Introduction 3tinidhi Sabha [representative committee] meeting on March 12, 2004, at
Jamdoli, Rajasthan) and 2,500 pracharaks (propagandists) and can mobi-
lize around three million volunteers. It has an educational organization,
Vidya Bharathi, that provides education for some 1.2 million students and
employs 40,000 teachers around the country. It also has more than 80 front
organizations, both parliamentary and nonparliamentary, at its disposal,
specializing in specific fields.^1 The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP—World
Hindu Council), established in 1966, organizes large-scale conventions of
Hindu religious men; runs schools, temples, and hostels; and yearns to
create a homogenized Hindu community. Bajrang Dal, the VHP's youth
wing, organizes the lumpen elements for the movement's muscle power.
The BJP is the latter-day reincarnation of the former Bharatiya Jana
Sangh (BJS), a politically isolated party that came into being in October
1951 and merged into the Janata Party in 1977. Following the collapse of
the Janata Party government due to a power struggle among its leaders,
the dual membership (of the former Jana Sangh members in the RSS), and
other issues, the new BJP was founded in December 1980. The party has a
youth wing known as the Janata Yuva Morcha (Janata Youth Front).
The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the trade-union movement that
has enjoyed substantial success among the white-collar workers, has
more than three million members, mostly in the Hindi-speaking states.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), one of the nation's larg-
est student organizations, has active units in 415 of India's 483 districts
and working branches in 121 of India's 167 universities. The Swadeshi
Jagran Manch, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS—Indian Farmers' Union),
and the Rashtriya Sevika Samita (National Working Women's Council) are
some of the prominent Sangh Parivar organizations. To act as a think tank
for the Sangh Parivar, there is the Deendayal Shodh Sansthan (Deendayal
Research Institute), which was established in 1972 in memory of a Hin-
dutva leader killed in 1968. The men in charge of these organizations are
all RSS members or leaders.
These neonationalistic right-wing Hindutva groups have been trying
to thwart pluralistic conversations in India and thrust upon the peoples
an authoritarian monologue instead. This elitist and vertical mobilization
attempt, which has mainly traversed the colonial and postcolonial periods
of "India," has been relentlessly attempting to erect a structure of cultural
domination upon themselves and others.
Part of this structure is the reckless attempt to reduce the multifarious
faiths of Hinduism to a single, homogenous, Semiticized system with
clear fundamentals. This "Syndicated Hinduism" rejects indigenous
religious articulations, distorts their historical and cultural dimensions,
divests them of the nuances and variety that were a source of their rich-
ness, and, above all, replaces this multiplicity of religious manifestations
by a premodern Brahminical version with some selected beliefs, rituals,