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Varun is courting arrest. Who does he think he is? A Gandhi? As it happens, he is, but he is not the Gandhi, as in Mahatma.

His grandparents were Indira Nehru and Feroze Gandhi and his parents were Sanjay Gandhi and Maneka Anand which makes him 50 per cent Sikh, 25 per cent Parsi and 25 per cent Hindu, which could have made him a wonderful advertisement for Indian secularism. Except that it was getting him nowhere; he was forever going to be like his mother, a poor Gandhi.

Most young men in his situation would have looked for an alternative career. I suspect he didn't because he wasn't equipped — academically or intellectually — to hold any job, so he stuck to politics (which needs neither education nor intelligence), hoping his luck would change. It did, in the most unexpected way.

When you think about it, Varun Gandhi's first cousins Rahul and Priyanka have an equally mixed religious identity; they are50 per cent Catholic, 25 per cent Parsi and 25 per cent Hindu, yet they are the true upholders of the Nehru-Gandhi legacy.

Which just tells you that you become what you choose to become and Varun Gandhi has chosen to be the worst face of Hindutva, a 'chotta Modi'(more accurately a chotta-motta Modi) an abusive hate-mongering bigot inciting the mobs to kill and maim his fellow Indians only so that he can move his fat-boy body into parliament.

In the normal course, one should really ignore someone like Varun Gandhi because he is a complete non-entity and in the long run he will remain as irrelevant as his mother has been to Indian politics. But the way the rank and file with the BJP has embraced him paints a dismal picture of our electorate and of our main opposition party.

You could speculate and say that LK Advani is keeping quiet about Varun Gandhi's vicious rhetoric because it steals some of Narendra Modi's thunder. And Modi, once an Advani protégé, has now become a rival to Advani's prime ministerial aspirations. But the sad truth is that hate politics is close to the BJP's heart and however much they say they want to get away from it and focus on real issues, when in trouble the party will run to its aggressive Hindutva corner.

That is why the BJP now wants to eat its cake and have it too, by only 'disassociating' itself from Varun Gandhi's speeches, not dropping him as a candidate as the party should have done.

The other troubling question you want to ask is why was Varun Gandhi offered a seat by the BJP in the first place.There are a lot of candidates from all parties including the Congress, who are political novices and whose contribution to Parliament will be zero. People like Mohammed Azharuddin and Madanlal or possible candidates like Dharmendra, Hema Malini and Govinda will ultimately only make up party numbers in the Lok Sabha, but at least each of them has reached a significant level of achievement in his or her own field.

They have national celebrity and recognition and respect for the work they have done. Varun Gandhi on the other hand has done absolutely nothing in his life at all. Which confirms that the only reason he's been given a ticket is that he bears the Gandhi name. And the party has the gall to talk about dynastic politics!

The Varun Gandhi episode has revealed once again in stark detail the true nature of the BJP and its supporters. It has also revealed in passing what we have always known, which is the true nature of Narendra Modi's appeal to his supporters. The captains of industry who went to Gujarat to sup with him may claim that it has to do with his administration's efficiency and incorruptibility, but in fact the Modi appeal is far more visceral and primitive. As is the BJP's.

The writer is a commentator on social affairs