A rupture has taken place within our community relationships and this will take a long time to heal even if the government changes. This is the candid analysis by Manoj Kumar Jha, academic and one of the more articulate Indian parliamentarians.

“Dogwhistling has moved from the fringe to the centre,” he says in a podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia.

Jha’s collection of columns has recently been published under the title In Praise of Coalition Politics and Other Essays on Indian Democracy. The essays cover a variety of subjects ranging from the caste census, Waqf properties, the RSS and government servants, and Jha’s letters to Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. 

Jha says university appointments are made keeping in mind the candidate’s affiliation to the organisation. “The only thing spoken in ...