Nearly midway through the protracted 2024 elections, the BJP has completely junked its rhetoric of universal development and inclusion ('sabka saath sabka vikas') and embraced unbridled anti-Muslim hate as the only theme of its poll campaign. The accusations being made against the opposition by Narendra Modi and other senior BJP leaders are getting increasingly bizarre and toxic. It started with the absurd accusation that the Congress would confiscate the property of common people - wedding necklaces of women, houses and even buffaloes - and redistribute them among Muslims. Next came the mischievous lie that SC/ST/OBC quota would be diverted towards Muslims. And now we are being told how Pakistan will be the happiest country to see a Congress-led government back in power in India. The Pakistan angle is of course one of the BJP's most standard techniques. In Gujarat Modi used to invoke the bogey of Pakistan in every Assembly election since 2002. In Bihar in 2015 when the BJP had to fight the Assembly elections without the support of Nitish Kumar's JDU and ended up getting reduced to just 53 seats in a house of 243, Amit Shah had tried his best to scare the people of Bihar by raising the bogey of Pakistan. But never before had Modi and the BJP been this blunt about scaring the common Hindu people about losing their property and reservation to Muslims. And the demonisation and targeting of Muslims as a community of infiltrators trying to capture India through population explosion, coming straight from the Prime Minister, in speech after speech, has been absolutely shocking and obnoxious. Modi realises that the question of reservation is central to the growing concern about the future of the Constitution of India. To the credit of the opposition, the INDIA coalition has raised the level of the reservation debate to the long pending quest for due and adequate representation of all social groups in diverse spheres of power. The caste census in Bihar and the consequent decision to expand reservation to 65% (apart from the EWS quota of 10%) provided a template for the whole country. The BJP which could not afford to oppose the caste census in Bihar remains dead opposed to the idea at the all-India level and hence it is desperately trying to communalise the reservation discourse by pitting SC/ST/OBC against Muslims. Nothing could be more untrue and mischievous than the claim that OBC quota is being diverted to Muslims. In more than ten states of India, including Gujarat, a number of Muslim castes have long been included in the OBC list. They get reservation not as Muslims but by virtue of being recognised as OBC in terms of their occupation and pervasive social and educational backwardness. Gujarat has perhaps the longest list of such castes, and in quite a recent interview given to ANI in 2022 Modi can be seen boasting about giving OBC benefits to 70 Muslim groups in Gujarat. In Bihar, the inclusion of Muslim castes in OBC dates back to the period of Karpoori Thakur which predates the VP Singh government's announcement in 1990 to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations about OBC reservation. The latter too included several Muslim castes in the OBC category and a nine-member constitution bench of the Supreme Court upheld it in its landmark 1992 verdict on the validity of OBC reservation. In recent past, the BJP itself had been trying hard to sport an inclusive by sponsoring a campaign for 'Pasmanda' (backward and deprived) Muslims and an outreach programme called 'Sufi Samvad' (Sufi Dialogue). The party must also be aware that the votes it got in 2014 and 2019 were way beyond its core base when issues like corruption and national security dominating the electoral discourse. This time round the BJP is desperate about galvanising its core base and hence it has shed all its masks of inclusiveness, development and good governance to rely unabashedly on anti-Muslim hate. This formula has worked in Gujarat, the 2024 elections beckon India to reject this formula of hate and division and return to the constitutional foundation and spirit of cultural diversity and equal citizenship. The BJP had banked upon the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya as its biggest electoral 'trump card' in 2024. The inauguration of an incomplete temple in Ayodhya on 22 January was designed as a stunning spectacle that would overshadow the elections. The song 'jo Ram ko laye hain hum unko layenge' (we will bring those who have brought Ram) was expected to become the 2024 electoral anthem. But the BJP's attempt to politicise the temple and exploit it for electoral gains seems to have fallen flat in these elections. Modi's Ayodhya road show on the eve of the third phase of elections and the insinuation that the temple would be converted into a hospital in the event of SP and Congress coming to power only reveals the growing desperation of the regime. With the third phase, polling is over in more than half of the 543 seats. The initial phases indicate a definite lead for INDIA, over the next four phases this will have to be consolidated into a decisive majority to end the disastrous reign of the dictatorial Modi regime. [ Editorial, ML Update, 7-13 May ]