THE SAFFRON DOLLAR: Pehle Paisa, Phir Bhagwan

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Yankee Hindutva responds to the non-resident Indian's identity problem. Its rapid spread among NRIs is full of implications for society back home.

From its marginal and obscure origins in Nagpur in 1925, Hindutva has become fairly "attractive" to large sections of the Hindu population (and its attendant "minority" eleves). Whether in New Delhi or New York, the global Hindu bourgeoisie has in the past two decades accepted Hindutva ideology as an acceptable part of its world-view. That is, whether one is actually a follower of Hindutva or not, one tends to acknowledge its presence in terms of its electoral strength in India (via the Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena) and the "relevance" of its overall politico-cultural arguments.

There appears to be a fairly universal agreement that the outfits of Hindutva are manned by two sorts of people: the moderate (exemplified by Vajpayee despite his own tight links with the RSS hot-heads) and the fanatic (exemplified by B. L. Sharma 'Preen' and the foot soldiers who destroyed Mir Baqi's mosque at Ayodhya). While the Hindutva fellow-travellers find themselves ill at ease with the rabidity of 'Prem,' they have no compunction about Vajpayee and hence, the project of Hindutva.

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