62 "Presenting" the Past"we have many friends in the BJP which is a well wisher of Hindus," and
second, the party was formed by those who preferred the RSS member-
ship and left the BJP on the dual-membership issue. The much-refuted
ambivalence in the RSS mind about the BJP also came to be revealed when
he said, "Though it does have an all-India image, it was not equally strong
in all states. I want its influence to grow in States such as Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal also." He denied that he ever wrote
to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, but acknowledged that "some of his col-
leagues had in connection with RSS work."^52
In the very next issue of the Organiser, its leading columnist wrote a
front-page column on "BJP poised for a breakthrough." He opened the
article by saying: "After eight years of somewhat aimless and fruitless
wandering, the Bharatiya Janata Party returned home last week deter-
mined to fight its way back to the top." The column praised the party's
latest decision not to have truck with other parties, except on its own
terms.^53 The following issue of the Organiser reported the month-old news
of the BJP leader, L. K. Advani, declaring that the "liberation of Ramjan-
mabhoomi [was a] national issue" at the National Awakening Campaign
in Bombay on September 28.^54 From then on the RSS-BJP relationship was
one of "brotherhood." When the RSS was trying to boost the morale of the
BJP through the Organiser, the DRI was discussing the ways and means of
strengthening the RSS in its mouthpiece, Manthan.
Following their national-executive meeting at Udaipur on March 3-5,
1989, the BJP started focusing more on organizing kisan (farmers) rallies
all over the country. L. K. Advani even claimed in one such rally at Raipur
on March 11 that "BJP was basically a Kisan Party" and that the party was
to concentrate on "grassroot problems—those of Kisans, unemployed
youth, regional imbalance etc."^55 Nonetheless, there remained one big
worry in the Hindutva mind and that was the charge of being commu-
nal. With that in mind, on July 28,1989, the BJP organized a symposium
on "Nationalism and Communalism" in New Delhi, which no one less
than Advani himself presided over. The meeting discussed, among oth-
ers, two papers entitled "Muslims Must Join the 'Majority'—and Not
Get Marginalised" and "Justice for All and Appeasement of None." The
DRI celebrated the independence day by organizing a symposium on
"Improving Hindu-Muslim Relations." When the BJP national executive
met in Madras on July 22-24,1990, the Centre of Policy Studies presented
to it a few papers, and one of them was entitled "From Restoration of
Rama Janmabhoomi to Ram Rajya." The paper summed up the Hindutva
thinking precisely: "Reawakening of the spirit of a nation needs a great
idea, and a great effort. The options available within the current reality
are always limited and none of them can possibly be exploited to break
the status quo. For that to happen, there have to emerge ideas that tran-
scend the current reality, that skirt the terms of current debate, and raise