When the Fish Shoot Back - Dr. Matthew CJ Rudolph

ICWA 

LETTERS 

Since 1925 the Institute of 

Current World Affairs (the Crane- 

Rogers Foundation) has provided 

long-term fellowships to enable 

outstanding young professionals 

to live outside the United States 

and write about international 

areas and issues. An exempt 

operating foundation endowed by 

the late Charles R. Crane, the 

Institute is also supported by 

contributions from like-minded 

individuals and foundations. 

TRUSTEES 

Bryn Barnard 

Joseph Battat 

Mary Lynne Bird 

Steven Butler 

Sharon Griffin Doorasamy 

William F. Foote 

Peter Geithner 

Gary Hartshorn 

Kitty Hempstone 

Katherine Roth Kono 

Cheng Li 

Peter Bird Martin 

Chandler Rosenberger 

Edmund Sutton 

HONORARY TRUSTEES 

David Elliot 

David Hapgood 

Pat M. Holt 

Edwin S. Munger 

Richard H. Nolte 

Albert Ravenholt 

Phillips Talbot 

Institute of Current World Affairs 

The Crane-Rogers Foundation 

Four West Wheelock Street 

Hanover, New Hampshire 03755 U.S.A. 

By Matthew C.J. Rudolph 

MCJR-1 

EAST ASIA 

Matthew Rudolph is a Phillips Talbot 

Fellow of the Institute studying political 

and economic developments in South Asia. 

When the Fish Shoot Back: 

Pink City Reflections on India’s 

14 th General Election (Part I) 

Old Stumping Grounds 

JULY, 2004 

LANDOUR CANTONMENT, Uttaranchal, India—His tone blending nostalgia and 

inspired determination, the speaker exuded calm confidence. He addressed the 

seated crowd in Jaipur from a raised election-campaign dais festooned with saffron 

colors, lotus paintings and a constellation of pictures depicting the pantheon 

of the Bharatya Janata Party’s leaders and martyrs. “It was near this very spot,” 

the speaker lamented, waving his hand toward arched roofs and darkened arcades 

above and beside his audience, “on June 23 rd 1953, while staying in an apartment 

here in Tripolia Bazaar, that I learned from a journalist of Shri Mukherjee’s 

tragic death.” 1 Above him, among the constellation, hung the image of Shyam 

Prasad Mukherjee, founder (in 1951) of the Jan Sangh, predecessor to the Bharatya 

Janata Party (BJP). The orator, BJP Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, was clearly 

drawing energy from his surroundings. 

The surroundings had a range of significance for the man at the podium. After 

all, it was here in Rajasthan state that Advani first cut his teeth on political 

organization and public rhetoric. Not far away in Alwar district, the young Advani 

worked as a publicity officer for the then-also-young (two decades) Hindu-nationalist 

organization known as the Rashtraya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). That 

was the late 1940s, and Advani had recently fled the section of Punjab that found 

In his fellowship application, Matthew Rudolph 

wrote: “Now is an excellent time to be sinking roots 

in South Asia. Fortunately, U.S.-South Asian 

relations have moved beyond the sourness that 

followed the 1998 nuclear tests. The campaign 

against terrorism, the growth of India’s high-tech 

industry, the increasing density of Non-Resident 

Indian (NRI) connections between the U.S. and 

India and the warmest Indo-U.S. and U.S.-Pakistani 

relations in decades, suggest that right now is a 

unique period in U.S.-South Asian relations... 

“One direction of study would examine the 

causes of peace, conflict and insecurity in southern 

Asia from the perspectives of sovereignty and stateformation. 

A second direction would explore the 

difficulty India has faced in attracting foreign direct 

investment, and the importance of this problem in 

India’s emerging relations with China.” 

Photo: Derek Hall 

1 

All quotations from L.K. Advani’s Hindi-language speech at Tripolia Gate on April 3 rd , 

2004 were noted and translated into colloquial English at the time by the author with the 

assistance of Hamir Singh Meru.

Pretty in Pink: Tripolia Bazaar, Jaipur's most architecturally striking market, is built around the gate that 

gives it its name. It is a favorite stumping venue for the party of the saffron lotus. Photo: Kalyan Singh Rathore 

itself in Muslim Pakistan after the partition of the subcontinent 

on August 15, 1947. 

The Deputy Prime Minister also drew strength from 

his ruling party’s longstanding bond with the particular 

venue of these hustings. At once delicate and majestic, 

Tripolia Gate is a classic example of the Indo-Saracenic 

design common in Rajasthan’s princely cities. This blend 

of Hindu, Rajput, Persian, Islamic and Western motifs 

has been construed by many as an artistic metaphor for 

the whole of North Indian culture that is so often — 

through cooperative assimilation — greater than the sum 

of its communal parts. The gate lies at the end of a wide 

boulevard inside the fortified old town, punctuating the 

far end of the most architecturally dramatic bazaar of the 

“Pink City.” Within Tripolia’s decorated triple-arches lies 

the City Palace, residence of the Jaipur royal family. For 

Advani in April 2004, however, it was not the Indo- 

Saracenic design above him that so inspired. Tripolia Gate 

had for many years been a favored venue for the Hindunationalist 

Jan Sangh which had often found a sympathetic 

ear among the martial and commercial population 

of Rajasthan’s first city. 

Back then, in the spring of 2004, most people thought 

that the march to victory of the BJP-led NDA (National 

Democratic Alliance), which had had five stable years in 

which to amass the benefits of incumbency, would be 

what some Americans call a “cakewalk.” In India, instead 

of cake, most people prefer round sweets called laddhus. 

Festive moments such as electoral victories are celebrated 

by the ritual exchange of laddhus. This ritual, known as 

manwar, involves the (gentle) stuffing of a victory laddhu 

into the mouth of your party leader or coalition ally. 

Today, under Advani’s leadership, the BJP has suddenly 

become the opposition in India’s Lok Sabha, the 

governing lower House of Parliament, victims of a major 

upset during India’s recently completed 14 th General 

Election in May. When the election results 

showed a clear but small Indian National Congress 

victory, the pictures in India’s national papers showed 

Congress, its allies, and its outside supporters among the 

Left parties with their mouths wide open offering one 

another manwar. 

Delphic Debacle 

The month before, however, the upset that provoked 

this gleeful round of manwar was still five weeks off, and 

Advani’s BJP seemed invincible. Less than two months 

before the election the odds in India’s enormous underground 

betting networks — the satta bazaars — heavily 

favored the BJP. According to some reports, satta-wallahs 

across the land had accepted some 650 million U.S. dollars’ 

worth of bets on the electoral outcomes. In Calcutta 

these bookies were offering punters a mere 0.06-to-1 payoff 

for a BJP win of 150 seats in Parliament. A Congress 

2 MCJR-1

markets at predicting the outcome. All major media outlets 

— print and electronic — undertook a range of opinion 

polls, exit polls and forecasting. Though the exit polls 

did get the major political parties quite exercised, and, as 

in previous elections, led to much controversy and public 

soul-searching, they too were hilariously mistaken in 

their predictions. 

Of Pilgrimages and Politics 

Businessworld Magazine, May 31 2004 

The Verdict 2004: Results from India’s 14 th 

General Elections (May, 2004) (data provisional) 

1999 2004 ’99-’04 Vote% 

Change 2004 

BJP+ (NDA) 1 299 188 -111 35.9 

INC+ (UPA) 2 134 219 +89 35.9 

BJP alone 182 138 -44 22.16 

INC alone 114 145 +33 26.53 

Other/Regional 65 70 +5 19.9 

Parties 

Left 42 61 +19 8.3 

On the April evening in Jaipur, Advani progressed 

smoothly through what was clearly a well-rehearsed 

stump speech. And well rehearsed it should have been. 

The Deputy PM was on day three of the two-week-long 

second stage of his Bharat Uday Yatra (India Rising Pilgrimage). 

Over the course of the yatra his itinerary described 

a Swastika across the Indian subcontinent, oriented 

to the cardinal points of the compass, each stage 

originating and terminating at celebrated sites of sacred geography. 

3 “India Rising” — an echo of the BJP’s “India Shining” 

campaign slogan — was suppose to invoke a sense of the 

Compiled from data available at Election Commission of 

India (www.eci.gov.in), and The Hindu (www.hindu.com). 

1 

Since 1998 the BJP-led coalition has been called the “National Democratic 

Alliance.” 

2 

The coalition led by the Indian National Congress (INC) following the 

2004 polling is called the “United Progressive Alliance.” 

win of 150 seats or more was a 10-to-1 long shot. 2 

As it turned out, punters took home not even six paise 

for a one-rupee bet on a BJP win of 150 seats. In the final 

tally, Congress bagged a surprising 145 seats (a gain of 

33 from the last general election in 1999), while the BJP 

slipped to 138 (from 182 in 1999). With 273 seats required 

for a majority in India’s 545-seat Lok Sabha, neither party 

was close to the mark, but both campaigned at the head 

of broader coalitions composed mostly of regional parties. 

To the chagrin of the satta-wallahs, it was Congress 

and Sonia Ghandi’s United Progressive Alliance (UPA) 

that won out. 

Professional pollsters did no better than the satta 

Unsubtle: Advani's 33-day-long Yatra crisscrossed the 

country traversing 14 of India's 29 states, passing 

through 128 constituencies of India's lower house of Parliament, 

the Lok Sabha. By the time the two-phase Yatra 

ended in Orissa's sacred city of Puri, it had described 

on the map of the country a shape curiously resembling 

the classical Hindu swastika icon. 4 

2 

A winning bet of Rs. 1 for a BJP 150 seat would earn the punter 6 paisa, while the same Rs. 1 bet on a Congress 150 seat win 

would pay a whopping Rs. 10. (US$1 = 45 Indian Rupees) 

3 

The Swastika is an ancient Hindu and Buddhist symbol found at most ritual sites. The direction of the arms on this South Asian 

Swastika rotate in the opposite direction to that of the Swastika familiar from Nazi party iconography. 

4 

Map from http://sify.com/news/infographics/rathyatra/index.php. 

INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS 3

Hindustan Times 

(Left ) Poised to Destroy: Kar Sevaks stand triumphantly atop the classic Mughal-style dome of the Babri Masjid before 

demolishing the mosque on December 6,1992. (Right) The cover of the Hindustan Times the day after the event. 

rising economy for which the party was claiming credit. 

In the early and mid-1990s Advani had honed this 

yatra spectacle into an impressively effective tool for political 

campaigning and for the related task of mobilizing 

support for the building of the Ram Temple at 

Ayodhya. Before the Bharat Uday Yatra, there had been 

the Ram Temple-oriented Rath Yatra (chariot pilgrimage). 

Advani and others would arrive at some venues atop a 

motorized float fashioned to resemble a chariot from 

Hindu mythology. These Rath Yatras were instrumental 

in the buildup to the dramatic event that eventually made 

the sleepy Hindi-belt town of Ayodhya infamous around 

the world. 

For those who do not follow Indian politics but who 

do follow world politics, the “Saffron Wave” of the BJP 

probably first caught their attention on December 6th, 

1992, when a crowd of young Hindu men tore through a 

protective barrier at the town of Ayodhya in the north 

Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, demolishing a 16th-century 

mosque. Saffron, a sacred Hindu color, is a well-understood 

code. People often speak of the “saffronization” 

of India with the rise to power of the BJP. 

The Babri Masjid (mosque) destroyed in 1992 is 

named after the Moghul emperor (Babar) whose general 

sacked Ayodhya in 1528. The BJP and its partisans allege 

the mosque was built over the site of an earlier Hindu 

temple. According to the BJP leadership, the earlier 

temple was erected on that particular spot to sanctify the 

birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. The Deputy Prime Minister 

of the NDA government — L.K. Advani — was 

present at the illegal demolition of the Babri Masjid by a 

crowd of some 200,000 inflamed Hindus. The question of 

his exact role (whether or not he “ordered” the demolition) 

was, as recently as September 2003, still sub juris. 

The circumstances under which the case against Advani 

Many tines in his trident: Advani tunes his stump speeches to his audience. 


was dismissed last year were, needless to say, highly controversial. 

The 16-day first leg of the Yatra traversed a North- 

South route from Kanyakumari to Amritsar. A day after 

filing his nomination papers in his Gandhinagar Lok 

Sabha constituency, Advani embarked on the second and 

final leg of the Yatra from Porbander (M.K. Gandhi’s 

birthplace) on March 30, and arrived in Jaipur on Friday 

night, April 2 nd . 

The second phase, lasting a fortnight, passed through 

Ayodhya, covering about 4,000 kilometers and 60 Lok 

Sabha constituencies, including BJP Prime Minister Atal 

Bihari Vajpayee’s constituency, Lucknow, where Advani 

and the PM addressed a rally together. 

Leveraging the BJP’s “India Shining” theme, the pilgrimage 

slogan was, “India to be a developed country 

by 2020.” The second stage of the Yatra traveled across 

the BJP-ruled states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Jharkhand 

(formerly part of Bihar) before concluding in the pilgrimage 

town of Puri in Orissa state (governed by an BJP coalition 

partner) on April 14. There Advani addressed a 

rally with an important National Democratic Alliance 

ally, Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik 

The “Family” 

When I arrived in India in October 1999 to begin field 

research for my doctoral thesis, the BJP and the coalition 

it led, the DNA, had just engineered a remarkable feat of 

political strategy and organization. The BJP had won a 

powerful mandate, establishing itself as one of the few 

truly national political parties in a country increasingly 

dominated by regional politics and parties. The BJP itself 

had captured 182 seats in India’s 545-seat lower house 

of Parliament. Its main rival, the Indian National Congress, 

garnered a mere 112 seats, its worst outing on the 

hustings or “its worst innings” in 50 years. With the support 

of its alliance partners, the BJP controlled a comfortable 

299 seats. 

This was a remarkable coup indeed for a party whose 

antecedents and associated organizations have been 

periodically outlawed, starting with the assassination 

of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948 by 

Nathuram Godse, a former member of the RSS 

(Rashtraya Swayamsevak Sangh). The BJP is the latest avatar 

of a political party that has for over 60 years represented 

a constituency of Hindu nationalist organizations. 

Insiders and outsiders alike refer to this assembly of informally-linked 

organizations as the ‘sangh parivar’ (a 

family of Hindu groups, associations or communities). 

Even when the RSS has operated legally, it has 

avoided direct involvement in formal political activity. 

The RSS and its parivar companions preferred instead indirect 

influence through “associated” political parties. 

One of the earliest of these to participate directly in governance, 

the Jan Sangh (the ‘Sangh’ being a “family” allusion 

not lost on parivar partisans), was linked to the parivar. 

The Jan Sangh participated in independent India’s first 

non-Congress government between 1977 and 1980, furnishing 

its Foreign Minister (and the eventual BJP Prime 

Minister), Atal Behari Vajpayee. 

In the 1980s the BJP replaced the Jan Sangh, emerging as a 

political party much more openly representing the interests of 

the parivar. In what is no doubt a loaded analogy, some observers 

have likened this relationship to that of the Irish Republican 

Army and its “political wing,” Sinn Fein. 

The thrust of these groups’ political and social agenda 

is the development of a Vedic-inspired 5 “nation-state” or 

“motherland,” referred to in Hindi as a Rashtra. The word 

‘Hindu’ is sometimes placed before Rashtra (as in ‘Hindu 

Rashtra’), but in deference to domestic and international 

public relations concerns (to locals it might seem ‘communal’ 

while foreigners might construe it as xenophobic), 

and in accordance with the BJP official position that 

Hindutva is a “cultural” and not a “religious” designation, 

Rashtra is now a stand-alone term, conveniently signaling 

its message to the faithful while avoiding provocation 

of potential critics. This sort of leger de main was a 

key ingredient in the BJP’s late-1990s political success. 

Party and parivar cast themselves as virile, intrepid 

champions of Hindutva (meaning “Hindu-ness” but with 

a distinct volkish connotation). The Rashtra-inspired principles 

that spawned these groups diverged sharply from 

the liberal, democratic, and Fabian-socialist bases of the 

Nehruvian vision. The latter stressed “the voluntary and 

contractual basis of individual obedience.” By contrast, 

“Hindu” doctrines of governance stressed danda, “the rod 

of punishment, as an indispensable requisite of order.” 

Thus, the Jan Sangh earlier, and the BJP today, defined 

themselves in clear opposition to Congress and all it 

stands for. These differences would find clear expression 

in the differing approaches to the Kashmir question, the 

Ram Mandir temple construction question at Ayodhya, 

and the matter of a “Uniform Civil Code” governing family 

and individual-property practices, particularly with 

respect to differing views on the “primacy of consent and 

force for obedience.” 6 

This blend of religion, nationalist historical imaginings 

5 

The Vedas are a collection of ancient Sanskrit texts that influenced the religious, cultural and social practices that have come to 

be known today as Hinduism. Historians often refer to the ‘Vedic civilizations’ that preceded the influence of Buddhist, Islamic 

and Christian political power inon the Indian subcontinent. 

6 

Rudolph, Lloyd I., and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph. 1987. In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State. Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press. 


and authoritarian tendencies (RSS cadres train, paramilitary 

style, in khaki shorts) has invited comparisons with 

20 th century European fascism. Even in the days of Shyam 

Mukerjee — the man whose death Advani so lamented in 

his remarks at Tripolia Gate — this form of Hindu nationalism 

had a following among those who sought an 

alternative to the secular, socialist ideology of Nehru’s 

Congress. 

Nehru represented the secular and socialist wing of 

the Indian National Congress. Vallabhai Patel, India’s first 

deputy Prime Minister, and his followers were at the very 

least more agnostic about secularism and socialism. The 

Nehruvian wing prevailed, and the Fabian socialist background, 

combined with the Gandhian commitment to inclusiveness 

and religious tolerance, produced the tripartite 

state ideology of secularism, socialism and democracy. 

The imperative for this tripartite ideology to succeed was 

rendered more acute by Indo-Pakistani partition and the 

embodiment of an alternative religion-based state in 

neighboring Pakistan. 

Muslim-majority Kashmir, a princely state that became 

part of India in 1947, was an obvious challenge to 

and “test” of Nehru’s vision, both internationally against 

the Pakistani leader M. A. Jinnah’s “two nation thesis,” 

and domestically against the Hindu chauvinists. Opposition 

to the constitutional and customary edifice that 

Nehru built to address this challenge was the rallying 

cry for Mukherjee’s early mobilization for his proto-BJP 

Jan Sangh. Unfortunately, for a now-nuclear-armed subcontinent, 

the outcome of that test is still in question. 

Shrewd Believer 

Staccato, provocative phrases cut Jaipur’s torpid 

desert air. Advani’s voice was carefully modulated, variable, 

exhorting, joking, admonishing. “In 1998 and 1999 

the Congress tried to scare you, saying the BJP would 

devour you. But our actions speak for themselves.” 

Advani was by turns paternal and strident. “The BJP has 

been calm. The BJP has been quiet. We have diligently 

delivered on our campaign promises.” Dryly, Advani delivered 

a scathing side dig at an erstwhile coalition partner. 

“It is we” he said, who should be called BSP, not that 

party in Uttar Pradesh. Why? Because we deliver bijli, 

sarak, pani (electricity, roads, water).” 7 

It was not surprising to me, seeing him speak live 

for the first time, that many observers had likened him 

to the “Iron Sardar” (“enforcer,” more or less) Vallabhai 

Patel. Patel, too, had served as Home Minister and 

Deputy PM to a more charismatic and popular Prime 

Minister. Just as Patel was bad cop — the danda — to 

Nehru’s good cop, so too has Advani served as the stern 

other face of Hindutva in contrast to former Prime Minister 

Vajpayee’s moderate, avuncular portrayal of their 

party’s Hindu-nationalist agenda. 

This man clearly had political talent. He had experience. 

He had a political base both amid the vast ranks of 

the parivar and, ironically, in his own constituency of 

Gandhinagar, where he has four times been elected to 

the Lok Sabha. The irony is that this national chauvinist 

represents a city designed by a Frenchman and named 

after the most compelling advocate of religious tolerance 

in Indian history. 8 

Gujarat is a state full of such contradictions. One of 

India’s wealthiest and most modernized states, it is also 

often referred to as the BJP’s “laboratory” because it is 

home to some of the country’s most stridently Hindunationalist 

voters and politicians. It contradicts the pat 

assumption that religious extremism, or what Indians call 

“communalism,” goes with poverty. 9 

Long before the Ramjanaombhoomi (“birthplace of 

Hindu god Ram”) movement that led to the destruction 

of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, 

there had been a bitter struggle over the reconstruction 

of a temple at Somnath, which faces the Arabian Sea on 

Gujarat’s picturesque western coast. In the tenth century 

C.E., Somnath flourished due to its proximity to Veraval, 

a major hub of Western India’s lucrative maritime trade. 

In due course, the temple’s vast wealth attracted the notice 

of the Afghan warrior-king Mahmud of Gazni. 

Gazni’s visit in 1024 left the city and temple in ruins. 

The mobilization of the pariwar forces around 

Ramjanamboomi in the early 1990s drew explicitly on the 

Somnath “precedent” (Advani’s own word); that is, the 

rebuilding of a temple that had been destroyed by Muslim 

invaders. The origins of the RSS in the 1920s had itself 

been tied to a mobilization of Rashtra forces around 

the effort to rebuild the Somnath temple. The temple was 

rebuilt in 1950/1951. Advani and other parivar partisans 

claim this was done with the consent of the central government, 

and in particular the encouragement of another 

famous Gujarati, Vallabhai Patel. 

It is true that today a statue of Patel stands opposite 

7 

This was a pot shot at the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati (who uses a single name) 

whose party was, to be sure, at least as interested in schemes to promote the identity of its major constituency, Dalits (previously 

known as “untouchables”) as it was in development. In 1999, Mayawati’s defection from the NDA, following on the heels of 

Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalitha’s spiteful withdrawal, cost the BJP its majority in Parliament and forced it to face new elections later 

that year. 

8 

Le Corbousier designed the capital of Haryana state, Chandighar, and had a hand in the fashioning of Gandhinagar as well. 

9 

In India religious violence and religious difference is referred to by the euphemism “communal violence” and “communal 

differences.” 


the temple entrance. It is also true that 

Patel was known to be at least less antagonistic 

to the Rashtra forces than his 

fellow Congressmen. The statue, his 

connection with the state, and the rumor 

of his involvement the temple’s rebuilding 

help explain why some members 

of the parivar admire Patel despite 

his loyalty to the Congress. This may 

also be why Advani does little to discourage 

comparison with the Iron 

Sardar. 

Whatever happened at Somnath in 

1950/51 did not, however, involve a violent 

convulsion on the order of what followed 

the 1992 Ayodhya affair. Nor is it 

likely that Patel would have condoned 

the recent behavior of the Gujarat state 

government. 

In February 2002, a string of events led to a grisly 

wave of lethal violence in the Gujarati city of Godhra, in 

nearby Ahhmedabad and elsewhere around the state, 

with police seemingly under orders to stand by rather 

than stop the violence. Gujarat’s Muslim communities 

suffered the most as the bloodshed unfolded. 10 Ten 

months later, Narendra Modi, the state’s Muslim-baiting 

BJP Chief Minister, was one of the few Chief Ministers to 

resist an anti-incumbency tide that swept the nation during 

mid-term elections for India’s state assemblies. Rather 

than punish Modi’s government for its complicity in the 

Gujurat pogrom, Gujarati voters handed him a huge victory. 

The BJP captured 128 seats in the 182-member legislative 

assembly. 11 

Six weeks after the May 2004 elections, Advani made 

a trip back to his constituency to thank them for re-electing 

him despite the party’s overall losses at the polls. 

Throughout the spring of 2004, however, pundits and 

editorial writers had been debating whether a clear mandate 

in the BJP’s favor after the April/May polling would 

lead the elderly and ailing Vajpayee to surrender the 

Prime Minister’s seat to Advani. 

Sitting before the Jaipur stage, in April, seeing him 

in the flesh, I again pondered the same two questions I’d 

been puzzling over since I first laid eyes on a picture of 

Advani back in 1992. In that photograph he was addressing 

an assembly of supporters, many of them kar sevaks 

poised near the soon-to-be-demolished Babri Mosque in 

Here’s Lookin’ Yatra: Advani is garlanded by top Rajasthan state BJP 

officials after his April 2nd, 2004 Tripolia Gate address. Notice the Lotus. 

Ayodhya. 12 These bandana-clad youths — almost all male 

— brandishing hammers and crowbars, seemed anarchy 

incarnate. In subtle contrast, Advani, as always, projected 

an appearance of calm resolve, albeit with a deftly tuned 

tinge of violence lurking beneath. 

Did Advani really believe what he said about 

Hindutva, the Hindu Rashtra, and the claims he made 

about the location of the Hindu god Ram’s birthplace, or 

were his claims the outcome of shrewd political calculation? 

And more importantly, if he believed, why has he 

always taken such extreme care to position his statements 

and actions just at the edge of potential falsification, at the 

edge of violating the law, or at the edge of unquestionable 

transgression of customary propriety in India? The consistency 

and persistence with which he operates at these 

margins must give anyone contemplating the nature and 

motivation of his faith and commitment some pause 

about his commitment to the norms of parliamentary 

democracy. 

Local Color, Local Allegiances 

Hindustan Times 

“Chitorghar, Udaipur, all the great places of Mewar,” 

Advani’s Jaipur tone was now one of reminiscence. “I 

visited them all when I was a young man first traveling 

in Rajasthan. I longed to be part of it all.” 

The man who as much as any other is credited with 

shepherding Indian policy toward the nuclear tests of 

1998, was homing in on Rajput claims to “Indian” na- 

10 

Somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people, primarily Muslims, perished during these events. 

11 

In the most recent national elections, Gujarati voters may have had second thoughts. They trimmed Modi’s sails, cutting the BJP 

Gujarat state representation in the national parliament from 21 (out of a total 26) down to 14, handing the Congress the other 12 

seats. 

12 

Kar Sevak is often translated as “religious volunteer.” It typically connotes a Hindu religious volunteer recruited to a specific 

mission, pilgramage, or crusade. The kar sevaks assembled at Ayodhya in 1992 came mostly from the Bajrang Dal, a youth group 

(occasionally referred to by critics as “shock troops”) cultivated by the parivar in the late 1980s and early 1990s to promote the 

Ram Mandir cause around the country. 


tional glory. Every member of the Tripolia Gate audience 

would understand the coded cues of these references to 

Chitor/Udaipur. 

Chitor symbolizes the heroic martyrdom of Hindu 

warriors (in this case Kshatria Rajputs) and their wives. 

Thrice, Chitor was besieged by Muslim armies of (as the 

ballads have it) superior force. Thrice, its inhabitants 

brought honor on themselves in the face of defeat by undertaking 

the ritual martyrdom known as johar. In a johar, 

the doomed male inhabitants of the massive fortress-city 

of Chitor donned saffron 13 robes, conducted a last amal 

sabha (ritual consumption of opium), and rode out to 

battle and certain death. Their wives and other female 

inhabitants, in the ultimate act of courage and marital 

devotion, immolated themselves within. 14 

When the capital of the ancient principality of Mewar 

moved from Chitor to Udaipur in southwestern Rajasthan, 

that city came to symbolize the indomitable spirit and martial 

valor of Hindu kings in the face of external invaders. At the 

zenith of Mughal imperial power under the Emperor Akbar 

in the 16 th and 18 th centuries, Udaipur’s Rana Pratap (descendant 

of the great Moghul fighter Rana Sanga) was 

the only Rajput king not to submit. 15 

This went over well. Advani was masterfully tailoring 

his message to the local crowd. The whole of Tripolia 

Bazaar had been cordoned off. Across the now-cleared 

boulevard carpets had been laid, upon which the audience 

was courteously but firmly encouraged to sit by 

some of Jaipur’s finest. A canny crowd-management tactic, 

this. The force deployed that night was distinguished 

by its ampleness both in number and individual girth. 

Every few minutes my companion cast a cautious 

glance over his shoulder. Hamir Singh Meru had accompanied 

me somewhat against his will. His uncle, a close 

friend, had earlier promised to escort me to the rally and 

introduce me to friends of his in Jaipur’s fourth estate. 

We hoped this would land us some front row seats for 

the spectacle. 

As it turned out, Hamir was advising me on the purchase 

of a motorcycle and just before the rally we’d 

had an appointment for a test ride in a nearby bazaar. 

The uncle had canceled and deputed Hamir to 

help me in his stead. Hamir was unable to locate any 

of his journalist friends when we arrived, so we 

found ourselves flowing into the “general admission” 

area. I attracted some attention as there was 

not another white face to be seen, an uncommon circumstance 

in this, one of Jaipur’s most touristed bazaars. 

Fortunately the policeman in charge of frisking all 

entrants was too busy discussing the latest results of the 

cricketing battle between India and Pakistan in the 

Samsung Cup to make anything of the lengthy lock-blade 

in my pocket. Above me, the rooftops all along the boulevard 

were crowded with jostling audience members. 

How, I wondered, could they assure the speakers’ security 

under conditions like this? 

Hamir’s furtive reconnaissance was driven not by a 

similar curiosity about the seemingly lax security precautions, 

but by his fear of being seen by anyone who 

knew his father. The Meru thikana — Hamir’s family estate 

— he explained, had been staunchly Congress since 

before Independence. 16 His father, the thakur of Meru, 

would not be amused to hear from someone else that his 

one and only son had been spotted at a BJP rally—and 

an Advani speech, no less. 

Hamir managed to dodge the bullet on this one, 

mostly because he was able to parlay his attendance at 

the rally into a moment of glory for himself. Some journalistic 

and politically active school buddies he met after 

the rally roped him into recruiting students from around 

the city to attend a meeting the next day with the newly 

installed BJP state Chief Minister to discuss the “youth 

situation” in Rajasthan. The meeting took place in the 

garden of the CM’s house, and was filmed by the NDTV 

(New Delhi Television) network, one of India’s better new 

news and opinion outlets. During the Q&A Hamir, on 

national TV, asked the CM what if anything her administration 

was doing to promote the game of polo in the 

state. He pointed out that the city of Jaipur and the state 

of Rajasthan had a comparative advantage in this area in 

historical terms and by way of infrastructure. 17 This had 

potential commercial, touristic, and cultural benefits, 

Hamir added. The CM applauded the point and said she 

would encourage her advisors to look into it. Needless 

to say, this made Hamir a big hero among polo-loving 

Rajputs, sparing him the wrath of his partisan father at 

the same time. 

Seated at the rally, Hamir and I queried our neighbors 

and concluded that the members of this crowd had 

assembled entirely of their own volition, and with little 

of the pecuniary or other inducements that are not uncommon 

when Indian political parties arrange large set 

pieces. None of the half-dozen or so men around me admitted 

to being RSS or VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad or 

World Hindu Council, the most militant wing of the sangh 

13 

Saffron is the sacred hue of the Hindu faith and the rallying colors of the parivar. 

14 

Some scholars believe that johar may possibly have been originally a Hebrew word, and came with the Persians to South Asia. 

This would help explain the similar pattern of the Chittor johars to the martyrdom at Masada. 

15 

A footnote to this history that Advani failed to mention as he held forth before the gates of the Jaipur royal palace, is that Rana 

Pratap refused to share a tali with Man Singh, the Jaipur kingdom’s heir apparent and leader of the Moghal emperor, Akbar’s, 

army. Its is a custom among Rajputs of equal status to eat off the same plate. 

16 

A Thikana is the estate of a Rajput aristocrat. 

17 

Most of Rajasthan’s major cities have polo grounds. 


pariwar) members. It was all men around me. For this 

event, as with many organized public events in Rajasthan, 

the genders had been segregated. 

“Ladies to the Right” 

As Hamir and I had entered Tripolia bazaar, a sign 

just inside the old city wall directed “Ladies to the Right.” 

This admonition struck me as politically redundant, since 

women coming to this rally would most likely be leaning 

that direction anyway. The boulevard was divided 

by a median intended to help maintain a remote semblance 

of order during the rush of daytime traffic in 

Tripolia Bazaar, but which seems mostly to furnish a daytime 

perch for tranquil cud-chewing cows. Women were 

seated on the other side of the median. I wondered about 

the whereabouts of those cows as Advani launched into 

a brief appreciation of Uma Bharati, the recently inaugurated 

BJP Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, one of 

India’s largest states. He seemed to be drawing some connection 

between Bharati’s protection of cows and her success 

at the polls. 

It was not hard to predict that this complimentary 

rhetorical nod in Ms. Bharati’s direction was a warmup 

for Advani’s subsequent panegyric on the new local hero, 

to BJP Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje. Four 

months earlier these two women had led their respective 

state-level BJP organizations to hugely important victories 

over powerful longstanding Congress incumbents 

Digvijay Singh (MP) and Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan). 

Bharati was a longtime, and shrill, stalwart of the party, 

but Raje was a new “comer” for whom the party had very 

high hopes. Glancing across the cowless median it was 

obvious that, despite having such inspiring female leaders, 

Jaipur’s women had come in much smaller numbers 

to this particular campaign rally. 

Is a Rose Just a Rose? 

Surrounding me as I sat cramped on the left side of 

the median was the ubiquitous image of the lotus. Everywhere 

illuminated against the night sky, it hung from 

tiny flagpoles, was stamped on banners and was painted 

in enormous scale behind the stage. As I once again revisited 

my questions about the Deputy PM, this lotus 

image mocked my thoughts. 

A simple lotus emblem serves as the BJP’s insignia 

at the polling booth. For those who used to argue that 

voter literacy was an important political concern, it is interesting 

to note that the world’s largest democracy does 

not require that its citizens be fully literate in order to 

vote. To insure that those with poor or no literacy are 

able easily to identify the objects of their political affection, 

all Indian political parties have devised evocativeyet-simple 

insignia for the purpose of distinguishing 

themselves to these voters. For example, the Samajwadi 

Raje on the (halfshell) Lotus: Lifesized cut-outs of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje 

were ubiquitous during the campaign. Photo: Kalyan Singh Rathore 


Symbol Minds: All Indian political 

parties use evocative insignia to help 

an often only partially literate electorate 

keep track of who's who. On election 

day many voters will go to the polls 

thinking "vote for the hand." 

Bahujan Samaj Party: Elephant 

Bharatiya Janata Party: Lotus 

Communist Party of India, Marxist: 

Hammer and sickle with five-pointed 

star 

Indian National Congress: Palm of 

the hand 

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam: Rising 

sun 

All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra 

Kazhagam: Two leaves 

Nationalist Congress Party: Clock 

Rashtriya Janata Dal: Lantern 

Samajwadi Party: Bicycle 

Samata Party: Flaming torch 

Shiv Sena: Bow and arrow 

Telugu Desam Party: Bicycle 

Party, a socialist party based in India’s largest state of 

Uttar Pradesh, uses a bicycle as its polling insignia. The 

Congress party is identified by a hand raised, palm facing 

the viewer like the mudra (ritual hand gesture) of a 

benign Hindu god. 

The BJP lotus is an obvious allusion to the significance 

of that flower in Hindu scripture, sculpture and 

ritual, but it is, of course, also just a common flower with 

a distinctive shape. Three weeks after the election I presented 

some cut flowers to the wife of my host, a Kashmiri 

Muslim. At the C-Block florist in Delhi’s Vasant Vihar 

neighborhood these flowers’ attractive display had 

caught my eye. It was only when my host quipped, not 

quite half sarcastically, that the white and magenta lotuses 

were “BJP flowers” did it dawn on me why I’d felt 

the decorations in Tripolia Bazaar had been cruelly teasing 

me. Like Advani’s statements and actions, the lotus 

is at once symbolically assertive and discreetly innocuous. 

Sibling Rivalry 

As I listened to Advani deliver the obligatory encomium 

about his “boss,” the largely benign Prime Minister 

Vajpayee, I still had no answers to my nagging questions 

about the speaker. However I had no doubt that 

the man on the podium had the ambition and the ability 

to make a serious bid for the Prime Ministership. Did it 

stick in his craw when he had to utter the honorific “ji” 

as he discussed the “drishti” (a fancy Sanskrit word for 

“vision”) of “Atal-ji”? I noticed that he left it for one of 

the lesser, warm-up speakers to rally the crowd with the 

well-worn campaign slogan, “Kaho dil se, Atal phir se” (‘say 

from the heart, Atal once more’). 

Within most families there are sibling rivalries, and 

though the BJP is often credited with a degree of intramural 

discipline uncommon among Indian political parties, 

the Hindu-nationalist parivar is not immune to this 

problem. 

A fairly well-kept secret of Indian elite politics, however, 

is the nature of the rivalry between the two top leaders 

in of the BJP — Vajpayee and Advani. Divining the 

nature of this rivalry is perhaps one of the most popular 

parlor games among Delhi’s political and chattering 

classes. Several weeks before the election I heard for the 

first time an account that shed some light on the contentious 

relations between these two political titans. This bit 

of “news” came from a businessman with close ties to 

India’s apex business associations, and therefore a person 

well located to receive tales of palace intrigue in North 

Block, the majestic sandstone buildings that house India’s 

Finance Ministry. 

Trinamul Congress: Two flowers 

In 1999 the BJP had just failed, embarrassingly, to 

keep its previous government together, forcing a new 

mid-term election. The mandate of that 13 th General Election 

clearly favored the BJP. Furthermore, many read the 


Not in front of the children dear: The serene setting of the BJP headquarters in Jaipur belies the intense behind-thescenes 

rivalry between then-Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani (left) and former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee (right). 

Photo: Kalyan Singh Rathore 

poll results as signaling popular support for the hardline 

wing of the party, represented by Advani. “This rivalry 

is very real,” the source claimed. 

Vajpayee, he explained, favored Jaswant Singh for 

the key position of Finance Minister, both because of his 

talent and because Vajpayee allegedly wished to keep promoting 

Singh’s career. Fearing Jaswant as a rival and concerned 

that he might not be able to control him in policy 

matters, Advani blocked Jaswant’s appointment as Finance 

Minister, forcing him instead to accept the Foreign 

Affairs portfolio. However, during Vajpayee’s 2002 cabinet 

reshuffle, when the balance of power had shifted in 

Vajpayee’s favor, he overrode Advani’s objections and 

finally gave Jaswant the Finance slot. 

In mid-April of this year, my source expected the cabinet 

formation of a new NDA government to be “particularly 

bitter,” signifying the intensification of the Vajpayee- 

Advani rivalry. “It is not yet clear,” the source added, 

“what this means for the succession, but its implications 

for the future of the BJP/NDA are profound.” In a sign 

of how certain even insiders were of the BJP victory, he 

expected this rivalry matter would be resolved during a 

second NDA term. What will happen with the BJP succession 

now that the party is in opposition is even 

murkier. The loss has led to a wave of bitter recrimination 

and odd behavior among the members of the parivar 

making it difficult to infer anything about the direction 

of succession. 

A Shiny, Well Oiled Machine 

At one point in the rally, as the biting, easy, demagogic 

one-liners tumbled out in a cascade, I could not 

help imagining Sonia Gandhi and her party supporters 

as the figure of a nearly-beaten boxer, stumbling rope-adope 

about the ring. “For us”, said Advani, “the Ganges 

is not just a river” [audience understands that the speaker 

is referring to the way foreign-born Sonia Gandhi sees 

the Ganges]. “No, the Ganges is our mother.” 

The greatest round of laughter and applause came 

when one speaker pointed out that Italian-born Sonia had 

mixed up her Indian religious festivals in some public 

forum. What was particularly egregious was that she had 

tripped up over Gangaur, a festival very popular in 


Rajasthan, the proper performance of which is crucial for wives and mothers. 18 

Another speaker wondered out loud to the crowd, “what will happen if India is 

attacked? Will the Italian army come rescue us?” 

Shrewdly lampooning the most common defense of the Congress party, 

Advani himself admitted that “yes, the Congress freed India, but now India 

must be free of the Congress.” We left the “British Raj” and replaced it with a 

“Raj Tantra” [a monarchy]. Audience members would understand that this was 

an allusion to the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty. 19 “We should have a Lok Tantra [democracy],” 

implying that the non-dynastic BJP was the more democratic of the 

two national parties. 

In the early decades of independent India’s democratic experience, it was 

common for a government (always an Indian National Congress government) 

to survive into the fifth year, by which time the constitution required a new 

general election. From the early 1970s onward, however, this became less common. 

Despite major disruptions in the spring of 2001 including a corruption 

scandal (involving the charismatic Defense Minister George Fernandez) and a 

related coalition defection (by the Trinamool Congress of West Bengal), the BJPled 

NDA survived long enough to call elections at a time of its own choosing. 

Thus, almost five years after my 1999 visit, when I arrived in India during March 

of this year, it looked very much like the NDA had consolidated its position, 

fine-tuned its organization, and polished its message. In short, during the early 

spring almost everyone expected the NDA to sail to victory. 

In 1996, just three years before the NDA’s triumphal 1999 election, in what 

appeared a desperate, even comical grab for power, the BJP formed a government 

lasting a scant 13 days. 20 After the 13 th national election in the fall 1999 

elections, the BJP’s only real rival as a national force, the Congress Party, suffered 

its worst defeat ever. 

For almost 18 months preceding the elections the NDA had succeeded in 

convincing Indians and foreigners alike that they had reformed India’s economy, 

persuading many to forget that the Congress had initiated the process and had 

ruled for a full five-year parliamentary term under Narasimha Rao. Many observers 

— and the NDA themselves — were convinced by the NDA’s slick publicrelations 

campaign promoting “India Shining.” 

As I sat there in Tripolia Bazaar I was awed by the organization and precision 

of the spectacle before me. There was unprecedented promptness (it started 

a mere half hour late). These orators were all charming and charismatic; the 

speechwriting was sharp and well integrated across half a dozen speakers. I 

was fairly convinced that if this rally was any indication, the BJP would steamroll 

the opposition. For the NDA, I thought, taking on their opponents in the Congress 

would be like shooting fish in a barrel. 

(But it was not to be…) 

18 

The spring festival of Gangaur is celebrated with particular zeal among Rajputs. Women 

of all ages clad in their brightest finery propitiate idols of Issar and Gangaur (manifestation 

of the Hindu god Shiva and his wire Parvati). Over the course of a fortnight, at altars 

and in raucous processions, unmarried women pray for a groom of their choice, while 

wives and mothers pray for strength in their marriage and the well-being of their husbands. 

19 

Rahul Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi’s son and the grandson and great grandson of Indira Gandhi 

and Jawaharlal Nehru respectively, had recently thrown his hat into the electoral ring 

along with his Italian born mother Sonia, the widow of Rajiv Gandhi. 

20 

The president gave thee BJP two weeks to form a government, i.e. win a majority vote. 

When it found it couldn’t, it resigned. It failed because no other party would cross the 

aisle to join it in a coalition government. It was at the time a pariah party. By 1998, however, 

when it again won the most seats in India’s 12 th national election, it had learned the 

art of coalition politics. 

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They can write on any subject, 

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Author: Rudolph, Matthew C. J. 

Title: ICWA Letters 

(South Asia) 

ISSN: 1083-4303 

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When the Fish Shoot Back - Dr. Matthew CJ Rudolph

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