I think the article made an attempt to explain it .You can either agree with it or disagree with it.
Leave aside Islamic fanatics or pseudo secular ones, I do not think people would have chosen another right extreme way of hindutva-wadism apart from being retaliatory to other fanaticism. Half of forum members sound tough and overtly hindu just to piss off selective few.
. Over the last few decades, the party ruling at Center was not in power in Karnataka. I would rather see BJP coming back to power in 2019 than winning Karnataka. But who knows, Modi had broken trends so many times and it's quite possible for him to do it again 