving Chief Minister. He has emerged as its Number One leader after Mr Advani. Rationalising butchery and cold-blooded murder is the price the BJP must pay for promoting Mr Modi.

Astonishingly, senior BJP leaders like Mr Jaitly, Ms Sushma Swaraj and chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad rant that Sohrabuddin was a terrorist. It doesn't strike them that even that can't justify his non-judicial execution. Sohrabuddin was in police custody and should have been put on trial to establish his guilt. Going down the slippery slope of justifying non-judicial killings in “extreme” or “exceptional” cases means granting the police impunity, and condoning, even encouraging, murder. No citizen can be safe and secure in such a society. The BJP must answer if that's the kind of society it wants.

Deep at work here is the BJP's notion of democracy. It sees democracy only as an instrument of power, to be used through elections, but devoid of the rule of law, minimal political decency and respect for human life. Such a tyrannical system of power undermines the content of democracy, including human rights and Constitutional freedoms. It's incompatible with a civilised social order.

The BJP is increasingly isolating itself from the aspirations and concerns of the Indian people, including the middle class, its sole (and shrinking) constituency. As it gets Modi-fied, the BJP will forfeit its claim to being a half-way responsible party which abides by the law of the land and the ground-rules of democracy. Such a party can only have a bleak future. (IPA Service)