Understanding Communalism

Understanding
Communalism
M. Muralidharan
P.K. Michael Tharakan
S. Kappen
Visthar

On Options of Identification:
Communalism and Democratic Politics
P.K. Michael Tharakan 61
Hindutva — Emergent Fascism?
S. Kappen 79
Contents
Preface 7
The Strategy of Hindu Communalism:
Stages and Historical Constraints
M. Muralidharan 9
First published in 1993
VISTHAR
45, D'Costa Square, I Cross
Bangalore 560 084
Laserset by Wordmakers, Bangalore
Printed at the W Q. Judge Press, Bangalore.

Contributors
M. Muralidharan teaches History at the School
of Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi Univer-
sity, Kottayam.
P.K. Michael Tharakan is a Senior Fellow at
the Centre for Development Studies,
Thiruvananthapuram.
S. Kappen is a thinker, writer and activist
based in Bangalore.
_1
Preface
Since the emergence of the Ayodhya movement, the fre-
quency and intensity of communal riots in India have
increased. Areas which have never experienced communal
tensions before have since witnessed large-scale riots. Be-
sides, the phenomenon of communalisin has diverted
people's attention from the struggle for justice and
equality. Even substantive economic and political issues
tend to be viewed purely from a communal point of view.
A number of studies have appeared on the complex issue of
communalism and on the strategies to be adopted to
counter the challenges posed by the Hindutva movement
to Indian democracy. There have also been several initia-
tives aimed at promoting communal harmony, exposing the
falsity of communal propaganda and affirming the
pluralist character of Indian culture.
As a voluntary organization committed to the humaniza-
tion of Indian society, Visthar has been involved since 1991
in organizing seminars and workshops, aimed at under-
standing the various aspects of communalism and in cam-
paigns for disseminating information at the grassroot level.
Activists as well as academics have participated in this
process. Bipan Chandra (Jawaharal Nehru University,
Delhi), Michael Tharakan (Centre for Development
Studies, Trivandrum), Asghar Ali Engineer (Institute of
Islamic Studies, Bombay), M. Muralidharan (Mahatma
Gandhi University, Kottayam), S. Kappen (Bangalore),
7

Hasan Mansur (PUCL- Karnataka), Babu Mathew (Na-
tional Law School of India University, Bangalore) and
Gabriel Dietrich (Centre for Social Analysis, Madurai)
were among those who presented papers and facilitated
discussions. We are grateful to them for contributing to our
search for relevant forms of intervention at this critical
juncture in our history.
The present volume analyses the Hindutva movement from
the religio-cultural, historical and political perspectives. M.
Muralidharan traces the various stages in the development
of Hindu communalist strategy — from 'elite extremism' to
`moderate communalism' to the present phase of 'mass
extremism'. Based on a scholarly analysis, particularly of
the Kerala situation, Michael Tharakan argues that no
meaningful analysis of Indian politics is possible without
understanding the influence of caste, religion, ethnicity,
language, clan, kinship etc. His study concludes with affir-
mation that the fight for attaining the social and cultural
aims of secularism has to begin with the fight for political
decentralisation. S. Kappen discusses how far Hindutva
movement is fascist in character. He has also shown how
the movement is an attempt to meet, though in a distorted
manner, certain genuine historical challenges which other
socio-political forces have ignored. The writer affirms the
need to redefine the prevailing concept of secularism.
It is hoped that this book will make a small contribution to
the on-going debates on communalism, nationalism and
secularism.
Bangalore
September 1993
The Strategy of Hindu
Communalism: Stages and
Historical Constraints
M. Muralidharan
Hindu communalism has come of age in this country.
Greater knowledge about its internal workings is no longer
a purely academic matter but a component of the power
necessary to combat it at all levels. The long term respon-
sibility of such a struggle is to be borne by all secular,
democratic and socialist forces. But our discursive
strategies have serious limitations for taking up the kind
of issues that are being raised in this paper.
First, they confine themselves to the polemical functions of
exposing communalism as an ideological or caste
phenomenon. Pointing to the empirical and logical fallacies
of communalist theories and their misrepresentation of the
past, and invoking the general dangers involved in the
event of a communal take over are areas in which we trade
arguments with the Right. The great value of this intellec-
tual struggle is not to be underestimated. But the emphasis
involved in this does not rise above propaganda. There is
also the obvious and related danger of confusing the
Visthar

Understanding Communalism
propaganda of the communalists with their real intentions
of not being able to sufficiently distinguish between their
`public' pronouncements and 'private' plans. Polemic has to
base itself on a core analysis that could reasonably pinpoint
the actual dynamics of enemy politics.
Second, we probably do not recognize that communalism is
not a single unilinear flow, but that it has been changing
over time. A better appreciation of these stages and the
factors that have induced crucial shifts at certain points is
a desideratum at the heuristic level. Our routine profes-
sions that before independence colonialism sustained com-
munalism and that now it is the turn of the Indian
bourgeoisie to do the same often act as a foil to such
urgently arduous tasks.
Third, in our eagerness to dispense with this unholy
phenomenon, we tend to assume communalism to be a
monolith in organisational and ideological terms. Though
major cracks in this structure are yet to appear and through
the Fascist character of its order makes such internal
divisions somewhat difficult to surface, unity has never
been total at any point in time. Apart from crediting the
Right with great coherence than it possesses, such assump-
tions prevent a view of the internal wrangles within which
the formation of such a strategy is rooted. An example is
the inability to appreciate that the RSS has never had a
complete organisational hegemony over the broader world
of Hindu communalism.
There are two reasons which make this effort rather haz-
ardous. The first is plain; the second less so. The RSS rarely
advertises its strategy and this is not just the truism that
politicians do not proclaim their plans from the roof-tops.
The Congress or Congress-like bodies present a near
transparent picture of almost all tactical matters, barring
probably the financial. This is bound up with the compara-
tively less structured character of its organisation and also
10
The Strategy of Hindu Communalism
the total withering away of both ideology and any sense of
a unified purpose within Congress circles. A study of Con-
gress strategy would not, therefore, be a challenging
proposition even in intellectual terms. Though the Com-
munists have a hoary (and much maligned) tradition of
conspirational activities, since being tamed to parliamen-
tary traditions, it is no longer necessary to ferret out Party
programmes like a detective. Since 1951, the Communist
Party has been religiously publishing its Party thesis,
complete with aspired tasks in every front. The far Right
is made of sterner stuff. The higher echelons of the RSS
and, definitely, its apex body are far removed from the
public gaze. This gives them an edge in tactical matters
that most democratic organisations do not have. It is true
that this very secrecy is anti-democratic. A good polemical
point; but poor consolation for those who want to know how
things work within.
A second set of barriers is ideological. The RSS—BJP leader-
ship operates in an ideological world which is partly their
own making. In a similar, but not identical context Hannah
Arandt pointed to the double illusions engendered by Fas-
cist structures.1 If the people have no access to the
"leaders", the leaders are caught in the cloister of succes-
sive outer rings formed by the lesser cadre and have no
touch with the people.2 This leads us to qualify our earlier,
rather blunt distinction between propaganda and policy.
We assume that the mental basis of such decision-making
would be located in a mixture of cynical untruth, bad faith
and genuine belief in the illusions that they have themsel-
ves generated.3 To this limited extent, they can be under-
stood best as the partial victims of their own propaganda.
The difficulty of the Left is this direction often takes the
form of a tendency to attribute to the Right, a style and an
orientation similar to their own. Without doing violence to
broad similarities in human nature, it can be asserted that
11

the two are not identical. Our problem is to piece together
this terrain by inference rather than direct perceptions.
This involves some speculation — better than none at all.
Before we go into chronological niceties, it is necessary to
form a judgement on the more elusive aspects of the com-
munalist decision-making apparatus. Let us dispel one
illusion that is too general and off the mark to be continued.
This is the idea that the RSS is the volunteer corps of the
BJP or the erstwhile Jana Sangh. This is the exact reverse
of the truth. The RSS is the core organisation composed of
full time dedicated cadres, and the BJP forms only its
Parliamentary extension with probably some degree of
autonomy as may be required by the exigencies of time and
region.
Along with the BJP there are other front organisations like
the VHP, the Vidyarthi Parishad and the trade union,
Bharathiya Mazdoor Sangh. The key figures in each of
these organisations are the RSS pracharaks, who see to it
that the decisions taken and the people elevated to posi-
tions are of their choice. Those who work in their organisa-
tions without an RSS background are treated as less
efficient or secondary and are not likely to be more than
figureheads. They rarely get access to the charmed cham-
bers of decision-making. At the local level this hegemony
of the RSS fraction is maintained through weekly and
monthly meetings called Baudhiks and at regional levels
through the Sibhiras. The full import and significance of
these may be evident only to the initiate as they are not
widely advertised.
How is the RSS's control over these organisations main-
tained? The main factor, or course, is that in all cadre
organisations organised minorities can control larger dis-
organized groups of people. This is a law of power that is
at the basis of the Fascist and, in a different way, Stalinist
structures. Second, this pattern makes it nearly obligatory
12
for the RSS elite to stay away from high places, from public
positions, so that they would not be corrupted by wealth
and power. This is to be seen in conjunction with the simple,
even spartan, life style of the Pracharaks that induces
admiration and a charismatic control among those in the
outer circles who lead a life of comparative ease. The RSS
hard core sacrifices material comforts — many of them are
life- long celibates — and the price extracted for this sacrifice
is power. The deeper layers of the RSS constitute such a
nearly self-contained mental world that they do not fully
appreciate modern social agencies like the Indian State.
Within these circles, the State is seen as a merely corrupt-
ing and decadent force. Such a psychology explains why
public leaders like Balraj Madhok were easily got rid of in
the late sixties and how they were able to put A.B. Vajpayee
in his place by raising the bogey of luxury and decadence.
Third, the major channels of communication and chains of
command are oral and informal in character and conse-
quently difficult to pin down. It is not very clear whether
there is a greater degree of freedom within these closed
circles — an open society in camera — or whether the same
worship of the leader continues there as it is advocated
outside. It is quite possible that freedom is limited there
also. Otherwise it is difficult to explain why the RSS has
been making several elementary tactical blunders and in
general why they have had a relatively crude strategy and
tactics down the decades. These shortcomings were sought
to be made up by the cadres being called upon to show
greater and greater loyalty and emotion. The central point
that is to be assumed is that such structures cannot be
analysed purely in terms of the economic, but have to be
seen as constituted by, and constitutive of, power relations.
It is one thing to argue that these operate under economic
constraints. But it is a totally different and erroneous
assumption to confuse them with individual economic mo-
t yes at every level. The RSS leadership is driven primarily
by the motive of power.
13

Elite Terrorism
We divide RSS strategy into 3 phases:
a. From the early Fifties to the early Seventies.
b. From the early Seventies to the late Eighties.
c.The present stage.
The three or four years after 1984 should constitute a still
earlier stage that needs to be briefly touched upon. The
inhuman carnage that accompanied partition and the bit-
ter trail of broken hearts, bitter memories, and rootlessness
that it left in its wake would have created an ideal climate
for RSS's growth.4 Besides, there was always a section of
the Congress of which both Nehru and Gandhiji were
critical for having a soft corner for Hindu communalism.
This the RSS knew as is suggested by its repeated attempts
to play down Nehru and idealise Patel and Rajendra
Prasad. Even the nearly loyalist role of Hindu com-
munalism in the anti-colonial struggle was not sufficient
to prevent this possible growth. But the RSS missed the
bus at this stage and was forced to lie low, largely due to
the assassination of Gandhiji. Since then, RSS reactions to
Gandhiji have been a mixture of idealisation and criticism.'
The RSS was banned and this ban was lifted only after its
leadership gave a written assurance to the effect that it was
a harmless socio-cultural organisation. This cast a shadow
over its subsequent career and RSS workers even in the
eighties would chafe at this allusion.8 M.S. Golwalker
helped Syama Prasad Mukharjee to found the Jana Sangh
also to outgrow the ignominy of this event. Few recognize
the sad irony that through his martyrdom Gandhiji
rendered as great a service to independent India as he did
through his long life in fighting colonialism. That Gandhiji
chose to be wedded to Hindu-Muslim unity though his
death was to stir a few uneasy consciences for years; a fact
that the RSS knew too well. This period was also dominated
14
by the stresses and strains between the hard core RSS
Cadre and the liberal easy going communalists like Muk-
harjee himself who had fallen into moderate communalism
late in their life. One recent writer has pointed to this
internal problem as a critical one faced by Hindu com-
munalism.7
From the fifties to the early seventies, we have a fairly
identifiable phase of RSS strategy. This strategy was
hemmed in by objective conditions and by its subjective
perceptions of its role. Three fears dominated RSS under-
standing of Indian reality and its reactions were condi-
tioned by three corresponding hatreds. One was socialism;
the second was the fear of a Muslim domination of the
country; the third was the revolt of the lower castes and the
attendant disruption of the Varnasramadharma.8 Its
whole propaganda and the thrust of its strategy can be
understood as revolving round these three possibilities and
attempts to evolve alternatives.
The RSS took "Avadi Socialism" seriously, much more
seriously than the Left. M.S. Golwalker writes, "the threat
of communalism has become real from another quarter in
our country. And that is by the present policy of our govern-
ment who have declared socialism.... as their goal".9 The
wave of nationalisation, the emphasis on public sector and
planning, the praise of the Soviet Union, and the tolerance
shown to Communists were sufficient indices for the RSS
that India was scaling the Russian path. In this battle it
picked on the "Communists" inside the Congress as their
main enemies, followed closely by the various socialist
parties. Golwalker is very clear on the issues. "A person can
either be a Hindu or a Communist. He cannot be both".19
Various groups and individuals within the Congress known
for vague left sympathies were attacked, with Nehru and
Krishna Menon singled out for character assassination."
With the death of Patel and the hopes of a rightward
15

transformation dwindling away in the days of Nehru's
euphoric popularity, the RSS turned bitter. One recurring
picture in its writings is expressed in a memory and a hope,
in "a would-have-been": if it had been Patel instead of
Nehru, India would have been saved.
The strategy of criticising Congress took the following
forms. While Nehru faced the Chinese debacle, the RSS
circles joined the anti-Nehru chorus as its loudest. They
were so full of glee that "Hindu-Chini bhai bhai" was all
over. It was alleged with the usual padding of innuendoes
and insinuations that the Congress was treacherous and
that the failure of the Indian Army was due to either
planned mismanagement or willing weakness. The image
of Congress weakness was a recurring one. The RSS was
the major force to use brigadier J.P. Dalvi'sThe Himalayan
Blunder as a case study of a good army being destroyed by
poor politicians and fifth- columnists — a refrain of the old
Nazi song that we were stabbed in the back!12 Similarly,
the RSS did its best to paint a series of dark stories around
Lal Bahadur Shastri's death at Tashkent. The idea was
that it was a Soviet conspiracy. As there was no earthly
° motive for the Soviets and as it would have been ridiculous
for anybody to murder a Head of State visiting their
country, the charge did not stick. This game of ultra-
nationalism was played to outflank the Congress, though
the people learned to ignore it, with the story of the freedom
movement still green in their memories.
A second line of attack focused on the Congress's soft-
pedalling the Communists. This also took the form of a
sustained campaign that was launched against the Soviet
Union and its allies on the international plane. The pro-
American tilt is very clear in Madhok. "In their misplaced
liberalism and emotional antipathy for the USA and
erstwhile colonial powers of the West, they have developed
notions about Communist countries and Communism
16
which have no relation with facts".13 The idea was that it
was an un-Indian ideology, being of alien origin, but it was
rarely attacked for its compromises on democracy.
Yet another lynch-pin of this brand of anti-Congressism
was the question of the anti-zamindari legislation. Gol-
walker took a clear position favourable of the landlords:
"Some people feel that the Bhoodan movement launched by
Vinobaji will take away the appeal of Communism. On the
contrary, with its Communist slogan of 'land to the tiller'
and with threats like, 'If you do not give of your own accord,
Communists are bound to come up and take away your land
all by force', by some of his short-sighted followers, it will
only give rise to an impression in the mass mind that after
all Communism is correct and is inimitable. It will be an
indirect sanction of Communism."
Even the limited anti-zamindari legislation propounded by
the Congress was projected as destructive of the traditional
order. In Bihar, the Jana Sangh joined the zamindari
sections and prevailed upon President Rajendra Prasad to
withhold his signature that would have made the bill a
law.15 Hence it had to be delayed, legal obstacles avoided
with so many loopholes being introduced, so much so that
the final form of the bill was nearly as pro- zamindari as it
was pro-tenant. These legal actions and petitions were
similarly complemented by the grassroots activism that the
RSS supplied liberally to the landed aristocracy in sup-
pressing the lower elements in the agrarian order. By way
of illustration from the periphery, it may be noted that in
Kerala nearly all the early RSS workers were either
itinerant traders or members of the feudal aristocracy that
was fast loosing ground. Even in the Hindu belt this openly
pro-landlordist stand is probably the reason why there is
no love lost between certain sections of the people op-
pressed by the earlier landlordism and the BJP.
In fact, the old Jana Sangh could fare better in the towns
17

where small traders and scattered refugees formed a cozier
environment for it to work in. The first generation lower
middle class in the cities loves to imagine that they were
landlords back in the villages. With them the RSS promise
of conserving the old order must have provided a dim
nostalgia, a remembrance not so much of things past as of
a past imagined. This was more difficult in the villages
where the costs of tradition were more perceptible than its
aesthetic twilight grandeur. It is always sound strategy to
claim a conservation of somebody else's tradition in the
name of one's own.
The last round of this phase of strategy was enacted in the
fateful years of the late sixties. Here the Jana Sangh
teamed up with the most reactionary elements in Indian
politics to attack what was left of the nationalists or
popular tradition of the Congress. The central issues that
figured in this attack were four:
a. Bank nationalisation.
b. The abolition of privy purses.
c.The Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty, and
d. The terms and conditions of the Simla Pact.
The jingoism and the class character of the RSS are best
illustrated in each of these issues. Defence of landlordist
interests, a pro-American free enterprise path of develop-
ment. ultra-imperialism — these are the plain, if contradic-
tory, elements woven into this strategy. Since then it has
changed.
Did this assault on the Congress succeed? Yes and No! It
failed in class terms because of its disarming candour and
it could not address itself to a sufficiently large mass base.
But it was a battle to a great extent in ideological terms.
The RSS was able to drive home the point — now accepted
without argument — in many circles — that the heritage of
the freedom movement was its own. How was it possible
for the RSS to claim the ideological lineage of a movement
with which it had no institutional links at all or with which
it was openly at divergence? This takeover of the past is
one of the unfortunate stories of our post-Independence
history and its tragic results may haunt our future for
sometime to come.
The tradition of our National Movement was going begging
till the late seventies. The Communists who have a right
to it rarely bothered to step down from their high interna-
tional pedestal to claim it. They almost scorned to be known
as nationalists and now that they are back at it they must
be finding it painful to see that their positions are firmly
occupied in public esteem by right reactionaries whose
participation in reality has been a brand of retrospective
wish-fulfillment. The Congress has not so much lost out as
it has been significantly displaced and downgraded in this
race for historical spoils. The generation ( mainly middle
class) born at the dawn of freedom has every reason to be
surprised that the Congress it knows had anything to do
with any mass movement worth the name. The Congress
leadership has converted it into a party of pure power and
patronage so that no one. not even the leadership itself,
takes its ideology or programmes seriously.
Therefore, the youth of the late sixties either went left or
turned right, wherever they thought that principled
politics lay. One inherent weakness of liberal politics when
confronted with Fascist coherence is that, ideologically,
liberalism sounds so weak and middle aged, with its com-
promises and hedgings included. In areas where the left
could not offer the youth the time and the opportunity to
cool their radical heels, they were taken over by the right.
A second reason for the RSS appropriation of the Freedom
Movement is linked to the failure of nationalism as an
ideology, particularly its historiographic aspect. From the
1918

Understanding Communalism The Strategy of Hindu Communalism
unified national society with common character and
qualities. The newcomers should bring about a total
metamorphosis in their attitudes and take a rebirth, as it
were, in that national lineage."19 Closely interwoven into
these statements is the spirit of aggressive imperialism. To
quote Golwalker again: "How many of us feel the insult that
we are denied access to our holy kailas and manasa
sarovar, that we have no chance even to take a dip in the
sacred Sindhu which gave us the name of Hindu and
Hindustan. Takshasila, once the world centre for diffusion
of Hindu thought is. no more with us... Do all these
memories burn in our veins?"20 RSS also has its Danzings
and its Ruhr Valleys.
The second major aspect of communalist strategy was
centred around the fear of Muslims. It is difficult to judge
the extent to which this was a routine fare dished out as
propaganda. Probably, the refugee mentality fueled such
an attitude even among a section of the leadership, though
such a mentality remains odd for the Maratha brahmins
who were geographically far removed to feel the brunt of
the partition riots. Apart from secondary experience gained
through myth-like stories of Muslim cruelty grafted on to
a similarly split historical vision, it is quite possible that
the genocide associated with the partition was merely a
heaven-sent opportunity to which the RSS latched on
eagerly. Even here it is notable that RSS, like Fascism
elsewhere, has a way of charging the past with the future,
of converting memories into fears, nightmares into forebod-
ing. The almost totally negative character of this Hindutva
is nowhere better expressed than in their obsessive fixation
with the past and the complete exclusion of the future from
their discourses.21 It is in this sense that it is truly reac-
tionary. With all my skepticism about economic reduc-
tionism, such ideologies get currency particularly when
real life also seems to remain static. An incidental point is
very beginning, the historical perception associated with
Indian Nationalism had a revivalist, even Hindu religious,
tinge about it. Historians like K.P. Jayaswal, R.K. Mukhar-
jee and R.C. Majumdar chose to attack British claims to
having a civilizing mission by pointing to the exclusively
"Hindu" and "ancient" part of our civilization.
Bankimachandra16 and other Bengali intellectuals17
started a game of shadow boxing in which the then non-ex-
istent national struggle was wished into being as a struggle
between Hindus and Muslims in medieval times. This has
been aptly described as vicarious nationalism. This tradi-
tion of eulogy had a field day till the seventies and it was
able to pass muster as common sense, in the absence of
sustained analysis from a secular point of view. A whole
tradition of untruths has been permanently enshrined in
text books and syllabi and has become difficult to dislodge.
As the RSS markets this cult in the present, it is tempting
to believe that it upheld the values of nationalism in the
past. Thus partly by the default of others and partly due to
their successful technology of manufacturing the past, they
have been able to slide into a historical position of great
political value.
This is a proper point of departure to analyse the concrete
content of its proclaimed nationalism. To quote Golwalker,
"Nothing can be holier to us than this land. Every particle
of dust, every thing living or non-living, every stock and
stem, tree and rivulet of this land is holy to us... All our
important religious ceremonies start with Bhoomi pooja —
worship of earth: There is the custom that as soon as a
Hindu wakes up in the morning he begs forgiveness of the
mother earth because he cannot help touching her with his
feet throughout the day".18 Here nationalism was primarily
land-centred and not people-centred. Cultural nationalism
was a second component. Here Golwalker writes: "Mere
common residence in a particular territory cannot forge
20 21

1 Understanding Communalism The Strategy of Hindu Communalism
way of combatting and isolating them was to dub them as
CIA agents.24
Another major forte of RSS arguments was the
demographic Madhok commented that Muslims rose in
numbers by 15,000,000 in two decades since 1947, while
ignoring the population growth of the Hinthis.25 The gist of
this dubious statistics was that the Hindus should outdo
the Muslims in this race for numbers. There were similar
arguments that talked in terms of miniature Pakistans
within India created by Muslims.26
The main thrust of RSS's anger was reserved for the secular
parties like the Congress and the Communists. The main
criticism was that the Congress aided the Muslims and that
"the Congress example soon began to affect other parties
particularly those which was splintered out of it". It was
asserted that India was the only country where the
minorities were pampered.27 Great nationalist leaders like
Azad, Zakir Hussain and even Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
were maligned in the foulest language. The criticism
against Zakir Hussain was that he did not allow his grand
daughter to marry a non-Muslim.28 It is a tribute to the
decency of many of them that they did not reply in a similar
way. But such silence was systematically interpreted by
the RSS as complicity. Here again the German parallels
are the most informative. This propaganda machinery was
extremely successful in the long run and they were able to
fatally debunk such part of our secular heritage as has
survived. Hindus have learned to be shame-faced and
apologetic about it. It is quite surprising that they were
able to project a more than life-size portrait of Muslim
communalism particularly when the Muslims, except in
some areas, have nocentral or even pfovincial level or-
ganisation.
A very interesting theoretical technique that the RSS
developed during the period was to project the Hindus as
23
that RSS seems to have had little role either in the carnage
or in the social service activities that accompanied parti-
tion. But in their grand mythology they filled the stage of
history.
Let us now survey the techniques associated with the
anti-Muslim emotions at the theoretical and practical
levels.
As Pakistan was theocratic and India secular, it was ar-
gued that the Muslims have certain special obligations,
namely, the embarrassing duty of proving their loyalty
twice over. Golwalker writes: "The conclusion is that in
practically every place, there are Muslims who are in
constant touch with Pakistan over the transmitter enjoying
not only the rights of an average citizen but also some extra
privileges and extra favour because they are minorities".22
Such arguments were used by the RSS cadre and pushed
to an almost paranoid extent. They had their chance during
the Indo-Pak war when it was fashionable to denounce
Muslims as the internal enemies, aiding and abetting the
external ones.23 Slogans like, "Scratch a Muslim and you
will find in him a Pakistani" were aired freely in speeches
and pamphlets. The Organizer regularly ran a feature
"Muslim press x-rayed", which contained the kind of
propaganda that would have done a Gobbles proud. Similar
inventive was reserved for the Christians also. In this case
all missionaries were accused of being American agents. In
the heat of the accusation, it was forgotten that the bulk of
the money that came to India was Catholic and that
Catholics 'continued to be near outsiders in American
society and politics. This was also a case where the RSS
shoe pinched directly. Christian missionaries were active
in the tribal areas like Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.
While some of them graduated from harmless piety to
socially radical positions harmful to caste, others intel-
ligently used these to aid conversion. The most effective
22

essentially weak, disorganized and unable to defend them-
selves. This casual explanation of India's weakness was an
unwittingly true description of her social order. Even the
imagined community of Hinduism is a comparatively
recent one. RSS originality lay in asserting that such a
"Hindu" identity was real, but that it was not felt by the
majority. By precept and example, they were able to steadi-
ly wish into existence such an identity in large parts of the
country during the sixties. Paradoxically enough, their
claims to revive the past were only props to this identity
formation. In this they were careful to attack many ele-
ments of tradition that were harmful to militant Hinduism.
Tolerance, glorified in early nationalist discourse, were
attacked as one of the proverbial weaknesses of the Hindus.
"Every national insult is covered up under the mark of
peace. Day after day we find our frontiers shrinking... all
these we gulp down saying that we are devotees of peace.
It is said in the Mahabharatha, that a person who goes on
swallowing insults is neither a male nor a female."29
Disunity among Hindus was another weakness.3° In all
these cases the success of RSS propaganda lay in exploiting
one of the most sensitive of sentiments, the sense of weak-
ness, and in inducing the meanest of emotions, the sense
of being cheated.31 Golwalker writes, "No other people in
the world have so far been so singularly unfortunate as we
Hindus in this regard." The theoretical frills and the his-
torical fiction necessary to sustain this need not detain us
here. They were premised on the image of the barbaric
foreign Muslims streaming into the holy land of the Ganga
via the Khyber; of the weak, gullible or treacherous Hindu
being cheated ofhis chaste women, of the holy temples that
were desacralised and of an occasional Rajput challenging
this swarm of locusts — in glorious anticipation of the
modern swayam-sevaks of our time.32
The option given to the Muslims was to Indianise or Hin-
24
duise, themselves, that is, to put it in narrower terms, to
accept the religion of the brahmanical elite. Madhok ap-
pealed to Muslims that they, "come out in the open soon
and declare at least to their own conscience to whom their
loyalty is, to India or Pakistan. If Pakistan, they must pack
up lock, stock and barrel and go to Pakistan at once. Such
people have no right to have any claim on even one square
inch of our sacred soil."33 He was also very clear that Gods
and festivals of foreign extraction have no place in our
country and that Muslims and Christians have a plentiful
choice from the Indian pantheon teeming with gods.34 This
applied to rituals and holidays where the litmus test was
the country of origin of these. "There are plenty of Hindus
who have names like Ram Ghulam, Santh Baksh Singh,
Eqbal Chand. Why cannot Muslims have names like Suraj
Din and Ram Dutta if not pure Sanskrit names as in
Indonesia"?35 The terms of cultural absorption and as-
similation were insulting to the non-Hindus.
To actualise their role as self-proclaimed defenders of faith,
the RSS cadre had to provoke riots. This was comparatively
easy in the atmosphere of many North Indian towns. The
inter- religious competition in small-scale trade, the cen-
turies-long tradition of religiously divided settlement pat-
terns and even segregated division of labour and above all,
the culture of violence inbuilt into the oppressive life of the
urban poor — all this promised to erupt in explosive fury if
only some one provided the original impulse. The success
of these tactics involving rumour and fear psychosis can be
appreciated only if we keep in mind the transverse trajec-
tories of our Third World urbanisation, an experience that
opens up new vistas for traditional bonds like caste,
religion, region and ethnicity. In fact it is highly doubtful
whether any part of the world has witnessed the kind of
modernisation in which "all that is solid melts". RSS chose
to provoke riots quite wisely. Organisationally they could
25

hegemonise the looser forms of Hindu communalism and
urban violence in general. They alone could give these
tendencies organisational definiteness and institutional
permanence. Ideologically, these could be paraded in other
parts of the country either as incidents worthy of indigna-
tion or as heroic sagas. Above all, riots are the raw material
for further riots. During this stage the RSS was not at pains
to cover up its communalism. There were no smiling masks
or velvet gloves.
Golwalker writes, "The other main feature that distin-
guished our society was the varna-vyavastha. But today it
is being dubbed casteism and scoffed at. Our people have
come to feel that the mere mention of varna-vyavastha is
something that has implied in it social discrimination."36
The threat from "lower orders" and the fear of an inversion
of the norms of the sanathanadharma constitutes the third
phobia around which the strategic machinery of the RSS is
deployed. This has something to do with the region of its
origin, Maharashtra. It is notable that the founding fathers
of the RSS as also a considerable section of its leadership
came from the Maratha Brahmin community. One of the
unpalatable experiences of this dominant section is the
series of non-brahmin and now Dalit movements in this
State. True to their class and caste instincts, they chose to
define a Hindutva that was a mixture of savarna norms
and neologism. To quote Golwalker again, "... there are
some who never tire of propagating that it was the varna-
vyavastha, that brought about our downfall down these
centuries. But does this interpretation bear the scrutiny of
history? Castes there were in those ancient times too,
continuing for thousands of years of our glorious national
life. There is nowhere any instance of it having hampered
the programme or disrupted the unity of society. It in fact
served as a great bond of social cohesion."37 There are three
levels to the character of Hindu religion that went into this
26
definition that are interesting as 'elite' absorption of
popular religious traditions and practices.
One, they chose their religious symbolism mostly from the
brahmanical or savarnatradition, tried to universalise this
as the religion of all, ignoring the lower-class religion or
oral, ritual and mythic readings that provided the Indian
traditions with its rich, if heterogeneous, variety. This
selective definition was achieved by techniques of ideologi-
cal repression, displacement and condensation that are too
complex to go into here. We will subsequently try to explain
the "compensatory mechanism" that made this process
somewhat alluring to certain sections of the lower castes.
Two, in geographical terms this selection confined its choice
of religious modes largely to certain areas: mainly
Maharashtra. Since then the RSS territory of Hindu
religion has somewhat expanded with some degree of
regional representation. RSS Hinduism is essentially the
Hinduism of the Maharashtra Brahmins at this stage.
This, to some extent, explains why it has not been very
evocative in the far South or in East India.
Three, a corresponding technique at the ideological level
was to invest political history, particularly the medieval
past, with a religious aura: a fatal mark of intensity
stamped on it by communal discourses. Here I do not mean
just the empirical flaws in converting the ideological strug-
gles of that period into ones between good Hindus and bad
Muslims. The deeper damage lies in changing the whole
terrain of the narrative into one suffused with the colours
of the communal vision. In essence, medieval history came
nearer to the contemporary — much nearer than the
freedom movement — and from this it was only one short
step before people would be emotionally prepared to die or
murder for Sivaji, Rana Pratap or Ram.
The counter-factual example is that the freedom movement
27

was rarely debated at all; nor does it figure in the same
sense in these high voltage discourses. Above all, the his-
torical fact that India is singularly blessed with two distinct
"medieval periods" aided these presentations. The techni-
que lay in glorifying the feudal past of the first stage (4th
century to 12th century A.D.) and running down the second
medieval period (12th to 18th centuries) which had
predominantly a Muslim upper class. Interestingly
enough, the Muslim communalists nearly inverted the
terms of this presentation but were caught within the
ambit of its framework.
The attempts to invoke the 'Hindu community' in this
period need some analysis. This is qualitatively different
from the social reform movements or from the revivalist
movements of the colonial period. Barring the suddikarma
elements of the Arya Samaj which were neither as broad
nor as determined as the present ones, they were rather
attempts to create sects of "philosophical communities" of
a broader range with inbuilt norms of universality. These
could not accommodate into the general framework of
traditional Hinduism or absorbed into its peculiarly
specific paths of change. They demanded no break with the
ideological equilibrium of traditional religion, which could
be conceived as a floating one than as one centred on a fixed
point. The RSS attempt was so radically new that even its
practitioners and some of its critics mistook it to be the old.
This new religion is defined in the following terms: It tries
to create a single sense of history by a powerful process of
selection and elimination from the past. It also goes by a
monolithic criterion of interpretative validity, by its claims
to truth as a privileged possession. This does considerable
violence to the heterogeneity of the sampradayas which
made up orthodox Hindu ideology. It also introduced the
totally new notion of the religious community that is
focused on the institutional rather than on a collectivity of
28
shared norms. This is achieved by fusing the image of the
nation with that of this religious community. Many old,
pious Hindus have noted that the RSS vision of Hinduism
resembles the image of Semitic intolerance that it parades
as its "other"; that its God is like the God of the inquisition
who has to outdo Satan so that his jealously reared children
could be saved from a satanic world.
There are at least two reasons that made this new com-
munity attractive. First, there are the obvious Sanskritisa-
tion pulls. The concept of Sanskritization is likely to raise
quizzical eyebrows because it has been used as a catch-all
for all social mobility, with no sensitivity to its historical
variations. But it is of use.in explaining lower caste absorp-
tion in areas where social reform or more radical move-
ments have not occurred or have been very weak. Lower
castes and tribes are justified in feeling elated when they
are allowed visual or auditory participation in a religious
universe that is all the more charming precisely because it
was taboo till recently. To understand the full emotional
strength of this promotion, one has to appreciate that
brahmanical religion has been exclusivist rather than
proselytising.Its logic was exclusion rather than incorpora-
tion, and when RSS attempted a socially conservative but
ideologically radical reversal of this pattern, it did hold a
seductive charm for many. This is one reason why
rationalists who sought to establish that religion was hum-
bug got caught on the wrong foot. They were swimming
against the tide; trying to prove to people who had acquired
a new religion at considerable pains that is was not really
a commodity worth acquiring. Second, the organisational
character of the RSS is attuned to couching the secular in
the form of the sacred. For various sections of the middle
classes bored with the humdrum details of modern society,
it promises a religious dimension of an intense nature, a
sense of security, and the restoration of a sense of totalised
29

Understanding Communalism.
sociality that must be a relief in an atomised world where
hopeless individuals confront each other. The cult of the
mother is one such expression. The maternal, just like land,
is elevated into an abstract object of worship, and this
invokes regressive images that appeal to a particular sec-
tion of the people.38 The hero worship that surrounds the
image of the hero and the contrasting picture of the ego-less
follower are structured in a similar fashion. Early leaders
like Hedgewar are practically treated as avatars.'
The bonds of military fraternity within the RSS are also
appealing to the creation of a barrack-like equality.° These
would protect the naked ego from the fear of freedom,
however limited in its tortuous Third World versions. Even
the partial success of this anti-individualistic ethos must
convince us that capitalism generates not only higher but
lower negations of itself; a lesson that we may not have to
relearn too well. A more developed extension of this in-
cluded Auschwitz that conferred a kind of equality on its
victims — the silent sameness of death.
In our survey of the main thrusts of Hindu communalist
strategy till the early seventies, we have focused on the
three main problematics around which it was organised.
These are not exhaustive, nor is it assumed that there were
not elements of continuity at all.
The Hindu cominunalists were some of the most ardent
advocates of Hindi. This helped them stay abreast of the
linguistic chauvinism in the Hindi belt, though other par-
ties based in that area could not be outdone in the assump-
tion that the unity of the Indian nation is best articulated
in the uniformity of one language that would gradually
replace inconvenient diversity. But this was rather costly
as movements like the DMK were built on an equally
irrational reverence for Tamil and would not take kindly to
its demotion. The RSS did not score much by way of elec-
toral victories during this period and the Jana Sangh
tactics in this field were fairly simplistic. It was only in the
next stage that they became aware of the ballot as an organ
of power. Their use of religion was not comprehensive
enough in the sense that they rarely launched attempts to
successfully interact either with the temple religion of the
masses or with the new "Matth religions" of the urban
middle classes. These possibilities they were to explore
with great effect in the next two stages.
Moreover, the friends of Hindu communalism, as they
perceived it, were the right fringe of Indian politics, includ-
ing the Congress right and the Swathantra Party. In this
mediation, agencies like the Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan had
a pivotal role. The Bhavan's Journal with its middle of-The-
road message that was apparently neutral in politics of-
fered welcome spiritual solace for the comfortably retired.
Moderate Communalism
The late sixties and seventies constitute the watershed of
our history. An agrarian crisis accentuated the problems of
rural poverty, and urban unemployment added to the
problems. The political dimensions of this crisis can be
gauged by the fact that the Congress came through in 1967
with the slenderest of majorities; with opposition parties
forming coalition governments in Tamil Nadu, Kerala,
Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Delhi. The death
throes of the old order were signified by struggles of the
extreme Left for the poor peasants and the tribals in many
regions.
Exploitative and oppressive strategies of the old type also
came cut in crystal-clear forms — Jana Sangh, the Congress
(0) and the Swathanthra Party. The situation was such
that the rest of the political spectrum was forced to speak
one variation or other of the socialist tongue. This ranged
from the "Garibi Hatao" of the young Turks to the "spring
thunder" of the youth. At this turning point, Indian history
30 31

refused to turn and got stuck in its grooves. The Left pulled
in different directions and came out fossilized in self-
righteous cocoons made of inflexible sectarianism.
The Socialists got bogged down in the problems of the Hindi
belt. If the Communists suffered from too much of organisa-
tion, the Socialists suffered from too little of it. One result
was that this political surplus that came out of their labour
in the Bihar movement could be conveniently appropriated
by the far right. The brilliance of Indira Gandhi is best
illustrated in these fateful days when she successfully
modernised the Congress. By an effortless shift to the left
she achieved two objectives. She pensioned off the old guard
whit had become a liability to the new "Socialists" image
that was cultivated with care. She made the C.P.I. look silly
by embracing them in an alliance — the notorious emergen-
cy honeymoon — that has permanently discredited them in
Kerala. While the left missed its rendezvous with history,
the right was waiting on the wings. It was learning its
lessons in strategy, shedding its early naivete. The new
shift in communalist strategy has to be viewed in this
context. It was constrained by the following factors.
a.The Zamindars had become defunct in the economy as a
class. To back them openly — it came to be recognised — was
suicidal.
b. Changes in the agrarian order had brought to the fore-
front a variegated peasantry leci,by the rich peasants who
were also the dominant castes in many regions. To win
them over was a subtle task. The successive political
manifestations of this class in Uttar Pradesh — Bharathiya
Kranti Dal, Lok Dal and Janatha — were competing in the
same region and over the same people. Programmatic shifts
that would neutralise the populist content of these parties
had to be envisaged. These were linked to prices of grains,
easier terms of rural credit, lower prices for pesticides and
fertilisers etc. The jargon of the "Hindu community" had to
32
be sufficiently modified to accommodate these groups, as
also to integrate the vast tribal tracts in central India that
the BJP rightly perceived to be a fertile field for their
operations.
c.At a more abstract level, it became nearly anachronistic
to plead for pure free enterprise and to advocate a pro U.S.
foreign policy. All these brought about a three-fold change
in Hindu communalist strategy. Ideologically, it replaced
the direct and extremist politics of Hinduism by the more
sophisticated terminology of Bharathiya Samskriti,
moderate communalism. Strategically, it tried parliamen-
tary politics as against militant action. It also involved a
less potent emphasis on the cadre based politics and a shift
to the use of mass movements. We will survey the strategic
elements of this phase which continued into the late
eighties.
Strategic Inputs
We will, first, analyse the strategic inputs of this modera-
tion. RSS started discontinuing the direct and belligerent
policy of provoking communal riots. In fact a study of the
rise and fall of the graph of communal riots will prove that
it bears a close correlation to RSS policy. After the wave of
23 riots in 1969, communal riots were comparatively few
(though by no means absent) till the eighties. It would also
illustrate that, to a great extent, it has been within the
power of the RSS to make or unmake communal riots. This
does not mean that they had discontinued their communal
ideology, but that it took much more complex forms. This
period paradoxically witnessed a looser, more intangible,
communalisation of Indian politics. This became stronger
with the long-term decline of class politics and the waning
of healthy nationalism within the Congress.
Hindu Communalism also evolved a new discourse, the
constituent elements of which require serious analysis. The
33

central point of definition in this discourse was Indian
Culture. This vague point demands detailed scrutiny. To a
great extent this new orientation consisted of placing "In-
dian" as an adjective wherever "Hindu" had been used
earlier. New elements were added to this field and the field
expanded. The advantage of this was that a broader terrain
of the past has been captured by a mere juxtaposition of
terms.
The very constitution of "culture" as the privileged object
of discourse has its implications. This is achieved by an
exclusion of several segments of real life like labour and
social conflicts. These are demoted as the vulgar and the
plebeian. By discursive strategies that invokes a hidden
censor against all that is demeaning to this culture. Those
who champion this culture-politics are able to come up as
the heirs of all that is rarefied, pure, and therefore, :cul-
tured" in the past.
The .terms of this constitution are equally interesting.
Culture is rarely specific culture; it is culture in the
abstract. Communalist reconstruction of Indian culture,
just as their reworking of Hinduism in the earlier stage is,
distinctively, original for its shallowness. The eulogies of
Sankara or Ramanuja rarely contain a discussion of their
ideas or aspirations to put them into practice. In fact,
spirituality was a thorn in the communal flesh. They had
to phrase renunciation as a product of the Indian heritage
but ensured that it was not practiced. Therefore, they
praised the sanyasins, but rarely spoke of their principles.
The point that is stressed is their greatness or originality
or superiority over the West. Most of their sayings are
invoked as signs, the signified being a monstrous "national"
qua Hindu ego. In other words, it is not the culture of India,
but the Indianness of the culture that is worshipped as an
unceasing source of childish wonder and joy.
The Indian culture so constructed is as significant for what
34
it excludes as for what it includes. All that smacks of the
Islamic was kept out of its confines. The great tradition of
Indo-Saracenic architecture, medieval painting, Hindus-
tani music and Urdu poetry are some of the cultural expres-
sions that are exorcised. It is becoming clearer that such
an Indian culture is being established as the mainstream
tradition. One u4dercurrent of this culture is a finely
nuanced Hindu fundamentalism. All that is eclectic is
dismissed as foreign or imperfect. From the reformation
down to the present Iranian religion, fundamentalism is an
indirect tool of religious conflict because it disapproves of
the accommodating syncretisms at the popular level by
holding them to the dead gaie of textual authority.
Heterogeneity and historical accretions are ironed out
when they fail the test of cultural standardisation. This
new culture was ahistorical, shaped either as a palimpsest
or as a smooth flow. This culture- centred discourse marks
one of the important bylanes through which the extremist
Hinduism of the sixties went into a long liberal detour — a
rite of passage by which they have come to their present
point of arrival — the new fanaticism of the eighties. We do
not assume this path to be free of blockages or even that
the process has been completed, but it is being carried
through now.
A third aspect of this moderation was built around a new
parliamentary strategy. We have noticed their early fear
and contempt for the elections and for popular politics in
general that they rarely bothered to cover up. This under-
went a sea- change in the seventies. They gave up or at least
shelved their early utopia of a total and unqualified Hin-
duisation of Indian politics. In fact, themes like conversion
and suddhi reminiscent of its early days were played own.
They started speaking in the name of a national consensus.
Parliamentarism brought about a series of united front
arrangements. From 1.977 to 1980 they sided with the Left
35

in Kerala and, by extension, with a section of the Muslim
League. For some time in Andhra they teamed up with the
Telugu Desam. They have a long and stable alliance with
the Sivasena in Maharashtra. The most crucial of these
U.F. experiments was their merger with the Janatha Party
in 1977. It was claimed that 96 members of the 1977
Parliament belonged to the old Jana Sangh. A study of the
mechanics of the dissolution and reconstitution of the Jana
Sangh would point to the ideological and organisational
resilience of its cadre. Both the Right and Left versions of
the non-Congress opposition that went into the Janatha
amalgamation failed to survive the shocks of break-up. The
cohesive character of Hindu ideology and the contrasting
weakness of these anti-Congress orientations combined to
achieve this result. It was also the RSS base that made it
possible for the Jana Sangh to survive this process and to
come out successful. Old socialists like Madhu Limaye were
aware of this when they dared the Jana Sangh constituents
of the Janatha Party to delink themselves from the RSS.
The Jana Sangh members also knew that this would be
suicidal. The result was that a whole series of leaders from
Morarji Desai to George Fernandes lost their popular base.
The biggest gain for communalism was in Gujarat, where
they stepped in to fill the space occupied by the
Swathanthra Party and the Congress(0). The BJP was able
to capitalise on the otherwise non-communal rightist
strands in certain branches of urban politics. The decline
of Left politics among the Bombay working classes led to
successive phases of "embourgeoisement" through Shiva
Sena regionalism, the optional economism of Dutta
Samant, and, of late, the violent nexus between drug traf-
ficking, smuggling, underworld crime, and the cinema.
Now the BJP stepped in there to cap a quarter-of-a-century
of erosion of working-class politics. The urban strength of
communalism, not only in Bombay but also in the steel city
belt, demands a serious strategic re-orientation among the
Left. The political space of the working class is larger than
36
the one occupied by the shop-floor. The culture of our new
working class, particularly its better-off sections, is ex-
pressed through the family, neighbourhood and a complex
institutional network. Caste, ethnicity, regionalism, lin-
guistic identity and militant religious revivalism seem to
gain in strength rather than weaken when rootless people
are confronted with the image of their own separation.
Unless an emotionally satisfying popular culture develops
in this 'private space' of the working class, the communal
ethos can come up as an emotional palliative for big-city
blues.
Before the seventies the RSS was never involved in mass
movements and generally held that a few dedicated cadres
were better than a large number of unthinking and fickle
masses. But with the involvement in the Bihar movement
and their perception of its impact on the elections, they
have become aware of the value of mass movements. Since
then they have started using new styles of mobilisation like
jathas, hartals, etc. The militant and highly disciplined
kind of route marches, complete with the martial music,
were replaced by the much more unruly political proces-
sions with their typical pageantry. One by-product of this
style was that the RSS lost much of its distinctive ap-
pearance that implied a superior scorn for mass politics.
The new style was accompanied by a more determined
drive by the RSS to ' woo the youth. The RSS made a
concerted effort to shed its northern origins and all that it
entailed. There were attempts to project South Indian
heroes like Pazassi Raja as freedom fighters as also to wax
eloquent on the glories of the forgotten Vijayanagar empire
that was destroyed by the Muslims. These attempts to
enter the South in a big way have also to be viewed as a
result of electoral compulsions. This did not succeed in
Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu where regionalist forces
were strong, but there was an upward swing for the RSS
37

in Kerala and in Karnataka. East India was, by and large,
cold to the RSS throughout this period, mainly due to the
growth of various regional identities like the Assamese and
the Bengali.
Trying to Outgrow Anachronisms
A second set of strategic changes revolve around issues
grounded in political economy: democracy; socialism, and
the Indian social order. In each of these, we find com-
munalism trying to outgrow its anachronisms and to
present a comparatively modern front.
The question of democracy may be examined first. All
political techniques based on extra-parliamentary sources
but existing within a continuing parliamentary tradition
have this problem. If they ignore the route channels of
democracy, they will be sidelined. If they accept it in toto
they will be co-opted. Therefore, RSS pretensions to defend
democracy are to be seen as primarily tactical and as a
compliment to even the limited nature of our democratic
process. The total claims made on the individual by the
Rashtra in Golwalker's book and the organic conception of
the State developed by D. Upadhyaya started giving way
to a toned-down, less totalitarian conception of nation.
During the emergency, Jan Sangh did criticise the Con-
gress for trampling on individual rights like freedom and
democracy which was quite at odds with the vertical nature
of the Sakha organisation.
The gap between proclaimed democracy and its real ab-
sence was one reason why it could not hold youth attracted
to its fold by the glamour of the anti-emergency struggle.
The paradoxical nature of these claims to have struggled is
borne out by the near-apologetic character of the four
letters written by B. Deoras from prison to the Prime
Minister. The BJP.ode of anti-Congressism approximates
to Arun Shourie's and Phalkhivala's annual denunciations
38
of the budgets for straddling free enterprise. For want of a
better term, we choose to call this the bourgeois critique of
the Indian State, a critique that gives vent to the pos-
sibilities of those who already have a great deal and► who
ask for more.
This has become more vocal now, with the "socialist" ex-
periments being discredited on a global scale. The RSS's
attitude to the media is an example. It envisages media
that is closely controlled in terms of its content in that it
should express its version of cultural Indian nationalism,
but given maximum economic freedom to be run on com-
mercial lines. This is a possible division of labour that
augurs well for the business houses, where the State throt-
tles political dissent but stays aloof from profit making.
The moderate phase of BJP politics has been characterised
by a changed attitude to socialism. Though "socialism" has
not found its way into any of their documents, speeches and
statements could be cited to prove this shift towards a
softer attitude to socialism. There were suggestions that
their main objection to Indian Communists was that their
brand of socialism was violent and un-Indian and that it
should not take root in their own soil. A native socialism in
moderate hues was peddled, though few were taken in by
this. It was asserted that Vivekananda and Aurobindo had
a healthier and more advanced socialism of an indigenous
variety and that it was quite pointless to look outside for
inspiration. In spite of this, the central point was the
argument of corporatism. It was made up of the following
elements.
First, the emphasis was on the national economy and not
on internal divisions. But this was not accompanied by any
sophisticated understanding of imperialism and hence it is
possible that this economics would be much more "open
door" than that of the Congress. Like the Catholic parties
of Italy and France, they speak the sternest language of
39

nationalism, but have no compunctions about economic
adjustments with imperialism.
A second component was that of the balance of interests
between labour and capital. They deny the antagonistic
interests of the two and assume that they have common
national interests. In a situation where capital is
dominant, this is tantamount to buttressing it ideological-
ly. Related to this is the idea that the duties, rather than
the rights of labour, require emphasis. This is usually
expressed in the terminology of karmayoga. One curious
point requires mention here. This is the attitude of the
Indian capitalist class. Till recently their major bet was on
the Congress, with liberal patronage distributed to other
parties also. As a class it has not backed the BJP all the
way. Too much violence and communal bloodshed might
turn them away. But if the BJP gains in electoral terms
and if they promise to be a stable power in the future, this
might change. Some of the more significant bourgeois eggs
might be laid in the BJP basket; partly by necessity and
partly as they could promise an era of industrial discipline.
From the early seventies to the Mandal days the BJP
modified its early glorification ofVarnasramadharma and
tried in earnest to woo the lower castes. This again is a
function of vote percentages. Even the most consolidated
Brahmin-Rajput vote bank plus trader Hindus would leave
the BJP an 'also rang in many parts of North India. To
expand this base, it would require a social face-lift.
The RSS launched a massive social movement in the seven-
ties, mainly in Madhya Pradesh and in Rajasthan among
the tribals. This explains the increased social base in this
area. It was less effective in Maharashtra where there were
strong Dalit Movements and where their early baggage of
anti-Harijan activity was a drag on their newly acquired
conscience. Sociologically, their Central Indian endeavours
are interesting on two counts: 'Absorbing' or 'assimilating'
40
of the Gonds and Bhils was on terms laid by caste Hinduism
and this is a crucial cultural parallel to the needs of
development economics that has been converting tribals
into proletarians or marginal workers under similar condi-
tions in the coal and iron belts. These purification
ceremonies were aided by a colossal condescension and a
sense of the civilising mission so that they are akin to
conversion.
The initial challenge to the old order in these areas created
by the Christian missionaries forced the RSS to imitate
many of their methods albeit in Hindu form. In the far
south, the RSS is making a similar attempt in relation to
the tribals and fisherfolk. P. Parameswaran's biography of
Sree Narayana was the first indication of this change,
premised as it was on the hope of "rescuing" that great
social reformer from the Marxists. A still more interesting
example of Hindu social reform requires some perusal. In
Kerala the lower castes have certain religious rights as-
sociated with the temple of Kodungalloor on certain days
of the year. These include the singing of ribald songs and
performing of animal sacrifices, and are probably rooted in
the safety valve mechanisms of the feudal days. The RSS,
in alliance with some local sanyasins, sought to put an end
to this ritual. This time they ran up against heavy popular
opposition, and the police had to struggle each time to
prevent a physical clash. In this venture, the Hindus are in
good company, as the other wing of opposition to this
version of popular religion is made up by the rationalists.
The whole effort ended in a fiasco.
Organisational Techniques
These strategic shifts were not confined to ideological mat-
ters, but were linked to the organisational network and
methods of Hindu communalism. Some of these techniques
require to be inquired into.
41

There was a tendency for the RSS to wear a low profile
image at this stage. It was perceived that, if RSS came too
plainly into the open, it would scare off potential sym-
pathisers who were not really prepared to accept the whole
packet of RSS ideas and norms in all its purity. One
standard form in which this new low-key statement of the
RSS connection was formulated is interesting. It was main-
tained that the RSS was not really interested in politics
and that they were too pure to be corrupted by power and
that such low activities were the lot of the BJP. It is not to
be assumed that this new internal change was a pure
conspiracy.
It also reflected the internal cracks in the RSS-dominated
organisational structures. It also reflected the gap between
generations. The old guard grumbled that the new recruits
after the emergency were pleasure-loving, less dedicated,
and after the seats of power. The RSS leaders had real
problem of power in controlling mass organisations which
were working in an atmosphere so different from the one
they were used to. One symptom of this was that in 1978
they advised the ABVP to stay off college union elections.
Apparently the student organisation had strayed too far for
its comfort. The clearest expression of this tension is the
celebrated divide between Advani and Vajpayee. Though
the latter has also an RSS background, he has been the
most consistent champion of a liberalised communalism
that aspired to acceptability and decency. This is reflected
even in his life-style and language, in his non-puritanical
habits and rich Hindustani, generally foreign to the laconic
reserve of the RSS phraseology.
The overall configuration of Hindu communalist organisa-
tion underwent a change in keeping with this new strategy.
Prior to the seventies it was composed of two layers, with
RSS in the centre and organisations like Jan Sangh, BMS,
VHP, ABVP, etc. forming a ring outside. But since the
42
liberalisation of the seventies this has become more com-
plex. A still looser outer ring of communalism is being
formed, the branches of which are spread over the whole of
the civil society. This organisational layer is not directly
controlled by the RSS, but has a delicate relation that is
not modelled on the simple military model of command and
obey. The dynamics of this outer ring that includes culture
and politics requires research. The Visala Hindu Munnani
and the Hindu Maha Sammelan are the political expres-
sions of this trend. In regions like Kerala, the United Front
idea was to open up a new catchment area for com-
munalism, viz., caste politics. This had to be done without
threatening the existing leadership of caste organisations
like the NSS and the Brahmana Sabha.
The idea probably was that once the post was taken the
RSS could move in and convert the arena into organisation-
al strength of a more direct kind. In many areas, this
strategy did not get beyond A good start. Caste leaders
schooled in the intricacies of local power-politics felt their
ground eroding and outsmarted the RSS by pulling out. The
success or failure of this united front strategy would depend
on the future of communal politics as a power-block at the
national level. At least temporarily it was a failure.
A second area that was opened up as part of this strategy
was temple politics. The RSS was slowly learning that
temples were a great emotional force around which the
Hindu community could be organised. Construction of old
temples, renovation of dilapidated or imaginary ones and
the capture of existing temple committees were the major
techniques involved. The attempt to win over the sannyas
religions was a third aspect. Inter-ascetic competition is
very severe and can be as ruthless as in business or politics.
In this, every bit of lay patronage (money) and institutional
support (politics) helps. Very few sanyasins have either the
means or intentions to stay above wealth and power. The
43

Rajadanda of the RSS would have served as a welcome
complement to many leaning on a weak yogananda in these
money-minded days. A whole fleet of political swamis could
be found resting in the shadows of this umbrella. But this
relation is also subject to qualifications. Powerful swamis
like Chinmayananda have a great deal of independent clout
and do not take orders from the RSS. The price that they
demand for spiritual charisma may exceed RSS's political
calculations.
There are also the non-communal ascetics of which the
Ramakrishna Mission offers a principled and substantial
example. Others like Sai Baba speak of the sameness of
Ram and Rahim, to the continued dismay of the RSS. The
still more withdrawn mendicant orders persist in practis-
ing what was till recently the Hindu religion. The opening
of the Bharatiya Vichar Kendra in the seventies and its
regional manifestations like tapasya form another front of
communalism. The Kendra was an intellectual factory that
turned out a consistently rightist interpretation of the
world.
The regional and local versions played a similar role at
different levels. Two examples of the effect of this intellec-
tual respectability are notable. Both are from Kerala. One,
the RSS was able to start a children's forum called "Bala
Gokulam" with periodicsobha yatra that have a popularity
that outstrips the adult base of communalism. Two, the
Mathrubhumi, one of the most popular dailies in
Malayalam with a great nationalist tradition, has been
penetrated by a significant RSS presence. There is a large
section of the Malayali middle class that reads it as truth
and communalist interpretations can pass among them for
common sense. This semi autonomous, if sub-conscious,
outer pulp of support is the most crucial creation of the
moderate phase of Hindu communalisin. What was lost in
cadre-cohesion, it gained in a nebulous popularity. If it
44
stopped short of intellectual articulation, it penetrated the
political unconscious, where it persists as a bad habit of
thought, as an imperceptible odour. The management of
this circle and the canalisation of the forces it unleashed
placed heavy demands on the RSS mode of functioning.
That they were not uniformly successful in this tight rope
walking, we shall see below.
Movement Politics
Before we enter the contemporary phase of strategy, some
observations regarding its background are in order. The
ambidextrous skills of the Congress are renowned and are
a source of wonder and dismay for its opponents. Mrs.
Gandhi, during her second stint in office, was discovering
the political values of sadhus and mandirs. She shed the
marks of the iron lady and turned to more devout ways of
pleasing the electorate. Sympathetic commentators have
read this change as one towards genuine religion, but the
notable point is that her change of heart was sufficiently
public to be political. In the rightward manoeuvre similar
to the one executed in the seventies to outflank the Com-
munists, the Congress sought to catch the Hindu wind on
its sails. The most patent instance of this, the post- assas-
sination riots, need no labouring.
Some specific points, however, need to be noted. Within
hours of the incident, the names of Satwant Singh and
Beant Singh were released, thus giving the anti-Sikh cue
clearly. Again Rajiv Gandhi's first statement on the eve of
his accession was a clear legitimisation and, under the
circumstances, a call to go on an anti-Sikh rampage. How
could one interpret a sentence like, "When a great tree falls
to the ground, the ground around it shakes." The metaphor
is important as it transferred the carnage from the ground
of history to the routine realm of nature. Above all, as the
mourning crowds filed past the body of Mrs. Gandhi, MR
45

and Doordharsan broadcast the slogan khoon ka badala
khoon for the benefit of those who had not come alive to the
timely need of making the Sikhs pay for the act. The whole
bloody procedure worked wonders for the elections, the
sympathy-wave being sufficiently complemented by the
wave of hatred. The Congress had outdone the BJP. The
BJP would have become irrelevant if it continued the same
line of lukewarm moderation. The RSS leadership per-
ceived that it was time to put the brakes on if the Congress
was not to grow at their expense. This was the central
reason for the about-turn and hardening of the BJP line in
the last three or four years.
Another set of issues is best expressed in the statement
that the "Mandal Commission forced the hand of the BJP".
The implications of this are seen purely at the level of
political incidents and not at the more basic level of tenden-
cies that have changed the power notations and class-caste
configurations in the North. I use the "Mandal" as a sign
that expresses this broader set of changes. The Aamindari
Acts, the modernisation of agriculture, and the Green
Revolution have transformed rural India. This may not be
revolutionary, but it is real. A rich peasant dominated bloc
of rural classes has been forming in each region, though
this has not acquired a more permanent political form at
the all- India level. In regions like Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh this class is yoked, in a relatively stable alliance,
to regional bourgeois classes. Consequently, regionalism
combined with pressure on the centre for better allocations,
has been its main slogan. In regions where this peasant-
capitalist politics has not been articulated with industrial
capital, it expresses itself in the form of agrarian populism,
town-country opposition, middle- casteism, etc. It is op-
posed to the interests of the all-India bourgeoisie above and
the rural poor below; it is either oppressive where neces-
sary and benignly integrative in vertical alliances
46
wherever possible. The crudest expression of this inchoate
new reality is Tikait, with Devi Lal and Hegde representing
ascending degrees of sophistication. V.P. Singh appeals to
the lower rung of this peasantry and its poorer caste
brethren. This he probably does not know. Herein lies his
strength and weakness.
The above paragraph is simple-minded class reductionism.
It will not do. Let us see how this new reality poses chal-
lenges and possibilities to the three major political forma-
tions at the all- India level and their reactions.
For convenience, I use the Congress as a short-hand for the
Indian State as the two have interpenetrated for long. Two
of the central functions of the Indian State, the develop-
mentalist and the integrative, are both thrown out of gear
by agrarian radicalism and regionglism. Easier terms of
trade for agriculture would be harmful to the "Hindu rate
of growth" and go counter to the new orientation of the
eighties that stresses fast growth in certain sectors. In this
respect the Indian, economy is undergoing problems of
accumulation, unlike the classical crisis of the thirties
related to realisation, which led to European Fascism. The
Indian State operates due to its abilities to accommodate
competing interests of a sectoral, regional, ethnic and caste
nature within a general framework of consensus. Extreme
regionalism undercuts this consensus. The Congress State
attempts to reinforce its hegemony in several ways: by
co-opting dissent, by out-flanking the moderates as in the
Punjab and Bengal, by invoking the fears of disintegration
and by occasional acts of heroism abroad that have been
financially ruinous to the State and politically disastrous
to those whom the State sought to help in the first instance.
The Left suffered losses in Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Punjab
due to this new trend. The dream of a rural coalition, of a
united country-side was rent asunder by capitalist growth.
If prosperity made the Left superfluous for the rich
47

peasants, poverty and oppression made it no longer pos-
sible for the poor. New forms of mind-boggling caste, alien
to the theoretical beauty of capitalist individualism, sur-
faced. This has led to two kinds of responses. The first is
most cogently expressed by Ashok Mitra who invokes the
ghost of Probrazhensky and even Marx to promptly turn
around and call the peasants "a sack of potatoes". This
revolutionary impatience, suitably echoed by K.N. Raj,
called for higher taxes on agriculture as the main source of
primitive accumulation. As the Indian kulaks were incon-
venient blocks on our grand road to growth, there was no
point in pampering them. Otherwise where was the surplus
to come from? Fortunately for the Left, its more realistic
political leadership had ignored this choice piece of Oxford
wisdom. The contrary position has been developed by Dan-
dekar who has proved to his satisfaction that the central
problem in Indian economics is that industries (including
the working class) exploit agriculture. The critical niceties
apart, the Left has been content to drift along, their eyes
on the horizon, waiting for the crisis, "that far-off divine
event towards which all creation moves".
The RSS has been at sixes and sevens when confronted
with the various versions of this new politics. These could
not be fought in physical terms with ease, as the parties
responsible have access to considerable muscle-power.
They could not be ideologically handled easily, as they do
not go by the same ground rules in such matters. To ignore
them would be suicidal if one goes by the logic of numbers.
With all their moderate spirit of accomodation, the BJP has
reached the limits •of its electoral strength. Greater
liberalisation would mean losses and not gains as 1984
amply demonstrated. Nothing short of an explosive
strategy could result in further expansion of its base. The
leadership was probably coming to terms with the losses of
Congress co-option and the potential disaster that would
accompany the Mandal divide. The Mandal threat called
48
the BJP bluff of a single Hindu community that they
claimed to consolidate. Given the class and caste barriers
of its constitution, the most potent demonstration of love
for the Hindus was the slogan of hatred of the Muslims.
This alone could rally the Hindus of all castes under a
single banner. When faced with this exceptional bot-
tleneck, the RSS reverted to the positions that they
cherished deep in their hearts, most familiar to their world-
view — an involution into the violent world of its origins.
A third set of compulsions spring from the internal charac-
ter of the communal fabric. For quite some time, RSS
hegemony over its front organisations has been slender
though not nominal. The RSS leadership seems to have
been suspicious of liberalisation and organisational
autonomy. It became possible and even necessary for the
RSS to come down heavily upon these much despised
"modernisms" and try to show that unless communalism is
genuine it will fail. Non-democratic cadre organisations
have this problem of restoring an inner purity that they
claim as their main virtue. This has to be done either by
inner purges or by projecting a sufficiently powerful exter-
nal enemy against which an all-out movement has to be
launched. Such blood-baths demand greater sacrifice
against which the weak and the vacillating are exposed and
by which the power and the prestige of the original elite are
restored. The intermediate phase of moderation was also
causing the anger of the old guard, the dyed-in-the-wool
communalists of the first generation. To placate them, the
RSS had to be true to its word, to its self-proclaimed picture
of uniqueness that would not be absorbed into Congress-
style politics. In other words, its ideology had to be ac-
tualised.
Actualisation of Ideology
We attempt here a brief analysis of this strategy, the new
phase of "mass extremism" as against the aloof "elite"
extremism of the first phase. It is sketchy and incomplete
49

and can be best expressed in the formula: a mass movement
— riot — propaganda.
The movement is the first of the four moments of this
strategy. The key elements of this moment may be analysed
as political techniques.
1. The target of assault was the Mandir, and the whole
historical vision of saving them from Islam could be used.
In this process, the central point that was communicated
implicitly and, later on, openly is that this issue could not
be settled by the regular, routine civil procedures like the
judicial. The State could be transcended by appeals to
issues that have their roots in a period centuries before the
Indian State was created. The modern State could be made
to look puny before this imposing edifice of emotional
antiquity. A second and even more important aspect con-
cerns the question of rights over religious institutions. The
local committees and even the priests of the Mandir were
projected as traitors. If this is a taste of things to come, the
RSS is likely to speak as a Church that has proprietary
claims over all mandirs. Unless there are powerful local
sources of secular religiosity, their claims may win easy
victories. This illustrates the sad paradox that one of the
greatest sources of India's spiritual strength and pluralism
is also the cause of its institutional weakness. If Hinduism
had a conservative church, however decadent, a deter-
mined minority like the RSS would not claim to represent
all its varied practices, nor would it have a cake-walk over
all its sacred spots.
2. Ram is the second instrument and casuality of this
strategy of movement. A systematically selective Rama
myth has been deployed, and all the elements of his char-
acter – filial love, parental devotion and fraternal attach-
ment – are replaced by the vira rasa of the military Ram
who destroys the Rakshasas. The mythological jacket the
Barjrang Dal points to the claim to an expiation of a
50
historical sin. Similar use could be found for Krishna also.
A shift may be noticed in this connection.
Till recently, RSS has been using chivalrous figures drawn
from Medieval History, particularly Sivaji and Rana
Prathap. Now the accent has shifted topuranic,mythologi-
cal characters whose religious aura in popular perception
is more pronounced. In either case, a tasteless and violent
heroism is painted on to these characters, obliterating
every other colour and motif. In politicising religion, they
have successfully de-sacralised the spiritual or aesthetic in
mythology.
3.TheRatha and theKarseva are the other elements in the
movement, the first a powerful symbol derived from the
Upanishadic and Gita texts, with philosophical and dhar-
mic overtones that has a deep meaning for the Indian
masses. In doing this, the RSS combine was able to provide
the V.P. Singh ministry with a tough choice. If the
rathayatra was stopped, it could be projected as proof of the
anti-Hindu, pro-Muslim character of the State. Apart from
the major ratha piloted by Advani, there were several
minor ones touring the length and breadth of the country
simultaneously, challenging the State and insulting the
Muslims. The political panic of the Chief Minister at the
approach of the wheels of history may be imagined. They
knew they were playing with fire.
4. The movement for the Mandir has the great advantage
of putting the RSS machinery to full work and of maintain-
ing them at a high pitch of efficiency and emotional frenzy.
If it fails it could lead to an opposite wave of disillusionment
and disarray. As far as the public is concerned, it is impor-
tant to have a movement just to be in the news. The
Rathayathra and theKarseva kept on hitting the headlines
week after week, displacing even Punjab terrorism from
the eyes of the sensation- mongering press that feeds a
readership that clamours unsatiated for an ascending
51

spiral of shocks. The whole movement was at this level a
perfectly orchestrated set of pageantry that sold well. The
press had a field day; or a month, to be more precise.
5. The ideological thrust of this strategy goes deeper than
the fanfare. We know from experience that people might do
extremely difficult things for the distant future; probably
more than for immediate, prosaic and ad hoc goals. We are
slower to realise that they may do similar things for the
distant past also. The whole set of political rituals are so
strikingly novel in our political experience that its magical,
mythical and ritual elements could be easily missed. Fas-
cism can be attractive also because it promises to restore
to a mechanical world the lost worlds of ritual, magic, and
myth. One function of this triad is to reclaim the past, to
recreate it in a blinding, if not fleetingly illusory,
synchronicity. Industrial society owns time so finely that it
generates a gnawing desire to own the past. One motif of
this myth is revenge; its ritual is sacrifice. In speaking of
these areas, I am open to the charge of wool- gathering. But
many have noted the highly emotive and nearly hysterical
language of violent communalism, and have expressed
shock at its "primitive" or "barbaric" nature.
The movement and its attendant provocations, lead to the
second major moment, the riot. The 1990 riots have a
totally different political meaning because they were clear-
ly part of an all-India plan. They were not sporadic expres-
sions linked to Hindu or Muslim festivals. From the way in
which they shaped, there is reason to believe that the RSS
expected a richer harvest and that they had foreseen a total
breakdown of law and order. In most towns, the riots could
be better described as anti-Muslim outbreaks. The better
and more centralised machinary of the RSS ensured that
the Muslims were at the receiving end of these in most
areas. The Meerut riots were openly anti-Muslim and the
role and composition of the P.A.C. has now become an
52
accepted truth. The helpless attempts of Muslims to
migrate from Jaipur is another example. The low level of
Muslim organisation or its local character worked out to
their disadvantage in certain unexpected ways. In certain
city quarters with Muslim majority, this gave them the
illusory confidence to attack and get worsted. Mulayam
Singh's irresponsible statements concerning the plan to
arm the minorities worked in the same direction.
Riots help organised communalism in another way. Once a
riotous situation is on, techniques like rumour and the use
of local media can drive a town into a point of no return.
Nearly all other identities — class, region, caste — vanish
temporarily. The Hindu and the Muslim become more real
than anything else; mythological phantoms that come
alive, feeding on a hatred that will stop short of nothing but
mutual annihilation. This is a situation dear to com-
munalism. Once neutrality is made impossible in a situa-
tion, organised communal forces have adherents whose
convictions on such matters are irrelevant. To put it dif-
ferently, in a riotous situation, secularism becomes the
most unrealistic, difficult, and laughable category under
the sun. Those who have lived through a riot know how
imperceptible the yawning chasm of suspicion spreads to
the comparatively secular segments of society.
Riots continue a temporary suspension of civilisation — a
Holi in reverse. In this atmosphere, hatred, fear, and
suspicion are the only sentiments possible. My cynicism
may be forgiven. But those who know the squalor, poverty
and insecurity of our urban slums would agree that in the
absence of communal riots or foot-ball matches, our poor
might demand some other form of frenzied self-expression.
Our metropolitan upper classes, who bemoan this bar-
barism in pious resolutions are comfortably shielded from
the day-to-day reality of this brutalisation. As they have
shelved the socialism of the seventies, they owe it to these
53

poor, that they be provided with more sublime forms of
siphoning off their misery. To retrace our steps to the main
argument, this atmosphere is of unique value for com-
munal politics. Short of the rarefied universe of the Hindi
cinema, a communal riot is the unique moment in our
towns totally purged of alLideas, where the mindless body
dominate all social intercourse. The murderous reality of
loot and rape blots out all culture and ideology. This is the
Utopia of Fascism; the underworld of war that feeds the
power-drive of the powerless. Once this threshold has been
reached, the ideology of communalism ceases to be utopian
and it becomes pointless to dismiss it as "false conscious-
ness". Secular democratic forces have their greatest role in
preventing riots. For, once they occur, they are invested
with a sub-human logic of their own, in which the weak
secular pleas for love would be increasingly sidelined by the
strong communal call for hatred.
Propaganda is not so much a chronological, differentiated
moment as an inherent strand of this strategy. To begin
with, it is much more belligerent in tone and violent in
proclaimed aims than in previous stages. It has totally shed
its cozy integrative rhetoric of Indian culture and the term
`Hindu' is back as a strong element on all levels of
propaganda. Second, it is in tune with the new media
explosion that has changed the channels of our political
communication in the past decade. Audio and video casset-
tes supplement old methods like the platform, pamphlets
and the press.
The main target of attack is the pseudosecularist. The
Organiser was quite clear on this point that the lines were
drawn and that the ranks had been closed. They divided
the Hindus into many types mainly on the basis of their
involvement in the Ram Janmabhoomi issue: Of the recal-
citrant Hindus, the worst were classed as the "Green Hin-
dus", the colour being a reference to Islam. If they make
good threats against these "fifth columnists", they are in
for a tough time when the BJP comes to power. Uma
Bharati's high-pitched abuse in both its audio and video
versions has reserved the choice epithet for V.P. Singh,
"that one who does not appreciate the glories of the solar
race", apart from dragging Chandrasekhar's paternal an-
cestor into our political scene. They are confined to the long
line of traitors, beginning with Jayachandra who started
playing foul with the Hindus.
The new orientation has in a way revived the old, gross
form of anti-minority slogans. Muslims are told in no un-
certain terms that they can survive in this country only if
they behave themselves. The assumption is that the
country belongs to the Hindus and that they stoop to
tolerate these non-Indian religions. The price for this
tolerance is good conduct. Besides, the minorities would do
well to purge themselves of all their unhealthy foreign
influences. There can be no question of more than one
culture in one nation-state. What is demanded of the
minorities is obedience and gratitude. They are told quite
frankly that all the "blots on national honour" like the
Masjid will be painlessly removed and that they had better
grin and bear it. This cultural vandalism aims at all Islamic
relics, from Kutab Minar and the Taj to the human "relics"
of dead centuries — the potential victims of a retribution for
all the sins that have been attributed to their ancestors.
Truly, the spectre of the dead haunts the living.
Another aspect of propaganda revolves round the attempts
to create a grand mythology around theKarsev a.The whole
procedure has been imbued with a grandeur that is
achieved by partly converting it into an ideal response to
historical needs. Historicising the present or the immedi-
ate past has a way of achieveing this effect. It is analogous
to the great pleasure involved in hearing our taped voice or
seeing ourselves on a video tape. Apart from historicising
55
54

p
r'
the form of the narrative, the converse technique of suffus-
ing the terminology with the mythical is also used. This is
similar to some of the discourses about Ram from these
circles, which use an interesting combination of mythologi-
cal statements inscribed in a linear framework. The in-
dividual stories of karsevaks,particularly the martyrs, are
serialised in some weeklies, depicting death-defying
heroism. The all-India processions with the sacred ashes
capped this whole process, though the reception was not as
rousing in many parts as the BJP had hoped.
Consolidation,
Electoral consolidation is the fourth element in this new
phase of BJP strategy. The 1991 elections mark the shift
to a new orientation. At the all-India level, the BJP won
12% of the vote and 82 seats in 1989. Most of these were
from the Hindi belt where the Party has a fairly solid
vote-bank of around 23%. Without the burning issue of
"Ram", a significant upward swing would have been out of
the question. On the other hand, if the "Mandir" could not
offset what was lost out in the "Mandal" wave, a five
percent fall would have been sufficient to reduce their seats
to forty or even less. The events did not take this downward
direction for the BJP forces us to analyse electoral patterns
seriously. Several aspects need mention in this context.
The new thiust apart, the BJP stood out as the party with
the most modern and technically sophisticated electoral
technology. Daily advertisements in all major newspapers,
calculated and regular press hand-outs, judicious cultiva-
tion of the media, superb use of audio-visual aids, cut-outs
and pageantry tailor-made to evoke a mythic grandeur,
and, above all, a domineering and continuous public
presence marked their propaganda strategy. It is a tribute
to their alertness that they were the only Party not to be
caught napping when the assassination of Indira Gandhi
56
came up to dampen the hopes of the non-Congress forces.
While the other parties were reduced to the routine profes-
sions of shock and sorrow and the mumbling of hasty
condolences, the BJP went ahead with a bid to play the
"national security" card, posing as the only party that could
bring in stability.
The keynote of their promises was the Mandir. While
Vajpayee mentioned this only vaguely, Advani and Murali
ManoharJoshi were more forthright. The moderate colours
in which the Mandir issue was painted by some of the
leadership belies the candid and aggressive tone of the
campaign at the lower levels. In the streets and the vil-
lages, all niceties were dropped and themes like "revenge"
and "we will teach the Muslims a lesson" were freely aired.
Another notable point in the mass rallies was the growth
of a right fringe of militant sadhus unfettered by
spirituality or even tactical scruples. Though the political
leadership of the BJP has begun to be slightly emhrassed
by this violent segment, the dissonance is yet to settle down
into a long-term internal contradiction of organisational
proportions. Such a possibility cannot be discounted, once
the present BJP boom is replaced by a political recession.
when internal differences surface easier. Apart from such
clearly communal elements, the BJP programme shows the
flexibility to absorb populist elements like better terms for
the farmers or even a muffled promise that incorporates
the Mandal Commission.
The elections point to the fact that the BJP strategy was
by and large successful. While their number of seats have
increased from 82 to 121, their voting percentage has leapt
from about 127 to 20%. They have made their debut in
Karnataka and Andhra and made their presence felt in
Kerala. Though the above arithmetic shows a subssubstantial
numerical increase in BJP support, the real picture is
slightly different. The major gains of the BJP have come
57

Understanding Communalism

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