By Raju Rajagopal

It was Washington D.C., August 7, 1993.

The aroma was overpowering.

Samosas? Chole? In the lobby of Washington Hilton?

I wasn’t imagining. As I came down the elevator, I felt as if I had just joined an overcrowded Indian party. People were everywhere, eating and talking loudly. Used plates and cups left behind on the floor.

As I walked around hesitatingly, I came face-to-face with Ashok Singhal, President of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and Murli Manohar Joshi, Member of Parliament and President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who were holding forth with other netas. Dothi and kurta-clad men in outsized tilaks stood in small groups talking animatedly in Hindi.

It was the 7th of August 1993, nearly eight months after Sangh Parivar mobs led by the VHP had demolished the 16th-century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. In my imagination, it seemed as if the same mob had diabolically transported itself to the lobby of a Washington hotel!

I was told that they were getting ready for the weekend “Global Vision 2000” conference organized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA) at the Capital Center sports arena outside Washington, D.C. Many of the people in the lobby had apparently been flown in from villages in India’s “Hindi Belt.”

My curiosity had the better of me at that point. I decided to set aside all my plans for the weekend and melted into the crowd being ushered into waiting buses.

As we trooped into the Capital Center, I was surprised at the size of the crowd, which seemed impatient for the program to commence. Who would have thought that a gathering spear-headed by an extremist Hindu organization banned in India could bring as many as 10,000 people into an American arena, just months after it had delivered the most crushing blow to communal peace in post-independent India?

Anyway, there I was, a gate-crasher at the Global Vision 2000 conference, commemorating the centenary of Swami Vivekananda’s famous address to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. I was determined to take advantage of the unexpected chance to educate myself on the VHP and the Sangh Parivar.

This story was originally published in americankahani.com. Read the full story here