The efforts of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to reach out to Dalit communities is the subject of Badri Narayan's Fascinating Hindutva. Fascinating it is, as one would think that the BJP would seek to suppress Dalit political action as a threat to its Hindu caste, Brahmanical base. But just as BJP leader Mayawati has reached out to Brahmans in her rise to power, so, too, has the BJP courted Dalits. In the ever-shifting constellations of Indian politics, poaching on other parties' favored constituencies is an essential tool that often can pay important tactical and strategic dividends. Fascinating Hindutva is not focused on evaluating the effectiveness of such political machinations. Instead, it analyzes the use of narrative to reframe Dalit history and identity in a manner that serves the political objectives of the BJP. What emerges is a rich ethnographic discussion that relates not only to contemporary discussions of Indian political culture, but also to the academic study of myth.
Narayan's discussion begins with “Saffron Imagining of the Local.” This first chapter focuses on how the Hindutva group Rashtriaya Svyamsevak Sangh (RSS), or the National Volunteer Corps, envisions village life. Narayan introduces the RSS activist Ramphalbhai, who views Dalits as loyal foot soldiers in the struggle to protect the Indian nation from Islam. Central to Ramphalbhai's argument is a reimagination of caste oppression as the direct result of Muslim dominance. For example, the Balmiki caste was once Rajput, but was defeated and enslaved by Muslims who forced them to clean excreta. In chapter 2, Narayan explores a village named Chittora in Uttar Pradesh where the RSS sponsors performances in village fairs that reinterpret Dalit heros such as Suhaldev, Ambedkar, and Mahatma Phule as defenders of the Hindu nation.
The theme of the “communalisation of memory” continues in the next six chapters, which examine how the BJP attempts to co-opt and reimagine themes within contemporary Dalit discourse. For example, the BJP prefers the word “deprived” (vanchit) to refer to scheduled and backward classes, as opposed to the more politically self-conscious “Dalit” (crushed). Accordingly, BJP ideologues, such as Murli Manohar Joshi, encourage scheduled and backward classes to celebrate their caste identity and to accept new technologies as a means of economic uplift.
Of course, low-caste economic advancement can only come within the bounds of traditional-caste Hindu dharma (duty). A particularly striking example of this argument comes in the reframing of the story of Eklavya, a talented archer whose low status leads to his rejection by the master-teacher Drona. As the Mahabharata tells the story, Eklavya makes a clay statue resembling Drona in order to continuing practicing. But when Drona finds out that Eklavya has achieved skills that surpass those of Arjuna, he demands Eklavya's thumb—a “payment to the teacher” (guru daskina) that destroys Eklavya's ability to use the bow and arrow. When members of Nishad caste, generally composed of fishers and boatmen, narrate this story, they emphasize high-caste oppression and treachery. But the BJP uses the narrative instead to highlight Eklavya's exemplary docility and submission to traditional Hindu values.
BJP outreach also includes the outcaste Musahar caste, which often works trapping rats and living off the grain that the rodents horde. In Bihar, Musahars trace their ancestry to Savari, a woman in the Ramayana who offers berries to Lord Ram during his exile. BJP ideologues and cadres use this myth to admonish Musahars that it is their duty to further the cause of Lord Ram, particularly by supporting efforts to build a temple to Ram on the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. BJP appropriation of Musahar narratives also extends to narrative of Dina-Bhadri, two brothers who fought for laborers against the landowning classes. In BJP speeches, Dina-Bhadri become incarnations of Ram-Laxman, and thus become a point for grafting the Musahar community onto the overarching Hindu nationalist construal of the narrative of Lord Ram.
According to Narayan, the BJP and RSS engage not only in reappropriation of Dalit narratives, but also in outright mystification. This is case with Salhes, a semidivine being venerated by the swineherd Dusadh caste in Maithili-speaking areas of Bihar. In order to reduce Salhes's status as a caste hero, the BJP emphasizes his supernatural power, which can be invoked for healing and exorcism. Within this analytic frame, Nayaran elicits a whole series of connections to contemporary religiohistorical scholarship that understands myth as “ideology in narrative form.” Although Nayaran does not pursue a broad theoretical agenda, Fascinating Hindutva remains a valuable ethnographic account of the seemingly paradoxical connection between Hindutva and Dalit mobilization.
