The destruction in 1992 of the Babri Masjid and the waves of violence that have followed it in India, coupled with the linked rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to political prominence, have led in recent years to a flourishing of studies on “Hindutva” or “Hindu nationalism.” Yet for all these works, very few have examined the relationship between the Indian National Congress (INC) and the rightwing religious politics of the Hindu nationalist movement. What work has examined this nexus has largely focused on its two varying poles. The first has dealt with the link between nineteenth-century reform movements and the post-1920 emergence of militant Hindu religious organizations, most notably the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Chetan Bhatt (2001), for instance, has carefully fleshed out the roles played by such mainstream nationalists and Congress stalwarts as Lala Lajpat Rai in developing the foundational ideological rationale bridging earlier ideas with the more rigidly communal ones that followed.

The second focus of scholarship has been on Congress activities of a more recent nature, post-Independence (primarily post-1980) when the party deployed “soft-Hindutva” for political gain. Generally, work in this group points to ways in which Congress-led governments succumbed to pressure from Hindu-right forces as early as the fifties, eventually opening the door for some party members themselves to advocate and practice weaker, more “moderate” versions of Hindu nationalist policy.