The 1970s comedy troupe Monty Python had a famous sketch in which a character called “Anne Elk” (Ms Anne Elk) claims to have a new theory about brontosauruses (brontosauri?). Since it’s not every day that somebody comes up with brontosaurus theories, Ms Elk appears on a TV show on which she pronounces that she has this theory and it is hers. The host nods, and then asks her, as any of us would: “What is it?” To which Ms Elk responds by looking around in consternation and asking: “Where?” Then she dissolves into a coughing fit. Repeat.

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When she finally does spell out her theory, it is so ridiculously trivial that the host can say only, in astonishment: “That’s it, is it?”Hold on to that thought about an elusive theory.

Back in late 1994, we Maharashtrians were gearing up for the upcoming Assembly elections. At a press conference, reporters asked the Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray about his party’s plans for the election, and for governing if his party came to power. (Which it did, in coalition with the BJP).

No surprise: Thackeray said something that was as revealing as it was, well, empty. Hindutva, said the Sena’s patriarch — yes, Hindutva, his party’s most recent raison d’etre — would not be the party’s main plank for the elections.

Ah. In that case, what might his party’s planks, main or otherwise, be? No fear, Thackeray answered that too. In the 1995 elections, he pronounced, his party was going to take up “roti, kapda aur makaan”. Not the hit 1970s film, you understand, but the real stuff: food, clothing and shelter. These planks would form the Sena’s election platform.

As you can imagine, this left people like me a little bewildered.

Consider: If Hindutva isn’t a plank, but “roti, kapda aur makaan” is, that clearly means Hindutva is not concerned with these three basics of human existence. That these are all completely disparate issues.

I mean, hundreds of millions of Indians yearn every day for not just one or the other of those basics, but for all three. For them, these are vital, fundamental facts of life. Even so, they are not a part of Hindutva. I mean, protagonists like Thackeray tell us often that we Indians must live daily by this overarching philosophy and, indeed, way of life, called Hindutva. But food, clothing and shelter, he also tells us, have zero to do with Hindutva.

Makes you wonder: what then does Hindutva consider important?But it’s not that I’m indulging myself in some nostalgia for this nearly 20-year-old pronouncement. I dug up my notes about it because I find myself similarly bewildered today. There’s a report about Narendra Modi’s Sunday rally in Delhi which tells me that “governance, not Hindutva, emerges as Modi’s poll plank.” In fact, “hardcore governance, and not Hindutva or shades of it, would figure in the BJP’s main battle theme for the Delhi elections as well as the 2014 polls, BJP Prime Minister candidate Narendra Modi indicated.”

What do we have here then? Hindutva is not about food, clothing and shelter: this much I knew from 20  years ago. Now I learn that Hindutva (and its shades) isn’t about governance either. I mean, with those same three basics in place, the average Indian would, it seems to me, ask for a measure of governance: justice, law and order, no corruption, safe streets, accurate voter lists … you know.

But apparently Hindutva doesn’t concern itself with those trivialities either.

Makes you wonder, again: What then does Hindutva consider important?

It should be clear what I’m asking for here. I don’t mean to suggest that elections should not discuss issues like “roti, kapda aur makaan”, or governance. On the contrary, I wish all our elections would be fought on these themes. I wish that politicians would rouse our passions with these true determinants of the quality of the average Indian’s life. I wish that we would be encouraged to go out and vote for the candidate who is most likely to deliver on these. Imagine where we might be if we had such a choice and managed to take it every time.

Consider instead the kinds of arguments that we hear from too many of our politicians. We have a temple to be built on that very spot in Ayodhya. We have Jinnah being secular or not. We have “I’ll send him to his Waterloo” replied to with “I’ll send her to the loo without water”. We have “Why haven’t you punished the culprits for the 1984 massacre?” answered with the now tiresome and meaningless “the law will take its own course”. We have “sons of the soil” in every state, with the not-to-be-questioned assumption that they, whoever they are, have proprietary rights over any jobs in that state.

And we have Hindutva.

And because it is mentioned so often, I’ve tried since at least that time in 1994, if not longer, to understand this Hindutva. And in doing so, I find myself identifying more and more with Ms Anne Elk’s TV host, the man asking his hapless question: “But what is it?”

Because that’s a little bit like how I feel about Hindutva. Given what its fans say about it, I know it’s not this and not that. But nobody has spelled out exactly what it is. And given how often we hear about it, given how important Hindutva is to so many of my countrymen, I would really like to know what it is.

Which is why, as we head once again into election season, I have these two questions I’ve asked before. I mean them sincerely and seriously. I would love any answers in the same spirit. These questions:

What is Hindutva?

Why should it appeal to me?

The author lives in Bombay and writes so he can keep his cats Cleo and Aziz fed. Views expressed are personal.