CHAPTER 3
Ramarajya: Envisioning the
Future and Entrenching
the Past
The popular story Ramayana has been told and retold in multifarious ways
in India for all kinds of reasons. Mahatma Gandhi, for one, used it to make
the masses envision the future state of India. Hijacking his powerful imag-
ery of Ramarajya along with Ram and Ramjanmabhumi "temple," the Hin-
dutva forces have reinterpreted it to isolate and terrorize the Muslims and
bring about a crooked unity among the Hindus. They retell the story and
create forms of communication and structures of meanings through which
people may relate to one another. In this project they mix political and soci-
ological propaganda, propaganda of agitation and integration, vertical and
horizontal propaganda, and also rational and irrational propaganda. While
not dismissing the communalization from below in the form of, among
other things, self-assertion of subordinate social groups, I argue here that
the manipulative politics of the Hindutva forces from above, with a com-
munal interpretation of history and a careful and calculated propaganda, is
a major factor in the present highly charged communal situation in India.
SOCIALIZATION THROUGH STORYTELLING
Human socialization is predominantly political, and this political social-
ization begins with one's birth and ends only with death. However, the
term political socialization, which came into existence in 1960 and gained
prominence in the 1970s, has been mainly used to refer to youthful learn-
ing processes. Political socialization is generally defined as "the develop-
mental process through which persons acquire political orientations and
patterns of behavior." Much of the research in this subject concerns itself