through a mobilization of Hindus for a religiocultural cause. From now on,
political power would come only through unique Hindu nationalist strategies
aimed at a fundamental transformation of the attitude of Hindus towards the
nature of the Indian polity. The RSS would be involved in this process because
grassroots activity and cultural transformation were going to possible only if the
BJP acted in accordance with the ideas behind its conception. This eventually led
to the radical strategies of the late 1980s and early 1990s; and they were radical
because Hindu nationalism combined, in that period, grassroots organization in
the traditional RSS manner with mass mobilization through the politicization of
Hindu cultural identity. But this was not before the new BJP had attempted to
maintain some continuity with its predecessor.
In the early 1980s, Indira Gandhi appropriated Hindu sentiments in her
increasingly extreme attempts to outflank all opposition. This included her
dangerously confrontational treatment of the demand for a Sikh state in the
Punjab, which ultimately led to her assassination. But Rajiv Gandhi, succeeding
her on a wave of sympathy that brought Congress an unprecedented domina-
tion in Parliament, also found it expedient to invoke Hindu imagery in his
attempt to secure support from sections of the Hindu population. The BJP’s
“liberal” strategy of fighting on social and economic issues, therefore, was quite
unsuccessful, for it had abandoned its natural constituency and then found it
taken over by the Congress. (Indeed, in this period, the RSS occasionally pre-
ferred Congress to the BJP in local disputes, as when it was challenged by the
electorally successful Communists in Kerala. There, Congress alone provided
opposition and partially used communalization to secure upper-class Hindu
votes against the Communists.)
Partially because of the lack of political success, the RSS revivified a different
organization, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, the World Hindu Assembly).
This had been founded in the 1960s with the support of religious leaders like
Swami Chinmayananda, but had focused primarily on the teaching of Hindu
religious beliefs. In the 1980s, it started developing as the activist arm of Hindu
nationalism, working with the RSS but expressing its Hindutva convictions in
overtly political areas and in a political manner. Its strategy was exemplified in
demonstrations and marches meant to articulate the idea of a united Hindu
India, covering places sacred in Hinduism and systematically conflating Hindu
sacred geography with Indian political unity.
Then, for a variety of reasons (and when a late and unconvincing lurch
towards getting back Muslim votes led to his loss of Hindu votes as well), Rajiv
Gandhi’s Congress lost power to the new left-wing party, the Janata Dal. The
BJP almost recreated the situation of ten years previously, going into an anti-
Congress coalition; but only almost, for it did not join the government. To under-
stand what the BJP then did, we must see what was happening with Hindu
nationalism in the 1980s.
Through the decade, Hindu nationalist mobilization had proceeded almost
against or independently of the BJP’s cautious and noncommunal parliamen-
tary strategy. Hindu nationalism in this period became more focused and
contemporary political hinduism 537