Introduction 9neighboring countries, it is not analyzed here, as our focus is the politics
of the Sangh Parivar.
Historically speaking, the establishment of Muslim separatism in the
1920s and the communal politics of the 1930s and 1940s exacerbated the
Hindu-Muslim chasm. The Hindu communal historiography had to deal
with the reality of Muslim culture even after independence, and the con-
venient way out was emphasizing its foreignness. This communal inter-
pretation of history, reinforced by the trauma of partition and the partisan
politics of India and Pakistan, gives rise to a pathological hatred and
mutual fear among many Hindus and Muslims in India, especially during
periods of social crisis or religious frenzy.
Having planned their communal program very carefully since the mid-
1980s and incited a communal frenzy all over India, the Sangh Parivar
struck a massive blow on December 6, 1992, by demolishing the Babri
Masjid in Ayodhya, a mosque built in 1528 by a lieutenant of the Mogul
emperor Babar. The Hindu communalists claim that the very site of the
mosque is the Ramjanmabhumi (birthplace of Ram), an avatar of a Hindu
god and the hero of a popular epic, the Ramayana (Struggle of Ram). As a
result of all this, their Hindutva ideology has gained prominence in India
lately, and the structure of cultural domination stands instituted upon
themselves and others.
HISTORY, MYTH, AND SOCIALIZATION
The wickedness of this structure of cultural domination is that it cre-
ates, as it did in Nazi Germany, "a horrible, perverse bond between the
perpetrators, victims, and bystanders." In other words, however essential
for the realization of the Holocaust, Hitler or the Nazi system could not
have carried it out alone.^14 The participation of others was instrumental.
And this involvement of the other social forces forms an important aspect
of this study. Put tersely, we question whether the historiographical proj-
ect of the Sangh Parivar builds on the popular mythification that prevails
among the masses or whether they manipulate the popular understand-
ing of history through their own political-socialization capabilities.
Thus the central object of analysis of this book is identity-construction
practices in independent India, the role of knowledge of the past in that
continual process, and the interface between the two as it manifests itself
in contemporary Hindu-Muslim relations and political governance. Quite
inevitably, such an inquiry would stretch into an investigation of many
related aspects, such as the possible role the rewriting and retelling of
history plays in the communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims in
India, the communal distrust between these two communities swaying the
Indian history discourses, and the role the manifest and the latent political
socializations play in this economy of knowledge of the past. Taking the