In all the haze, maze and daze over Narendra Modi, is the BJP losing the plot, bit by nano bit, as the next general elections inch closer? Or is the party taking a calculated risk by bidding the good governance-economic development adieu and checking in with the tried and tested LK Advani brand of Hindi-Hindu-golden past politics?

Are the comments, observations and reactions by different leaders of late a well thought out strategy, or stumbling and bumbling in haste?

On July 6, Amit Shah, Modi’s Man Friday in Gujarat turned the BJP’s Man Friday in Uttar Pradesh, picked up the by now dusty and rusty Ram Mandir issue in an effort to revive it and stoke passions for a glorious march past the present and back to what the RSS-BJP tries to sell as a glorious past. “I came here to pray to Ram Lalla. I wish we will soon build a grand temple for Lord Ram here and restore Lord Ram to his rightful place,” Shah, heading the BJP campaign in the politically crucial state, told the media in Ayodhya. That’s as Brand Advani as you get these days in the absence of the man himself in the arena.

On July 12, Reuters news agency released an interview with the Gujarat chief minister that raised more than the proverbial storm in a tea cup and teed off a new war cry. Till now seen as trying to etch a shadow of strong leadership, good governance and well-rounded economic development, Modi tried to do a bit of Advani-esque harking back. “Any person if we are driving a car, we are a driver, and someone else is driving a car and we're sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not? Of course it is…” he said during the interview, leading interpreters to interpret the puppy in the sentence as a reference to Muslim victims of the 2012 riots. Not done yet, he asserted, later in the interview: “...you can say I'm a Hindu nationalist because I'm a born Hindu.”

On July 18, BJP president Rajnath Singh took a quaintly revivalist stance. “English language has caused a great lot of loss to India. We have started forgetting our religion and culture these days. There are only 14,000 people left in this country speaking in Sanskrit. Knowledge acquired out of English is not harmful but the anglicization penetrated into youths in this country is dangerous,” he said, according to TV channels.

That could have been fashionable in the late 1980s, when another generation ruled the roost in pre-economic liberalisation days, but not anymore. Not many would dare utter words like “English language has caused a great loss to India”. Not especially in the election heat, and especially not unless you want to offend a great chunk of population.

That Shah, Modi and Singh – all experienced politicians who understand the nuances of electoral politics like the back of their palms – would string together words to form sentences that read like pages taken out of the BJP’s “mandir wahin banayenge” days of the 80s and early 90s is a question unto itself. Is the party not confident enough of making a dent in the Congress bastion by attacking corruption and nepotism of the UPA government? Has the party realised that it has little to gain beyond the 120 or thereabouts Lok Sabha mark by harping the purported Gujarat model of growth? Does it need to revive the LK Advani-Ashok Singhal-Bajrang Dal days of yore to get closer to the 200-seat mark?

Or is there a method to what the other parties call madness, a plan to play the ace when the time comes, a confident aggression in putting up the Hindu nationalist posters across Mumbai?