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In the Belly of the Beast: The Hindu Supremacist RSS and IMP of India—An Insider's Story
by Partha Banerjee
Ajanta Books International, New Delhi, 1998
164 pp, INR 195
A convert from the Hindutva ideology eagerly tears into it but does not tell us the secret behind its popular appeal.
The phenomenal growth of the Hindu fundamentalist right-wing in the 1980s and 1990s and its significant political repercussions on the day-to-day, lived practice of secular politics have spawned a virtual cottage industry of scholarship in India. In recent years, concerned scholars and activists have attempted to interrogate this nascent Hindu revivalist consciousness, its growth as an ideological formation, and the role played by the RSS (Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh) in organising and fomenting daily communal practice and prejudice.