12 "Presenting" the Past
conscious history and backward-looking future, the civil society comes up
with corresponding social responses. Political analysis of such historical
discourses could look at the political intent of writing and rewriting his-
tory for the present (ab)uses, or at the political side of history, or read
history as "power" or ideology. This book seeks to understand how this
complex "past-present-future" drama was enacted by the Sangh Parivar
in India, what kind of past was chosen, which media were used to present,
how the future looked, and how they all would intersect in the present,
that is, when the BJP-led government ruled India between March 1998 and
May 2004.
We begin with an analysis of the various streams of Indian national-
isms, including the Hindutva communal nationalism that points out how
social, cultural, and religious symbols are exploited by the Sangh Parivar
to socialize people. Taking Ram as the core, we proceed by following up
the leads provided by a closely related set of texts: the Ramayana, Rama-
rajya (state of Ram) imageries in political discourses, the Babri Masjid-
Ramjanmabhumi controversy in Ayodhya, and the Ramraksha gover-
nance of the BJP-led government in New Delhi. Delineating how a diverse
society such as India was divided into Rambhakts (Ram devotees) and
non-Rambhakts, we proceed to study the Ramayana, especially the most
popular TV version, telecast nationally in 1987-88, and investigate if and
how the characters, events, and imageries of the epic are translated into
a coherent set of metaphors, idioms, and expressions so as to create a
national identity and instill a sense of history, especially among the Hin-
dus in India. The next stage provides an exegesis of political socializa-
tion with the help of the symbols and imageries such as Ramarajya in the
nation-state sovereignty discourses during the independence struggle and
after the creation of independent India. The BJP's comparison of the India
that they would establish with the Ramarajya concept in their political
speeches and writings forms the core of this next stage of the analysis. This
leads to the ongoing controversy of the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhumi
conflict and the communal politics behind this highly emotional issue.
This analysis inevitably leads to meditations on Ramraksha, the politi-
cal manifestations of the Hindutva program, and the social responses that
they prompted. By studying the policies and programs of the BJP-led gov-
ernment, the electoral performances of the BJP, various communal riots,
and the production and consumption pattern of some of the social sym-
bols, one is better able to understand the reactions of "the acquiescent"
or "the silent" masses. These particular sociopolitical sites are preferred
to textbooks and general-history books because the former speak louder
than the texts and also because the illiterate masses have little to do with
textbooks anyway. When we hear, understand, and interpret the silence
of the silent, we may be able to complete the picture with some possible
insights.