The Other is always an active negation. All such movements mobilise hatred, and often harness unusual organisational effort to achieve it. The Ram Janam Bhoomi campaign lasted nearly two years, during which the BJP leaders and their partners reached out to thousands of villages and towns throughout India, with their mobilising rituals of preparing bricks to build a temple where then stood the 16th-century Babri Mosque. The campaign ended in December 1992 in a national march to Ayodhya, where the mosque was violently demolished by a frenzied mob. Riots and massacres inevitably followed.
Hate pays, however temporarily.
The mobilisation contributed to the dramatic transformation of the BJP from a marginal political grouping to one of two largest parliamentary parties in India. In Israel, the right-wing Likud and its extremist allies began their rise to national power as they mobilised a campaign of hate and colonisation of Palestinians under occupation. In Bosnia, the Serbs' campaign of ethnic cleansing preceded and accompanied a mobilisation of Christian hatred of Muslims. The cult of violence and proliferation of enemies are inherent in ideologies of difference. All express their hate for the Other by organised violence.