The importance of preserving the Hindu “extreme”

When the Indian National Congress (INC) started off in the late 1800’s as an elite club of landowners and entrepreneurs  its elite naturally went for “narampantha” (“soft path”) of pleasing the ruler to get crumbs as anti-narampantha would jeopardize their wealth/status by confrontation and retaliation by state. However it soon realized that unless it got the “common” “chota log” (literally “small people” used in a semi-derisive way to disparage the “lower status”) Hindu on its side, it would not have enough numbers to appear worth negotiating with.

But this meant a dilemma – how to keep the societal hierarchy of control over the “lowers” and prevent them from being “uppity” when realizing the power of their numbers in political mobilization. That problem was brilliantly solved by Gandhi’s almost-collaborative-with-Brits removal of Hindu-sadhus/babas who had been in the forefront of popular dissent/resistance against the Brit state, but which was also a threat to backers of Gandhi – as such movements showed the potential of decentralized, beyond-elite-control-from-above, Hindu “lower” mobilization, and which within colonial frame also threatened the economic gains that elite had maintained under new rulers. Simultaneously Gandhi and his coterie formulated the very first steps of Islam appeasement and recognition of both Ulemaic claim of sole control over Muslims and communal/separate “award” (as early as 1915/16).