The historian Shahid Amin argued, some years ago, that the visible symbol by which the Muslim man was identified in our cartoons, films and suchlike, the fez, was Turkish and had little to do with India. Hardly anyone in India wears the fez, yet if a man has to be identified as a Muslim, if it has to be shown that a group includes a Muslim or many, there is the cap, ready and waiting.

All social groupings which seek to be different from others, use visible marks of identity. Across India, Hinduism has a bewildering variety of marks placed on the forehead to denote caste and sect and so on. The Roman Catholic has the crucifix, and in the same way the Sikh has the kada. In most parts of India, Hindu and Muslim women and men wear distinctively different clothing and accessories.

One could go on virtually endlessly. The mangalsutra was the mark of the married Hindu woman in some parts of India, but it has now been spread by the media into regions where it was not a tradition. The pinch of sindoor once deposited in the parting of the hair, again to signify a woman's saubhagyavati state, has been supplanted by a red daub, which apparently may be of any shape, size or shade, placed at the top of the forehead in the middle – regardless of whether the hair is parted there or to one side or not parted at all. My very young female friends speak of this mark pithily, as in “Varma Aunty´s headlight is very bright today”.

One could go on, through the sola topee and the white linen suit of the Raj, through the shermaxivani made famous by the present Health Minister or the sweater tied so as to hang over the rear or the dark glasses worn only above the head, down to the ear-rings and green hair espoused by the world of punk. It is enough to say that there are very many more distinctive symbols than there are distinct social groupings.

Here I shall point to two symbols important today, of both of which we saw a great deal some months ago: rape and the trishul.

Among non-material symbols, rape is an exceedingly powerful one. When a woman is raped, she is not alone in being traumatised and dishonoured: her menfolk, her caste, her religion, her race, her country – whatever may be involved – all are shown just where they stand. A single act of violence has a wide and potent effect whose intent is to subjugate.

Many observers have remarked on the extensive use of this symbol-weapon in the February-March violence against Muslims in Gujarat. The general consensus seems to be that for the mind-set of what is today called Hindutva, essentially mindless, the rape of one Muslim is final proof of the superiority of all Hindus. The khakhi shorts of the soldier of Hindutva become his armour, and in a characteristic up-ending, this armour is removed when he goes into the form of battle at which he is best.

The trishul is an ancient symbol of Hinduism. Hindutva has come to use something nominally akin to a trishul in an eminently practical way. The object seen near the corpses in some photographs from Gujarat is technically a trishul (“three thorns”), because it indubitably has three parts in front of its haft. The central part is a much elongated diamond-shaped blade with a sharp, tapering point: in simple terms, a vicious knife. The small sub-blades, one on either side of the main blade, are unlikely to be of any use either in stabbing or in slicing. They seem purely nominal. We may say that the weapon is much like a penis with its usual hangers-on.

One symbol of the Parivar´s Hindutva, then, is the rampant penis; and the other is a weapon which is functionally not very different from the Roman stabbing sword, the gladius hispaniensis, but which is tarted up in the interest of religious symbolism and so rendered phallic as well. The soldier of Hindutva is taught to misuse both and is carefully kept unable to think beyond either. In any language, he is best described as his own symbol. I wish I had a stronger expression of contempt.