SACW #2 | 09-11 March 2004

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire #2 |  09-11 March,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] India: Hindu nationalism and Orissa: 
Minorities as other  (Angana Chatterji)


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[1]


Communalism Combat [India]
February-March  2004

Special Report

Hindu nationalism and Orissa:
Minorities as other

BY ANGANA CHATTERJI

In October 2003 Angana Chatterji wrote a report 
on Orissa for Communalism Combat about the 
political economy of Hindutva in the state. In 
this article, she continues to map the 
entrenchment of the sangh parivar. Information 
used in this article is derived from multiple 
sources, including interviews with persons 
affiliated with sangh organisations. As relevant, 
quotations are anonymous or pseudonyms have been 
used, and place names changed, listed or omitted, 
at the request of the contributor. Insertion(s) 
within [] in the quotations are the author's.

Your god has no eyes. He cannot have a soul. Your 
god is violent, just like you are.' A Hindu neigh-
bour charges Hasina Begum. With her technician 
husband, Hasina's is the only Muslim family in a 
housing society in a small town in Orissa. They 
relocated in 2003. Hasina and her husband are 
isolated with few acquaintances in the area. 
Geeta, a Hindu woman, befriended Hasina only to 
be confronted by others about such association 
with Muslims. Geeta slowly withdrew, saying. 'We 
like you but we have to live in society here, do 
we carry you with us, or carry them? What choice 
do we have?' Geeta and Hasina do not speak any 
more.

Hasina Begum tells me, "We know that many Hindus 
hate Muslims and I know that Hindus are in power. 
I am afraid for my daughter. I want her to stay 
at home with me. She does not listen. So many 
times I am afraid for her, I beat her to make her 
stay at home. She has marks on her back from my 
beating her. I am ashamed. I feel isolated. If 
something happens to us, if someone attacks us, 
robs us, who will be with us? We are asked, 'You 
have no idols, so who is your god? Are you 
godless?' I know that we are not welcome here. 
There are stories about us 'Pathans' that 
circulate in the market place. We have heard 
about Gujarat." People tell Hasina that nothing 
has really happened, that she has not been 
attacked, that she is overreacting. She replies, 
"Fear is attacking me. I feel that they are 
watching me."

Subash Chouhan, state convenor for the Bajrang 
Dal, the paramilitary wing of Hindutva, claims, 
"In the country, Orissa is the second Hindu Rajya 
[state]. Today, Sai [Christian] missionary and 
Islam, they both want to convert the entire 
pradesh [state] into Sai and Islam. In the Tribal 
belt they have been planning to convert the 
people into Christians and Harijans into Muslims. 
This work is moving with force in Orissa. This is 
the reason the Bajrang Dal and VHP [Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad] have taken up the task of consolidating 
Hindu shakti in Orissa. In the entire state we 
have selected some [key] districts, such as Sai 
based Sundargarh district, Gajapati zilla, 
Phulbani, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Koraput, 
Nabarangpur districts - we are undertaking seva 
[service] work here, hospitals, one-teacher 
schools, Hari Katha Yojana, orphanage, these 
types of jojona and seva work are being 
undertaken all over the state."

A secular activist responds, "The Rashtriya 
Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS] and sangh parivar sailed 
in with the cyclone [in 1999], we are now 
drowning in their midst. They are too many and 
everywhere. They are kind and giving to people 
who abide by them, even as they are watchful and 
intolerant of people who disobey them. They do 
more than the government, they work hard and say 
that they are against corruption. But at what 
price? They are for a 'clean' Orissa, they are 
cleaning out the filth, and Christians and 
Muslims are the filth they want to sweep out."

Citizen's groups have formed various campaigns to 
combat communalism in the state. Since 2002, 
secular meetings and marches have taken place in 
Beherampur, Cuttack, Balesore, Bhadrak, 
Bhubaneswar and Sambalpur. Community and 
citizen's leaders speak of alliance building. 
They warn about the futility of partnerships with 
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and sangh 
parivar vigilantes, cautioning that alliance 
building requires shared commitments. They urge 
for rallying progressive, democratic forces 
across the state.

Throughout Orissa, land reform movements, Adivasi 
and Dalit organisation for self-determination, 
and resistance movements confronting the 
devastation of dominant development and 
globalisation act as a bulwark against the 
escalation of the sangh parivar. Adivasi and 
Dalit self-determination exists in opposition to 
the State. Adivasis and Dalits, within 
politicised contexts, do not identify as Hindus 
and resist their incorporation into the 
Brahminical (and elite) social order. In a Hindu 
majority state in India, Brahminism enforces the 
supremacy of 'Hinduness', and defines norms, 
values, ethics and morality. Ethnic, minority and 
marginalised groups are subject to the political 
and economic violence of Brahminism via which 
they are forced to frame their political and 
cultural aspirations.

The secular activist continues, "[In retaliation] 
the sangh parivar is consolidating its position 
in the mining belt and in all sensitive and 
Tribal areas in Orissa, where there are popular 
Dalit or Adivasi struggles for 
self-determination, trying to undercut them. 
Several developments are taking place on the 
mining front, where the sangh divides poor 
people, who, driven out by corporations, are 
organising to resist." In Nayagarh district, 
Dalit communities watch Hindutva's voracious 
march. They speak of malignant fictions 
circulated by the Hindutvavadis that Christian 
missionary activity is placing Hinduism at risk. 
Dalits, Adivasis, Christians, Hindus and Muslims 
speak of how their villages and watersheds 
intertwine, and how crops are dependent on the 
run-off water from each other's lands. They say 
that they cannot afford to hate each other.

In a massive mobilisation drive in the mid 1980s, 
the Jagannath Rath Yatra passed through Hindu, 
Christian, Dalit and Adivasi villages across 
Orissa. The Yatra traversed a thousand sites 
between March 1986 and May 1988, drawing 3-4,000 
people in each place. Local people met expenses 
totalling 2-4 million rupees. As an outcome of 
this process, 1,600 permanent mobilisation units 
managed by 500 committees were set up. The VHP 
and Vanavasi Kalyan Ashrams run these units, 
carrying out their mission via Kirtan Mandals, 
Satsangs and Yuvak Kendras.

Today, the annual Jagannath Yatra and other 
Hindutva organised religio-nationalist spectacles 
continue across the state. Muslims, and Adivasi 
and Dalit groups connected to self-determination 
movements in dissent to the sangh parivar, are 
afraid as thundering mobs engulf their villages. 
On April 11, 2003, communal tensions spiralled in 
Rajgangapur, an industrial town 400 kilometres 
from Bhubaneswar, during a procession for Hanuman 
on Ramnavmi. Two people were killed in police 
firing.

Over the last decade, the sangh has amassed 30 
major organisations including political, 
charitable, militant and educational groups, 
trade and students unions, women's groups, with a 
massive base of a few million, the largest 
volunteer enlistment in the state. The Prakalpa 
Samanvaya Samiti is a pivotal sangh organisation 
synchronising the activities of various faith and 
welfare outfits. The Prakalpa Samiti operates a 
school at Chakapad, three student hostels, 20 
weekly balwadis, and 300 night schools. It 
attends to 20,000 patients each month through 
medicine distribution centres and three mobile 
vans. The Prakalpa Samiti acts to drive 
Christians to Hinduism.

In Orissa, the RSS charges that hostile 
Hinduisation is a 'rational' and necessary 
response to, among other factors, the growth of 
missionary activity leading to an increase in the 
Christian population. Numerous groups are 
conflicted about the need to direct 'equal' 
energy in assessing Hindutva, Christian 
missionisation and Islamic fundamentalism in 
India. Violent Islamic fundamentalism certainly 
requires deep scrutiny in South Asia, even as 
Hindutva must command particular emphasis in 
India. Hindu nationalism is linked to a state 
that authorises Hindutva's actions, lending it 
dangerous legitimacy.

Fundamentalist Christianity, linked to the United 
States, is endorsed by the current Bush 
administration. Evidence suggests (American) 
evangelist participation in intelligence 
operations in Latin America and elsewhere. Such 
activity and its relationship to India should 
concern us only as it actually takes place. 
Christians constitute less than three per cent of 
the population in Orissa, with a one per cent 
increase since 1981. Neither does the Christian 
population in India record any appreciable 
increase from 2.6 per cent in 1971, to 2.43 in 
1981, 2.34 in 1991 and 2.6 in 2001.

The sangh parivar converts minorities to dominant 
Hinduism without distinguishing between forcible 
conversions and the right to proselytise, and 
uses the converted for sadistic ends. The sangh 
does not acknowledge that Tribal and Dalit 
conversions to Christianity are rarely coercive 
and occur in response to oppressive and 
entrenched caste inequities, gender violence, and 
chronic poverty. The sangh's claim that 
Christians in India are anti-national facilitates 
violence against them. Dalit Christian activists 
seek empowerment and understand 'decastification' 
as necessary to fighting Hindutva. They also 
speak of challenging inherent inequities that are 
often reproduced through the church, where, they 
say, pews are filled on Sunday mornings with 
compliant people sitting in rows ordered along 
caste hierarchies.

The sangh's voracious assault organises the 
disenfranchised into a vicious political economy 
structured by the caste system. RSS cadres 
working in Sambalpur district stress how critical 
it is that Adivasis and Dalits are converted to 
Hinduism. They organise Adivasi rallies where 
'Garbh se kaho hum Hindu hai' (say with pride 
that I am a Hindu) pierces the air. Badal 
Satpaty, an RSS office bearer, stresses the 
importance of Adivasi conversions for Orissa. 
"Vanavasis [derogatory term for Adivasis] are 
given land by the government. If Vanavasis see 
themselves as outside Hinduism, then their lands 
too are non-Hindu lands that are anti-development 
and cannot be used for the betterment of the 
nation. Bharat is a Hindu nation, and these 
people and their lands are anti-national."

Whose nation? Adivasis are 8.01 per cent of the 
nation's inhabitants, yet 40 per cent of the 
displaced population. The Transfer of Immovable 
Property (by Scheduled Tribes) Regulation of 1956 
provides against land transfers in Scheduled 
Areas. Outside Scheduled Areas, the Orissa Land 
Reforms Act of 1960 and subsequent amendments 
guard against Tribal land alienation. In 
practice, an extensive 'land grab' has resulted 
from debt bondage and indenture related to land 
leasing and mortgage of Adivasi and Dalit lands 
to large farmers and moneylenders, consolidation 
of land holdings, strategic marriage alliances 
and corruption.

Adivasis living in forest villages are often 
evicted; their right to land dismissed by the 
state's insistence on 'evidence' of ownership and 
residency. Such demands evince the betrayal of 
old claims with new boundaries, maps, roads, 
checkposts that insert violence into the everyday 
life of the Adivasi. Tribal testimonies are 
converted into 'lies' by the apparatus of the 
state. A Gond Adivasi elder testifies, "We live 
in the village in the forest. We have lived here 
for generations. Our houses are made of local 
mud, our roofs from local leaves from the 
forests. Our diet, our thoughts, our language 
tells you that we have been living here. You can 
see the shadows of our ancestors reflected in the 
pond, our songs mimic the birds, they tell 
stories of the forest, our feet walk these lands 
over and over. These [imprints] are our land 
records. The forester does not believe us. Our 
lives are lies to them."

In India today, about 86 per cent of Dalit 
families are landless or marginal landholders, 
and 63 per cent subsist on incomes from daily 
wage labour. Social violence against Dalits 
remains institutionalised. Legitimation of 
Adivasi and Dalit rights has been a process laden 
with inequities, and the notification and 
denotification of Tribes is often used as a 
political tool to undermine Adivasi 
self-determination by not recognising their 
status, claims and rights vis-à-vis the state. 
The amputation of Adivasi tenure on forestlands 
has contributed to cultural genocide in Orissa 
that supports the consolidation of national 
territory, corporate liberalisation and the ethic 
of conservation inherent to modern nation states.

In July 2003, the Orissa government permitted the 
unconstitutional transfer of lands in Schedule V 
areas for mining and industrial use. Orissa's 
decision contradicts the 1997 Samata versus 
Andhra Pradesh judgement, where the apex court 
had ruled against the government's lease of 
Tribal forest and other lands in Scheduled Areas 
to non-Tribals for mining and industrial 
operations.

Beginning January 23, 2004, four Adivasi 
villages, Borobhota, Kinari, Kothduar, 
Sindhabahili, and their agricultural fields in 
south east Kalahandi district, have been razed by 
Sterlite industries, a multinational corporation 
building an aluminium refinery near Lanjigarh, 
adjacent to Kashipur. Sterlite's finances are 
generated from its partner company, Vedanta 
Resources. Non-resident Indians operate Sterlite 
and Vedanta, launched in London in December 2003. 
Sterlite has a controversial history. Company 
chairperson and managing director, Anil Agarwal 
has denied knowledge of the Samata judgement in 
the past. The Lanjigarh project will mine bauxite 
at 4,000 feet from the north west rim of the 
Niyamgiri mountains. The villagers, forcibly 
evicted, without requisite compensation or 
rehabilitation, are living in camps under police 
'guard', their right to life placed on hold.

State sponsored development in Orissa forces the 
incorporation of the poor into the dominant 
order. The sangh parivar conspires with the Biju 
Janata Dal-BJP coalition government in 
Bhubaneswar to enable this inequitable 
amalgamation. Sangh activists have infiltrated 
deep into state run development agencies such as 
the Council for Advancement of People's Action 
and Rural Technology (CAPART), an autonomous 
institution that works to create rural 
development partnerships between voluntary 
organisations and the government. CAPART supports 
numerous RSS activities in Orissa diverting funds 
for Hindutva.

Badal Satpaty of the RSS says, "It is because 
these people [Dalits, Adivasis] refuse to 
integrate that all these problems arise. Why do 
they ask for special rights? The motherland is 
good to us all. These people are lazy, they live 
in filth, they are illiterate. How can we take 
them seriously without civilising them? The RSS 
seeks to help in this mission, for the betterment 
of the poor. The RSS is working with, first, the 
Hindu Dalits to mobilise them and tell them about 
the dangers of defection. Then, we are bringing 
Christian Dalits and Adivasis back to the Hindu 
fold through education and re-conversion. We are 
also helping them economically."

Where conversions to Hinduism are acquiescent and 
occur with the complicity of non-Hindus, 
acquiescence is produced by its intimacy with the 
dominant. For non-dominant groups, the landscape 
of Hindu supremacy shapes fear (of the dominant), 
desire (to acquire privileges), hope (for 
'acquittal', to 'pass' as non-other) and 
internalised oppression. These complex forces 
create agency on the part of the marginalised. 
Such agency is manufactured in relation and 
response to Hindu ascendancy.

I spoke with a Dalit RSS worker who said: "The 
RSS is helping us build a Hindu samaj. We are 
poor, we have no assistance, we are fighting 
Christians and Muslims for development money. The 
Christians, they have foreign missionary money, 
what do we Hindu Dalits have? The Sai 
[Christians] are also converting our people to 
their religion. They eat meat, they touch 
leather, they have bad morals. I am scared for my 
children. We are thankful that the RSS has sworn 
to protect us." AC: "Have you seen these 
Christian missionaries?" Dalit RSS worker: "No, 
but I have heard that they are nearby." AC: "How 
many Hindus have been converted in your village, 
or in any of the neighbouring villages?" Dalit 
RSS worker: "Nobody yet, but the RSS tells us 
that they [the missionaries] might come soon. 
That is why we go to the RSS meetings, to become 
informed about the troubles facing us, and how we 
can be strong and protect ourselves, to become an 
army against these foreigners." Dalits continue 
to suffer social ostracism and economic 
deprivation. They are manipulated into joining 
the very Hindutva forces that have historically 
deprived Dalits of equity in order to use them 
against other mistreated communities.

At a 15,000 strong Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram 
organised rally in Bhubaneswar in December 2003, 
Dilip Singh Bhuria, chairperson, National 
Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled 
Tribes, commended the BJP for its pro-Adivasi 
policies. Adivasis have historically voted for 
the Congress party in Orissa and have not 
benefited from this loyalty. Mr. Bhuria said, "We 
are passing through a governance similar to Ram 
Rajya," posing Ram as the god, and BJP as the 
party, of Adivasis. Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram 
president, Jagadev Ram Oram insisted that 
Adivasis converting to Christianity should not be 
allowed to access the benefits of reservation. 
Through espousing another religion, he said, 
Adivasis no longer retain their Tribal status. 
Speakers condemned Christian conversions 
declaring 'all Tribals are Hindus'.

Adivasis are taught by Ekal Vidyalayas about the 
'origins' of Jagannath in Hinduism, as Jagannath, 
the famed Tribal god of Orissa, is Hinduised. 
Since the inception of Saraswati Shishu Mandirs, 
the Janata Dal, Congress and other political 
parties have endorsed the sangh parivar's network 
of educational organisations, interpreting 
Hindutva education as secular. Consecutive 
governments have abdicated state responsibility 
in building a quality education system in the 
state. High levels of illiteracy among Dalits and 
Adivasis proliferate simultaneous to the 
denigration of non-Hindu traditions and cultures.

In the absence of viable educational 
institutions, Hindutva education offers a free, 
widely available and rigorous curriculum. 
Students from these schools succeed in state 
board examinations. Hindutva schools, run 
primarily by RSS organisations, are complemented 
by organisations that facilitate cultural 
regimentation. The facticity of hate in this 
curriculum, the dismissal of minorities, the 
assertion of Hindu supremacy is overlooked by 
many Hindus.

In the current climate, many Muslims retreat to 
madrassas. These institutions often teach 
orthodoxy, deliberately mischaracterised by the 
majority community as uniformly 'fundamentalist'. 
Hasina Begum offers, "My daughter is in a good 
school but with those other children who do not 
like her. She wants to play with the neighbours 
but they curse at her. They physically push her 
around. Now we think we should find a madrassa 
for her. The madrassa is orthodox, but they will 
protect us. The education is better in the school 
but what if something happens to her?"

The adverse effects of the sangh parivar on the 
social and economic health of Muslim communities 
are apparent. Samshul Amin, a Muslim man from 
Bhadrak says, "We trade in leather. We always 
have. The RSS and Bajrang Dal tell lies about how 
we slaughter cows to shame Hindus. That we kill 
and send the cows to Muslims in Bangladesh." A 
Muslim businessman in Jagatsinghpur town 
confirms, "They threaten and at times beat 
Muslims on the road, starting from Bhadrak, from 
Balesore, onwards up to Calcutta, where the 
Bajrang Dal has a strong presence, there they are 
violent. They stop cow transportation on Jajpur 
road."

Subash Chouhan, Bajrang Dal state convenor, 
indicts, "There is so much cow slaughter, for 
example in Sundargarh, Bhadrak, thousands of 
cows. Every day about 200 trucks leave with cows 
for Bangladesh. We believe that the cow is our 
mother, but they want to kill the cow. Also, if 
the cow stays, it is a financial security for the 
home. So, if necessary we will use a suicide 
squad. To save the country and its sanskriti 
[culture], we will do whatever is necessary."

In Pitaipura village, in Jagatsinghpur district, 
a disturbing event occurred in the winter of 2001 
after Muslim graveyard lands were placed in 
dispute. According to Hakim Bhai, a resident of 
the village, "The land record for the village 
divides the 25 acres into two plots, one listed 
as a 'kabarstan' [graveyard] and another as 
'gorostan' [also graveyard]. But villagers insist 
that 'gorostan' is 'gaochar' [grazing land] not a 
kabarstan. We were harassed when funeral 
processions arrived or we read namaaz during Id. 
We sat down together to resolve the dispute 
without any success. Then we filed a case in 
court. The court did not resolve the case for the 
longest time. The court then began mediating and 
declared a part of the land as a graveyard and 
held the rest as disputed. Once, the night before 
the official was coming to measure the land, 
Hindus from the village stole into the graveyard 
and placed a murti [idol] to mark it as their 
land. We found out and went inside and took it 
out. The next morning when the official arrived, 
Hindus were angry that we had taken the murti 
out. They threw stones at us, we threw stones 
back at them. The crowd ran from the graveyard 
pelting each other. We were near the Ma Durga 
temple. The Hindus started accusing us of 
throwing stones at the temple. Then it began."

Another resident inserts, "Perhaps our stones had 
fallen on the temple compound. But we were not 
destroying the temple, we were responding to each 
other. Once the word spread that we were 
destroying the temple, RSS youth arrived from 
Bhubaneswar and mobilised people from surrounding 
villages. They went around with loudspeakers to 
20-30 Hindu villages accusing us of destroying 
the temple. Our basti [hamlet] is in the middle 
of the village, between Hindu hamlets. Five 
Muslim homes were burnt in our basti and men were 
beaten. The police could not do anything. For 
three days during that time we were very afraid, 
some hid in the forests. A peace rally came to 
our village. They have not returned. The case is 
pending. No resolution has happened. If we are 
left alone things might escalate. Then what?" 
Hakim Bhai responds, "The RSS continues its 
meetings in the Hindu hamlets regularly since the 
incident. These meetings are not publicised, they 
spread through word of mouth. We Muslims have now 
made our own shops in the basti, we have 
retreated to ourselves. Our women are afraid and 
they do not want to go out of the basti. When we 
go out Hindus call us names. Call us 'Pathans'. 
We are becoming isolated." Shazia, a woman, adds, 
"Even our dead cannot rest in peace."

The extent to which violence is inscribed 
disproportionately on women's bodies and memories 
is rarely named or languaged. A Muslim woman in 
another district requests anonymity. She says, 
"We came from Chhota Nagpur, displaced from a 
mining town. Our village is surrounded by the 
RSS. We live like moles, I teach my children to 
be unseen. If we are quiet people will leave us 
alone. The men, it is not easy for them. Last 
month there was violence in our village. Bajrang 
Bali's called us names, they threatened we would 
never work again. Said we were dirty, that when 
we kill cows, we do violence to Hinduism. They 
said they were watching us. My husband came back, 
shaken. He brought fear with him into the house. 
He forced me to have intercourse. It was not 
about intimacy, it is about power, about feeling 
helpless and wanting control. So, here it is, in 
our kitchen, in our bedroom, in our home. Even as 
we wait for it to strike, it already has."

The violence that accompanies Hinduism is not 
new. Hindutva is its variant. It is not about 
groups and peoples, but about the country, who 
belongs and who doesn't. The imbrication of state 
disregard for Adivasi and Dalit human rights with 
the grassroots mobilisation of Hindutva make 
Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Adivasis, women's 
rights volatile in Orissa.

Hindutva corroborates the impairment of women's 
rights that are already structurally limited in 
Orissa, together with women's access to land, 
livelihood and well-being resources. A host of 
xenophobic women's organisations are in place, 
including the BJP Mohila Morcha and the Rashtriya 
Sevika Samiti. Established in 1936, the Rashtriya 
Sevika Samiti has been active in the crusade 
against cow slaughter in Orissa. The Samiti 
organises state and district level meetings, as 
well as daily and weekly sakha and prayer meets 
in villages, towns and cities "to encourage 
physical education, intellectual development, 
mental acumen".

Bidyut Lata Raja, leader of the Rashtriya Sevika 
Samiti, says that the parivar helps discipline 
the mind and weans people from 'pointless' 
activity. She says that the parivar functions as 
a family, each taking care of the other. "The 
parivar seeks to create unity. Dalits and 
Adivasis say that Hindus are outsiders. How can 
that be? We must create consciousness that we are 
all one." They seek to complement economic 
development with building moral character to 
unite India through shared nationalism. The 
Samiti supervises Balmandirs and Udyog Mandirs, 
celebrates the anniversaries of influential sangh 
leaders and religious festivals, hosts classes on 
culture and ethics, organises Bhajan and Kirtan 
recitals, and runs women's schools and hostels. 
The Samiti concentrates its volunteer-based 
social work services in Adivasi areas, seeking to 
bring 'enlightenment'.

The Rashtriya Sevika Samiti seeks to organise and 
train women in self-defence, "to increase their 
physical and mental capacity to encourage them to 
protect their nation, dharma and culture". 
Stringently heterosexist and mired in sexism, the 
Samiti is dedicated to supporting women in their 
youth, in marriage and motherhood, work, and 
leadership, indoctrinating the practice of 
Hindutva as patriotic, the saffron flag as the 
national emblem, insisting on the loyalty of its 
followers to their husbands, families and the 
Hindutva leadership.

The sangh parivar asserts that relations between 
higher caste, Dalit and Adivasi groups have 
improved in rural Orissa. It ignores that lower 
class and caste and Adivasi people are seldom 
acknowledged as social equals. In an interesting 
display, while all residents of a particular 
village, including Adivasis, may contribute 
financially to the major annual Hindu pujas 
(prayers), higher caste people control the 
preparations and ceremony. It may be appropriate 
for a member of the Dalit or Muslim community, if 
invited, to eat at a general caste home usually 
seated in a demarcated space, and internalise the 
invitation as demonstrative of the 'charity' and 
'tolerance' of the upper caste toward 'lower 
caste' people. The reverse is nearly impossible. 
Inter-caste alliances, marriage between 
non-comparable social castes, are more evident 
even while often socially ostracised.

Associations among Hindus and non-Hindus remain 
strained in the state and frequently prohibited. 
In upper caste rural Orissa, poor Muslim 
communities are as socially unacceptable as 
Adivasis, and constitute a 'lower' social strata 
than Dalits. Gender and ethnicity are central to 
how resources and power are allocated and rights 
disbursed, both nationally and locally, and are 
salient to the organisation of legal, cultural, 
economic and political infrastructure and 
institutions. The imposition of Brahminical 
language, ritual and memory seeks to incorporate 
the marginal into the dominant polity 
simultaneous to segregationist arrangements for 
water use, food and forest resource sharing.

BJP and sangh parivar organisations have a 
significant strategy of manoeuvring Muslims in 
middle class neighbourhoods and villages by 
forming alliances with the local leadership. In 
Banamalipur and Jadupur village, neighbouring 
Bhubaneswar in Khurda district, Muslims leaders 
spoke of their alliance with the BJP. Poor 
communities in these villages say this allows 
local Muslim politicians access to electoral 
seats leaving the disenfranchised without 
trustworthy representation. Minority resistance 
is frail with few options, progressive Muslims 
say. A Muslim activist from Bhubaneswar states, 
"We are isolated. We do not want to identify with 
the madrassas and we do not have a mass movement 
that accepts us."

The actions of sangh organisations are often 
triangulated, with parallel components for 
edification, mobilisation and service. For 
example, Vidya Bharati (known as Shiksha Vikas 
Samiti) directs 391 Saraswati Shishu Mandir 
schools in Orissa. Sangh students are inducted 
into the cadre via a formal curriculum that 
emphasises Hindu nationalism, along with informal 
training in cultural values and defence. In 
addition, these students and their families are 
expected to volunteer in mobilisation and 
developmental work, in local fundraising. They 
are even expected to participate in temple 
inaugurations.

Religion, development, polity and education are 
used by sangh parivar organisations to facilitate 
recruitment into Hindu extremism. An army of 
parivar organisations fundraise abroad as 
registered charities to support sectarian 
development in India. Funds from the US and UK 
amounting to millions of dollars were raised by 
sangh organisations during the Gujarat earthquake 
and Orissa cyclone, substantially aiding the 
expansion of sangh networks in both states.

The US Commission on International Religious 
Freedom recently designated India as a 'country 
of particular concern', asking for US 
investigations into RSS organisations registered 
as charities in the US. India Development Relief 
Fund is one such organisation that, post cyclone, 
raised $90,660 for Sookruti, $23,255 for Orissa 
Cyclone Rehabilitation Foundation, and $37,560 
for Utkal Bipannya Sahayata Samiti, as documented 
in the report 'Foreign Exchange of Hate' in 2002.

In the United Kingdom, Sewa International UK (the 
fundraising wing of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, 
RSS equivalent in UK and US) sent a majority of 
the £260,000 raised for cyclone relief to Utkal 
Bipannya Sahayata Samiti, an RSS organisation in 
Orissa, detailed in the report, 'In Bad Faith? 
British Charity and Hindu Extremism' by Awaaz, 
2004. Currently, Utkal Bipannya Sahayata Samiti 
undertakes sectarian disaster relief work and has 
been working with approximately 50,000 
beneficiaries after the floods of 2001, funded by 
RSS organisations abroad.

RSS cadres mobilise sakhas around minority 
villages in Orissa. Each sakha begins with an 
organiser and a few members who meticulously 
monitor the area, teaching people to describe 
themselves as 'communal', a new identity that 
denotes Hindu cultural pride. Minorities worry 
as, under the watchful eye of the RSS, cricket 
conflicts, harmless fracas between children's 
winning and losing teams, turn into communal 
skirmishes. Green flags of stars and crescent 
used by madrassas are depicted as adhering to 
Pakistan, linked to terrorism and the Inter 
Services Intelligence.

VHP, RSS and Bajrang Dal leaders and their cadre 
in Orissa reiterate that charges of 
fundamentalism cannot apply to Hindutva. It is 
not an ideology, they say, but integral practice, 
a lifestyle for nationhood. Hindutva functions as 
a meta narrative in manufacturing foundational 
truths to build and govern the nation. Hindutva 
assimilates the plural traditions within Hinduism 
to create a narrow centralised code that promises 
to unite Hindus. These principles are 
universalistic, in action segregationist. This 
strategy thwarts the complex search for cultural 
identity that confronts the vast diversity of 
peoples in India living at the pre and post 
modern intersections of nation making and 
globalism.

Hindutva justifies practices of domination in 
ways that ignore the power dynamics of its 
discourse. There is no pluralism in its agenda - 
Hindutva is the only 'right' way to be human 
within its specified territory, any other must be 
annihilated. Hindutva invokes difference and 
plurality in the name of domination. What are the 
effects of Hindutva's discourse? Hate. Cruelty. 
Terror. To realise its mission, Hindutva, 
anathema to democracy, defines minority interests 
as oppositional to Hindu, and therefore national, 
interest. The struggles for justice of marginal 
groups organised around ethnicity, religion, 
class, caste, tribe, gender, or culture become 
hostile to national unity.

Elite aspirations in nation making, the 
annexation of territory and resources from the 
disempowered, the imposition of violent 
ideologies and alienating identities, and 
subaltern resistance, have produced contested 
meanings and practices of democracy. Through the 
amassment of identity politics, reinvention of 
history, the normalisation of difference, the 
extension of its power into private and social 
life, Hindu majoritarianism exhibits scorn for 
those it finds unincorporable and inassimilable 
into its governing imaginary. Hindu nationalism 
is aided by the State as it operates as legatee 
to its imperial coloniser, inheriting and 
modifying its biopolitics.

What are the reasons for Hindutva's conquest in 
rural and urban Orissa? What prevents a resonant 
secular counter-response? Praveen Togadia, 
international secretary of the VHP, visited 
Jajpur on February 16 and Beherampur on February 
29, continuing his seditious campaign for 
Hindutva amidst rousing protests from local 
groups. Since the assembly elections, the BJP has 
gained in strength. As Orissa gears up for the 
next round, the BJP is using the 'jal, jungle, 
zameen' (water, forest, land) platform, 
appropriated from land reform movements, to 
persuade Adivasis in Orissa. The Vanavasi Kalyan 
Ashram is the key strategist and organiser for 
the BJP in the Tribal belt. Having won 
Chhattisgarh, the BJP is confident. Tribal 
culture is being glorified as artefact, 
objectified, made distant from its political 
reality while the relentless decimation of these 
very cultures continues.

Subash Chouhan of the Bajrang Dal resumes, "We in 
the VHP believe that this country belongs to the 
Hindus. It is not a dharamsala [guesthouse] and 
people cannot just come here and settle down and 
do whatever they want. That is not going to 
happen. We will not let that happen. Whatever 
happens here will happen with the consent of the 
Hindus. If you come to another's house and live 
as a guest and then start doing what you please, 
that is not going to happen. Whatever happens 
here, say politics happen, it will have to be 
Hindutva politics, with Hindutva's consent. India 
is a world power, what is in India is nowhere 
else, and we want to create India nicely in the 
image of Ram Rajya."

Hindutva's production of culture and nation 
escalates, celebrated by breakdown, rupture, 
violence. As I write this, the second year closes 
on Gujarat. Justice remains beyond reach for 
Muslim minorities in the complex duplicity of 
State negligence, judicial oversight, and the 
deep fragmentation of the political community in 
India. Gujarat represents an end and a beginning, 
a marker in Hindutva's malevolent reach for a 
Hindu State. The end of lives, the culmination of 
brutality. I am reminded of a Dalit boy, age 
eight, in a decimated colony in Ahmedabad, in 
June 2002, who said, "I am not afraid of death. I 
am frightened by life. Look what happens in 
life," as Muslim and Dalit women stared each 
other into silence across a boundary wall.


(Angana Chatterji is associate professor of 
Social and Cultural Anthropology at the 
California Institute of Integral Studies. She is 
currently completing a book on this subject, 
titled, 'Violent Gods. Hindu Nationalism in 
India's Present', forthcoming from Three Essays 
Press Collective in Delhi).


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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
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