Ramayana: Historicizing Myth and Mythologizing History 59Hero No. 1. And many Muslims have been drawn to the "Leela" (playfulness) of
Krishna over the ages. Muslim maestroes sing the glories of Krishna. Fortunately
the Ramayana TV serial has introduced Rama even to non-Hindus—and installed
him in the heart of one and all. If Muslims and Christians like it, we can have TV
serials on Muslim or Christian themes.^38While the intellectual wing of the Hindutva forces was examining issues,
the cultural wing, the RSS, was issuing commands. In their working com-
mittee at Haridwar on July 17-18,1987, the RSS discussed the communal
violence and passed a resolution that included the following suggestion,
among other things: "Situation demands that the Hindu people speed up
their efforts in making their organised strength more effective and offer
whole-hearted co-operation to the workers of the Sangh engaged in this
task."^39 The RSS organized on October 1-5 a special five-day meeting of
its national executive with "prominent Swayamsevaks working in vari-
ous fields of national life." At the end of the meeting, Balasaheb Deoras
claimed that "the unifying and all-encompassing urge of Hindutva" lay at
the root of Indian national unity and territorial integrity, and was pleased
with the "growing Hindu awareness."^40
However, the RSS was a little ambivalent about the strategy to bend
the "growing Hindu awareness" to its advantage. In his annual Vijaya
Dashami speech on October 2, 1987, Deoras said, "Some believe that the
RSS is anti-Congress but that is not true. The Sangh founder Dr. Hedgewar
was an office-bearer of the Congress Party. But its policy of appeasement
of minorities, prompted Doctor Hedgewar to part ways with the Congress
and strike out a new path for national rejuvenation." He also felt that a
viable alternative to the Congress (I) did not seem possible in the foresee-
able future, and further clarified that the RSS "never believed in weaken-
ing of the Administration at the Centre."^41
Although the All India Congress Committee (I)'s (AICC) 12-member
high-profile Committee on Communalism had recommended that the
party should have no truck with any communal or religious or sectarian
party, the general secretary of AICC (I), Naresh Chaturvedi, claimed on
October 5,1987, that there was nothing wrong in responding positively to
anybody's gesture that supported the policies and programs of the party.
However, another general secretary, K.K. Singh, criticized the RSS on
October 7, charging that they were trying to create confusion. However,
the BJP's three-day national-executive meeting that concluded at Jodhpur
on October 11 kept a studied silence on the whole issue, but came down
heavily on the Congress (I) and the communist parties.
Following the above episode, there was another meeting on October 14-
18,1987, at the RSS headquarters in Nagpur. Besides the RSS leaders, there
were prominent leaders of other Hindutva outfits, particularly Vajpayee
and Advani of the BJP at the meeting. It was a "meeting together of broth-
ers—each one of them following his own avocation, but all of them uni-