The United Colours Of Saffron

Katju tries to keep her voice as non-ideological as possible. Although she notes the fascist tendency of the VHP in its subversion of the principles of Indian democracy by insisting that Hindus form the “permanent majority” and by centering Indian history on the life of “the Hindu”, she also notes the manner in which it calibrates its speeches by appealing to different constituencies on different platforms. While the aggressive Ram rhetoric is used in North India, in the Northeast she finds the message is much more activist and welfarist. She emphasises the fact that the VHP is born not only from communal politics but also from the large sections who find themselves left out of the prosperity

of middle-class India and the successful green revolution farmers.

The book is mercifully free of the numbing academic speak with which scholarly inquiries into Indian politics have become associated. Instead the simple linear tale moving from the foundation in 1964, the pre-Hindutva phase, the radicalisation wrought by the Meenaskshipuran conversions of 1981 to the demolition of the Babri Masjid is fluently written, although in certain parts, reads something like a newspaper report.

The hate-filled ideology and violent actions of the VHP as well as the Bajrang Dal are interpreted as part of the RSS plan to consolidate the Hindu community for the sake of electoral benefit. In this context, Rithambhara’s technological extremism appears as a master performance to seek a mass constituency rather than a stance born from personal conviction. The book neglects the individual biographies of the chief actors in the VHP drama yet provides examples of their immense talents in pulling crowds. Notwithstanding mobilisation, however, Katju concludes that that the VHP’s abiding legacy to India will be schism, division and communal polarisation and the overall agenda of Hindu rashtra will never bear fruit because of the diffuse jelly-like nature of Hindu society.

This is perhaps the first straight look at the VHP’s politics without casting it as a lab rat in larger studies on “communalism”. The VHP emerges as a socio-economic as much as a political movement whose anti-Christian and anti-Muslim identity is powerful in the short term, yet limiting in a longer term.