SOCIAL SCIENTIST
independent Islamic states in India since the 1980s. (See Christophe Jaffrelot,
The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s
(London: Hurst, 1996), pp.196-97, 344, 392.) More recently, the VHP Vice
President stated that Christians were breaking India with the assistance of
the CIA, and Christians were funding naxalites along with the ISI (Week, 7
June 1998). The VHP's all-India general secretary (also in charge of Gujarat)
claimed that in tribal areas "the church is encouraging a separatist movement
as it wants to carve out a Christian homeland" (Outlook, 10 Aug. 1998).
Hindu 25 Jan. 1999; Hindu 28 Jan. 1999; Week, 17 Jan. 1999.
See Kumkum Sangari, "Women, swadeshi and nuclear weapons", The
Indian Economy 1997-98: An Alternative Survey (Delhi: Delhi Science
Forum, 1998).
Outlook, 22 Feb. 1999.
Since 1982, the Shiv Sena has campaigned to take over the shrine of the
sufi Haji Malang, worshipped by hindus, muslims and Christians, low and
high castes, and to rename him Macchindranath. (See Asad Bin Saif, "Attack
on Syncretic Culture," EPW 31:32 (10 Aug. 1996). More recently a sufi
dargah in Karnataka where the same deity has been worshipped under
different names by hindus and muslims through syncretic rituals has been
attacked. The VHP and BD have been trying to "liberate' the dargah by
installing an idol of a Hanuman. See Outlook, 14 December 1998; Muzaffar
Assadi, "Threats to Syncretic Culture: Baba Budan Giri Incident", EPW
34:13 (27 Mar. 1999),pp.746-48.
Savarkar saw tribals as hindus who were not yet fully "integrated" (Keer,
p.77). The BJP believes tribals belong to Hinduism anyway so there is no
need or organisations such as the Vanvasi Kalyan Sangh to convert them
(Hindustan Times, 22 Jan. 1996). And the RSS sees them as vanvasis or
backward hindus who need to be reformed (Shah, p.316).
Times of India, 9 Jan. 1999; Week, 17 Jan. 1999.
See Kumkum Sangari, "Tracing Akbar: Hagiographies, popular narrative
traditions, and the subject of conversion" in ed. Neera Chandoke (Delhi:
Tulika, 1999).
Hindu, 22 Feb. 1999.
Star News, Sunday, 31 Jan. 1999.
On shuddhi, see Christophe Jaffrelot, "Hindu Nationalism: Strategic
syncretism and ideology building," EPW 28:12-13 (20-27 March 1993),
p.519; Suvira Jaiswal, "Semitising Hinduism"; Social Scientist 223 (Dec.
1991), pp.28-29; Kenneth W. Jones', Socio-religious Reform Movements in
British India (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), p.101; Sarkar,
pp.1696-97.
Cited by Manjari Katju, "The Early Vishwa Hindu Parishad: 1964 to 1983",
Social Scientist 26:5-6 (May-June 1998), p.53.
A current slogan in Gujarat that Papiya Ghosh drew my attention to — pahle
kasai, ab isai — articulates precisely this sequence of prejudices.
Cited in J.N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India (1914; rpt
Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1967), p.311.
Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1923, Bombay: S.S.Savarkar, 1969), p.130;
Keer, p. 193.
Cited in Jaffrelot, p.348.
The procedure for reconverting tribals in the Dangs, a purificatory bath in a
