Ayodhya has always been important to the several million Hindus who make up the majority in India, because it is said to be the birthplace of Lord Ram. Ayodhya is also important to the Muslims, who make up the largest minority, because it holds an ancient mosque (the Babri Masjid) which was built in Mogul times. As such Hindus and Muslims have lived side by side in relative harmony for centuries. However, in the last decade, some Hindus have been demanding the demolition of the Babri Masjid because they have 'discovered' that it was at this very site that Lord Ram was born. Over the years, both the central and state governments have been opposed to the idea, but have not put an end to it. The only gesture towards guarding this ancient monument and allowing peaceful Muslim prayers has been the posting of a lone policeman outside. On 6 December 1993, however, the dispute was forcibly brought to the surface by several thousand Hindus who marched to Ayodhya from all over India to rip apart the Babri Masjid brick by brick.
What followed was an orgy of murder, looting and rape of all Muslims that the crowd could lay their hands on, and between the early hours of 6 December and midday 7 December, at least 13 Muslim men and children were burnt alive. In turn, the Ayodhya events sparked off similar rioting and backlash against Muslims in city after city. In Bombay and Delhi, for instance, the army had to be called in and curfew imposed as vehicles were set alight, Muslim homes and businesses were wrecked, Muslim women were gang-raped and Muslim men were murdered by frenzied mobs. In that first week of December, India's belief in secularism was seriously questioned as Muslims lived in fear in the country that gave birth to them.
Consequent investigation and analysis of such horrific incidents suggests that these acts could not be explained simply as spontaneous, hysterical mob behaviour. A simple observation of those stewarding and leading 'youth action' in Ayodhya makes it readily apparent that much of the blame for inciting Hindu/Muslim conflict lies with various Hindu fundamentalist parties that have recently been increasingly dominating the Indian political scene.
These political parties have several disagreements. But they all appear to carry one central message - that India has historically belonged to the Hindus and therefore Hindus must reign supreme in the New India or Hindustan (land of the Hindus). In order to strengthen the Hindu 'front', the larger parties such as the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), the Rashtrya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Prishad (VHP), and the Bajran Dal (BD) have all come together to form a 'family of Hindu parties' known as the Sangh Pariwar (Pariwar).
Membership figures are a closely guarded secret. However, there is some evidence to suggest that numbers are large and membership highly disciplined. For example, the RSS, the second largest political party had a membership of approximately two million in 1993. It is suspected that this has almost doubled in the last few years, and judging by the size of crowds that each Pariwar event attracts, it is clear that the overall following of fundamentalist parties is massive and growing every day in both rural and urban India.Thus, in some ten years, the Pariwar has managed to build up a sizeable following, gained entry into democratic politics and the parliament, gathered a lot of support from prominent and powerful people, and managed to create intense conflict in places like Ayodhya.
The Pariwar is backed by some highly influential businessmen and politicians, as well as by Hindus abroad. Pariwar leaders and 'holy men' have held mass meetings in Milton Keynes, Leicester and Southall in the United Kingdom, and other cities in Europe and the USA, receiving large sums in foreign currency. But what the Pariwar needs most is backing from the ordinary majority. It has succeeded by making clever use of propaganda and ideology, in redefining the meaning of both Hinduism and nationalism. In Pariwar politics, the two are inseparable, and it is a patriotic duty to unite as a Hindu community to wipe out the enemy within - the threat posed by non-Hindus, particularly the Muslims because: 'Muslims are traitors and harbour pro-Pakistan sentimentsŠ they betrayed Mahatma Gandhi and severed the two arms of Mother India (East and West Pakistan) ŠMuslim polygamous practices means that they have a higher birthrate and Hindus are in danger of being swamped by the Muslims.'
Whilst there may be several problems with this idea because Hindus are not a homogenous group and come from several different caste and class backgrounds, the Pariwar appears to dismiss these difficulties, being able to recruit from castes at the very bottom of the hierarchical order. And, in particular this Hindu nationalist fervour has appealed to millions of unemployed, disaffected, poor, young men and women who have little hope or sense of direction, as with Hitler's youth leagues.
To carry this out in a systematic fashion the RSS, for instance, has developed a network of shakas (party branches) all over India where: 'Every evening 40-50 men (known as karsevaks or the defenders of the faith) dressed in khaki shorts, meet at the training ground and perform a series of physical exercises and martial training with long sticks (lathis). After the training they gather in the assembly hall in front of a map of Akanda Bharat (pre-partition India), images of God Ram, saffron flags (saffron being the Hindu colour) and a statue of the founder of the organisation. Here they collectively perform the patriotic sanskrit prayer of the RSS, promising lifelong and selfless service to the regeneration of a pure Hindu nation, standing in rows with their hands stretched in front of their chests in a sort of military salute'.
Long marches are organised where thousands walk in a show of strength across town, village and state boundaries, whilst parading and shouting Hindu slogans in a manner which threatens non-Hindu localities. Rather than see themselves as without a future, the young karsevaks and karsevikas see themselves as having a special role in India.
Of equal importance is the need to gain new recruits. There are at least two difficulties: firstly, that parties such as the BJP and RSS are officially banned and thus not allowed air-time or public broadcasts. Secondly, many Indians (especially in the rural areas) are poor and have low literacy rates. The Pariwar has ingeniously turned to informal communication systems which are both accessible and understood by the poor. For instance, one important means of spreading propaganda is through cassette-recordings, sold very cheaply. A classic example are the tapes made by a woman called Rithambra who is presented as a sanyasin, a holy woman who has renounced the world and is 'pure in being and pure in message'. In a passionate hysterical high-pitched voice, tape after tape calls on India's young men and women to awaken to 'the feelings of nationalism so that we may be able to change India's condition which is wretched today.'
And, this can only be done by removing the non-nationalists, particularly the Muslims who are to blame for that wretched condition of India today because 'the Koran exhorts them (the Muslims) to lie in wait for idol worshippers (the Hindus), to skin them alive, to stuff them in animal skins and torture them until they ask forgiveness. Our Hindu heritage enjoins repentance even if an ant is killed underfoot. The cultures are polar opposites'.
Tapes such as these are played in private and in public gatherings. Alongside these, the Pariwar uses powerful images to convey its message: posters, calendars and postcards depicting Bharat Mata (Mother India) as a vulnerable Hindu deity in need of protection from her faithful sons. In an attempt to present a 'before' and 'after' image, the deity is squeezed with her arms folded into a map of present-day India which is minus the two sides that are now Muslim Pakistan and Bangladesh. This image is further superimposed on a map of the 'original' India so that it is clearly visible how much motherland is now in the hands of Muslims.
Just as a final note, in spite of the fact that these developments cannot be ignored, it is also important to remember that there is a strong Hindu opposition against the activities carried out by Pariwar. And this is increasingly evident from every emerging analysis of day to day life.

This is an edited version of an article published in Contemporary Politics in Spring 1996.

Review: The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity and Secularisation, by Achin Vanaik

The horrific events that surrounded the partition of India and Pakistan some fifty years ago have left a deep mark on the Indian psyche. Bitter memories of the holocaust that cost millions their homes, livelihoods and lives are still etched onto the life-stories of every Hindu and Muslim in India even today. Thus one of the most pressing tasks of the Congress Party, which has ruled India since Independence, has been to maintain national unity through a strong show of commitment to securalism. But whilst any communal tensions have been contained in the first few years after Independence, the last two decades have seen a slow but steady cancerous growth of communalist politics. Recently however, even the Government appears to be helpless as the mushrooming communalism of the '70s and the '80s has been sharply transformed to the highly-organised communalism of the '90s. The leading players in this are the Hindu-flag carrying parties such as the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) who have recently mustered up further strength by combining with several other smaller communalist parties. The alliance between these parties has resulted in the formation of the Sangh, a powerful right-wing spearhead of Hindu communalism.
The strength of the Sangh is not simply that it can summon up a mass following which will riot, demonstrate or incite hatred in an organised fashion as demonstrated by the Ayodhya incident of December 6, 1992. The ultimate power of the Sangh is in fact demonstrated by its ability to pose Hindu communalism as a real ideological and political alternative to the Congress Party. This means that the Congress Party can no longer guarantee votes either from the rich or the poor alike and its weakening position was clearly evident in the 1996 election when it was ousted by the communalist vote. Congress was only just reinstated because of a hasty alliance between the backward castes (as they are officially known) and other left-wing groups.
Communalist parties then continue to maintain a stronghold in India, and at present there is little hope of Congress reviving its lost place in the political arena. As leader after leader falls, Congress's attempts at regaining lost ground get more and more critical, sometimes to the point of absurdity. For instance, often to the amusement of national and international observers from time to time Congress offers the leadership to Sonia Gandhi (the widow of Rajiv, and an Italian by birth) in a desperate bid for the Gandhi name.
There is then, a burgeoning political crisis in India today which has left the country in a nervous state. Thus there is a sense of urgency in its attempts to understand the problem of communalism, and in the past few years, all kinds of newspapers, journals and academic books have been published on communalism and its associated issues such as secularism and democracy.
It is clear that Achin Vanaik has spent considerable time following this discourse because his book oozes with the confidence of someone who knows his subject. Vanaik carefully unpacks the problematics of conceptual terms such as nationalism, secularism, and communalism and argues that these can only be understood within both a global and an Indian context. Thus Vanaik places the rise of Hindu communal parties within the global paranoia of an imagined Muslim brotherhood (and eventual takeover). At the same time, in India, the questions of communalism can only be understood within a context of a general shift to the right in three of its most crucial spheres - the economy, secularism and democracy.
Vanaik argues that in India today, the 1991 Economic Policy (incorporating trade-liberalisation) has by its very nature invariably led to an increase in institutionalisation and right-oriented political representation. There is then a breakdown of the traditional populism of Indian politics. Also, whilst Indian democracy has always arguably had a tendency towards authoritarianism, it would appear that recently the balance had tilted further away from democracy.
Under the 1947 pledge of democracy, secularisation continues to remain a desirable goal in India today. In reality, however, the lack of application and the lack of state backing is evident in all crucial areas of civil life such as education, welfare and so on. Since Independence, then, the process of secularisation has remained slow and uneven. However, Vanaik seeks to defend the classic ideal of secularisation, ie 'the relative decline in religious influence - as a fact of modernity everywhere'. What follows is a rich discourse into the highly complex relationship between religion, culture and society, especially as it can be understood in an ancient country like India. In this he forcefully argues against those who regard religion as central in determining everything Indian or those who offer simplistic explanations of India's social relationships still essentially located in a basically traditional society. Vanaik challenges arguments of cultural essentialism (such as those of Raymond Williams) suggesting that they undermine the value of secularisation and secularism for India. Instead, through an immaculate analysis of the three essential points of reference in the modernity debate, ie tradition, capitalism, and post-modernity, Vanaik asks the critical questions, 'What basically happens to religion in modernity?' and 'What is feasible to want and fight for now?'
In attempting to answer these questions, Vanaik looks at India's own unique experiences of the processes of modernity. He argues that whilst the current pressures on the Indian polity cannot be denied, it would nevertheless be deluding to take the 'doomsday' view of India's secular future as many have done. In an optimistic chapter on New Social Democracy, Vanaik points out several factors that may emerge to challenge the communalisation of politics in India today. These include the very history of democracy which remains important to the peoples of India who have fought for it for a long time. Also India has a hugely diverse population and within that, the 'continuing forward march of the backward castes' is a real contest to anyone offering inequitable ideas of political homogeneity.
Furthermore India, unlike many countries where the left has been severely undermined, is still capable of creating new social movements under the leadership of the new left and the two major Communist Parties - the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) and the Communist Party of India (CPI). For instance, this is clearly exemplified by the Indian women's movement which has gained momentum in the last three decades. Vanaik therefore offers the reader both a theoretical analysis of the problem as well as hope by pointing out that there are still several hurdles before a Hindu communalist political takeover can be accomplished. The Furies of Indian Communalism is not an easy read. It expects the reader to be familiar with the classical arguments of Marx, Durkheim, Giddens on questions of identity, religion and modernity. It also assumes a current knowledge of the post-modernist discourse, and of course, a knowledge of Indian politics. The book is therefore one that can be highly recommended to students and academics. Nevertheless, the essay approach which allows each chapter to be a unique piece in its own right, makes this a very manageable book for those who do not wish to tackle it as a whole. Vanaik offers a rigorous scholarly analysis on the subject which can only be a welcome addition to existing debate.