organized than it had previously been. In 1981, the conversion of low-caste
Hindus to Islam in the Tamil village of Meenakshipuram has acted as a lightning
rod for the alarmist tendencies of Hindu nationalism. Events like that could be
presented as an attack on Hinduism and therefore a threat to the very fabric of
India. Another rich source of threat perception was the illegal immigration of
Muslims from Bangladesh. Although the bulk of them went to the contiguous
states of West Bengal and Assam (where they interacted with other ethnic prob-
lems), the political consequence was most felt in Bombay. There, the right-wing
Shiv Sena (the Army of Shiva), which had originally sprung up as a chauvinist
Maharashtrian party targeting internal immigrants from south India, reposi-
tioned itself as a Hindu nationalist party targeting Muslims. As with conversion,
so with illegal immigration, the threat of an Islamic invasion of a Hindu land was
used as a cultural gloss on prevailing economic insecurities and tensions.
The non-BJP organizations in the Hindutva family of organizations (the
Sangh Parivar), then, were busy developing a mobilizatory rhetoric. The funda-
mental strategy was to interpret economic tensions in cultural terms, and con-
flate the identities of culture and the nation-state. Muslims, it was argued, were
unfairly pampered by the secular nation-state, which was blind to the threat
posed by them to its very existence. The ideal way to safeguard the nation-state
was to remove the threat, but that could be done only by those whose loyalty
was only to it; and they were the Hindus, whose nation, after all, India was. If,
in that process, the resources of the state were redirected to Hindus, that was
only fair and proper. Indira and Rajiv Gandhi recognized that targeting economic
resources (jobs, places in educational institutions, other forms of preferential
treatment) was an effective means of mobilizing key constituencies; hence their
concern to express a Hindu identity. But whereas, in this period, the BJP’s par-
liamentary caution allowed it to be outflanked, the other Hindu nationalist
organizations persisted with their strategy, hindered though they were by Con-
gress’s actual control of economic resources. These organizations were working
for the longer term. Also, when Rajiv Gandhi recognized the need to woo back
Muslim voters after his flirtation with Hindu symbolism, the Hindu nationalists
were ready to welcome disaffected Hindus.
Electoral Success and the Problems of Power
In the late 1980s, the BJP faced a delicate task. Its strength would come elec-
torally only through the grassroots mobilization undertaken by the rest of the
Sangh Parivar; and it was that very strength that would make it a worthwhile
ally in any anti-Congress alliance. But that alliance was to be with the Janata Dal,
which was extremely hostile to Hindu nationalism; indeed, more so than the old
Janata Party, which had at least had old-style Hindu traditionalists at its core.
In the elections of 1989, the BJP went into an agreement with the Janata Dal,
but did not join the government formed after the defeat of Congress, merely offer-
538 c. ram-prasad