Ramarajya: Envisioning the Future and Entrenching the Past 103similar newspapers and magazines in various regional languages have
assisted also. There have been innumerable programs to teach Sanskrit
and Yoga and to impart "Bharatiya values" in music and science. How-
ever, the pinnacle of the Hindutva program has been history and human
thinking. The Bharatiya Itihas Sankalana Yojana was founded in 1973 to
"present an authentic chronology of Indian history dating back to the
beginning of Kaliyuga," which is said to have started some 5,000 years
ago. The Bharatiya Vichara Kendra was created in Kerala in 1982 "to make
our national mind free, vigorous and creative."^114
The various "mass contact" programs were ingeniously devised and
developed to radicalize the illiterate masses. For instance, the BJP paraded
the mortal remains of the karsevak "martyrs" killed in Ayodhya police firing
through remote villages. The Hindutva group would descend on these vil-
lages with loudspeakers blaring that Hinduism was in danger and convene
meetings at the village temples. They would distribute scarves, badges,
and even wristwatches with pro-Ramjanmabhumi slogans emblazoned on
them. They would shout "Siya Ram Chandra ki," and the crowds would
respond "Jai!" A few people might get converted and others disperse with
reservations; nonetheless, the communal message of the Hindutva political
socialization would have been imparted.
The Hindutva forces not only have built up a social and political orga-
nizational structure to capture the consciousness of the people, but also
have utilized the growing number of riots as major instruments of com-
munalization. They have effectively used every imaginable agent of
socialization to agitate all sections of the society through both manifest
and latent processes of political socialization. With the popular religious
icon Ram, they have entered both the urban and rural social congrega-
tions, and with Ramarajya, they have entered the political consciousness
of the masses.
NOTES
- Jack Dennis, Political Socialization Research: A Bibliography (Beverly Hills,
Calif.: Sage, 1973), pp. 5-6. - Dean Jaros, Socialization to Politics (New York: Praeger, 1973), pp. 8, 21,
136-47,139. - Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and
Democracy in Five Nations (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), pp. 266-71. - Roberta Sigel and Marilyn Hoskin, "Perspectives on Adult Political Social-
ization—Areas of Research," in Handbook of Political Socialization: Theory and
Research, ed. Stanley Allen Renshon (New York: Free Press, 1977), p. 262. - David Schwartz and Charles Mannella, "Popular Music as an Agency of
Political Socialization: A Study in Popular Culture and Politics," in New Directions
in Political Socialization, ed. David Schwartz and Sandra Schwartz (New York: Free
Press, 1975), p. 290.