116 "Presenting" the Past
in India. He seemed to problematize the case of the Shri Nathdwara tem-
ple of Rajasthan, where harijans were not allowed to enter. However, his
twisted logic worked in the same old Hindutva fashion: "Nobody can be
allowed to shut the doors of a temple on the plea that the temple belonged
to a particular sect. If there is any regulation for the sake of 'Maryada' it
should apply to all. If wearing of a Kanthi with a string is essential to have
entry into the temple of Shri Nath ji, then it is a different thing." Although
Vajpayee dismissed the varna system based on birth, he supported the
same scheme based on vocation. According to him, "Whatever vocation
we choose, it denotes our Varna.... Whatever vocation a man chooses
depends upon his qualities, actions and nature which are not the same in
all persons."^22
The inhumanity of the Brahminical orthodoxy was marked not just by
their naked casteism but also by their antifemale concept of brahmacharya.
Most of the Hindutva leaders have been unmarried. When a Mahila Samaj
activist, Lakshmibai Kelkar, wanted to found a female version of the RSS
called Rastra Sevika Samiti in 1934 and approached Hedgewar for assis-
tance, he explained that the RSS leaders had taken a vow of brahmacharya,
and an association with an organization of women would be a direct vio-
lation of their vow. Only an indirect help seemed the proper thing to offer
to those women.^23 Decades later, another RSS supremo, Balasaheb Deoras,
argued against the entry of women into the RSS "on pragmatic grounds
and not on the relaxation of sexual morality when men and women came
together." He thought that women could not take part in the shakhas (drill
meetings) in the morning and the evening as "they had domestic respon-
sibilities."^24
This conviction of Hindu innocence glosses over caste oppression,
subjugation of women, and dehumanization of the Other, but rather
gets engrossed with one's own somaticity and the self-centered need for
untouchability, unseeability, unedibility, and so forth. Building on and
feeding into this somaticity, a spiritual strength manifests, taking one
closer to the actual realization of the abstract understanding of innocence
one begins with. Only the somatic is real in this spiritual journey that starts
with an understanding of the innocence and proceeds with more and
more strength to the future realization of it. So the somatic is an important
link and a sensible point to start with. When translated politically and
organizationally, this understanding provides a virulent ideology such as
Hindutva, which may be defined as "a highly structured belief system
involving the interpretation of the past, an analysis of the present, and a
set of precepts and imperatives for future conduct."^25
The Hindu somatic, or the Hindu Rashtra, absorbs all different religious
groups in an unproblematic fashion: Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, and so-called
animists are as much Hindus as Arya Samajists, Theosophists, and Brah-
mos, and Shaivites, Vaishnavites, and Tantriks. According to Hindutva