‘Long-distance nationalism,’’ an expression coined by Benedict Anderson, is often used to refer to transnational political activities, but thedynamics of this expatriate nationalism tend to be neglected. Mere nostalgia or even spontaneous mobilizations are invoked to explain this phenomenon, but fail to explain the mechanisms that lie behind it. Using the example of Hindu nationalist movements, this paper seeks to highlight the implications of political entrepreneurs in the country of origin and the instrumental dimension of long-distance nationalism.
The Sangh Parivar, a network of nationalist Hindu organizations, was replicated amongthe Hindu diaspora and its structure was literally exported by a central-ized body located in India itself. The spread of the Sangh Parivar and of its Hindutva ideology abroad was greatly facilitated by local policies likemulticulturalism and by the rise of racism in the countries of emigration. A comparison of Hindu nationalist outlets in the United Kingdom, theUnited States, and Canada brings to light two main factors instilling long-distance nationalism: a favorable local context for ethnic mobilizationamong migrants and a centralized organization in the country of origin. The engineering of long-distance Hindu nationalism from India questions the changing nature of nationalism in a globalized world.
Benedict Anderson’s theory outlined under the ingenious expression of ‘‘long-distance nationalism’’ suggests that a strong and nearly automatic allegiance binds members of an ethnic diaspora to their homeland. According to Anderson, immigrants continue to feel toward their native land identical sentiments to those nourished in the context of ‘‘traditional’’ nationalism. The political positions of the ‘‘long-distance nationalists’’ serve to protect an ethnic identity that is threatened either within their country of origin or sometimes in the host society. The only specific feature that Anderson recognizes in this variant of nationalism has to do with its irresponsibility, which sanctions extreme radicalism. In fact, the long-distance nationalist ‘‘need not fear prison, torture, or death, nor did his family’’ (Anderson 1998:74).
In our opinion, the main weakness of this approach lies in its indifference to nationalist organizations operating in the homeland that attempt to mobilize its offspring abroad. This type of transnational action has been studied in detail with regard to religious movements such as the Tabligh-i-jamaat, which advocates the re-Islamization of Muslims who have migrated to the West. But the role of ethno-nationalist movements, which have many similarities, has not sparked the same interest, as if the flow of diasporas with regard to the homeland was one-directional. In fact, ‘‘long-distance nationalism’’ is at least as much the product of a reverse flow of political entrepreneurs from the mainland generating nationalist aspirations among the diaspora. Indeed, the very notion of diaspora often results from the deliberate action by a center vis-a-vis its periphery (Ragazzi 2004; Dufoix 2005). The case of India allows us to test this hypothesis in relation to Hindu nationalism, a movement directed since 1925 by a key organization, the Rashtriya Swayamasevak Sangh (RSS—National Volunteers Corps).
Hindu nationalism is an exclusive form of ethno-religious nationalism which thrived in the first years of the twentieth-century in reaction to the ‘‘threat’’ the West (Christian missionaries as well as British colonizers) and the Muslim minority (allegedly related to a pan-Islamic movement rooted in the Middle East) were posing to the Hindus. This movement, which quickly became the largest Hindu nationalist organization, was intended not only to propagate the Hindutva ideology but also to infuse new physical strength into the majority community (Jaffrelot 1996).
Indeed, the RSS has adopted a very peculiar modus operandi relying on the development of local branches (shakhas) according to a standardized pattern: young Hindu men gathered on a playground for games with martial connotations and ideological training sessions every morning and every evening. In 1939, it had 500 shakhas, and now there are 44,417 in 30,988 places, with some cities and towns having more than one (The Organiser 2007:67). Moreover, the RSS developed front organizations after Independence, its aim no longer being merely to penetrate society directly through shakhas but also to establish organizations working amidst specific social categories.
Hence in 1948, RSS cadres based in Delhi founded the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP — Indian Student Association). In 1951, the movement created a political party today known under the name Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP — Indian People’s Party). In 1964, in association with Hindu clerics, it set up the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP — World Council of Hindus), a movement responsible for grouping together the heads of the various Hindu sects to lend this very unorganized religion a sort of centralized structure. Lastly, in 1979, the RSS founded Seva Bharati (Indian Service), to penetrate the slums through social activities (free schools, low-cost medicines, etc.). Taken together, these bridgeheads are presented by the mother organization as forming the ‘‘Sangh Parivar,’’ ‘‘the family of the Sangh,’’ that is of RSS (Jaffrelot 2005).
The RSS’s strategy of reaching out to the diaspora consisted in reproducing abroad the modus operandi of the organization in India. This voluntarist approach explains the rise of the Hindutva movement outside India at least as much as the diaspora’s alleged ‘‘long-distance nationalism.’’ If the latter was latent, there is no doubt that it was the RSS that activated it. But such an undertaking would have been doomed to fail if the host societies hadn’t played along through a peculiar mixture of racism and multiculturalism, and if the international context, dominated by ‘‘the Islamist threat,’’ hadn’t mirrored certain features of the situation in India: Hindu nationalist discourse was thus able to acquire relevance on a global scale. This is particularly true in three countries: the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.

Hindu Nationalism Beyond Hindustan

Hindu nationalism is not naturally inclined to overflow India’s borders. Its deepseated nature is ethno-religious and it therefore coincides with a people and a civilization. It is indissociable from a territory, the sacred land (karmabhoomi) of eternal India. Why and how, then, has this ‘‘ism’’ been able to broaden its radius of action beyond the ‘‘black water’’ (kala pani)1 of the Indian Ocean?

One reason is that Hindu migrants have gradually formed communities in the four corners of the world. These ethnic bridgeheads have justified an overseas expansion of Hindu nationalist movements because they formed fragments of India abroad which, without them, were in danger of being denatured. The promotion of Hinduism in diaspora was the primary motivation of the Arya Samaj updeshaks (activists) in the first movement of this school of thought founded in 1875, which followed the waves of immigration in the colonial 19th century in South Africa and the Caribbean.2

The RSS later took up the flame according to the same logic. One of its leaders, M.S. Golwalkar, who became head of the movement in 1940, in fact devoted an entire passage of his famous book, Bunch of thoughts, to overseas Hindus, calling on them to act as ambassadors for their nation:

The first point to be borne in mind by our brothers and sisters living abroad is to keep alive in their day-to-day behavior a spirit of intense national self-respect. And for this, a keen awareness of the glorious heritage that our forbears have left for us should ever be present in our minds. (Golwalkar 1980:450)

He added that Hindu migrants should serve ‘‘the Cause’’ abroad:

And in order to do this the one supreme conviction that we are a great people charged with a World Mission, should be ever vibrant in our breasts; that a sacred duty and trust is cast upon us of bringing home to the entire humanity the sublime truths embedded in our Dharma [religion] and that the various ills and challenges being faced by it could be met successfully on the basis of the all-comprehensive scientific yet spiritual outlook of Hinduism. (Sadashivrao 1980:456)

Golwalkar therefore recommended Hindu migrants to teach their children Hindu civilization, to build temples and not to alienate the host society. His successor, Balasaheb Deoras—who took the lead of the movement in 1973—crossed another threshold by entrusting diaspora Hindus with part of the RSS mission. In his message to the 1989 UK Virat Hindu Sammelan (Great Hindu Assembly)—one of the largest Hindu nationalist events organized in the West—he stated:
Inspired by sublime thought and feeling, countless great personalities of Bharat have propagated and promoted this cultural vision in many countries, seeking nothing but the welfare of the entire humanity. The Hindus who have settled in several countries all over the world have contributed significantly to the all-round development of social, economic and cultural life of the countries of their residence. Present times demand that they carry on constructive and social welfare activities with greater zeal with harmonious cooperation of the local people to make universal brotherhood a reality. (Cited in Seshadri 1990:13)
The RSS thus gradually wished to rely on Hindu communities abroad to spread its message. To this end it created a special branch for Hindus overseas, the Antar Rashtriya Sahayog Parishad (ARSP—Indian Council for International Cooperation), in 1978. It was, moreover, this very development strategy that involved creating sister organizations which gave rise to the expression ‘‘Sangh Parivar’’:the RSS—or Sangh—forms a ‘‘family’’ that it lords over and of which the multiple branches are its children.
According to the official RSS history, the first shakha to have been created outside of India formed spontaneously in 1946 aboard a ship linking Bombay to Mombasa in Kenya:
One evening, on a tempestuous day, two passengers, both in Khaki [sic] shorts, accidentally met on the deck of the ship. One of them was from Punjab and the other from Gujarat, both unknown to each other. But a popular Hindi song that one of them was singing sotto voce, attracted the other towards him with raised eyebrows; and they recognized each other as belonging to the common Sangh family. Facing towards the Motherland, both of them together then sang ‘Namaste Sada Vatsale Matrubhoome’ [Hail to Thee O Motherland!]. Thus was born the first Sangh shakha off-shore! (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 1992:1)
Kenya was indeed the country in which the first non-Indian shakha was officially created in 1947 by these swayamsevaks once they located other Hindus there. Kenya and Uganda were the host countries for Indian immigration in which the RSS expanded the most rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s under the label of Bharatiya Swayamsevak Sangh (Indian Volunteers Corps). The BSS was an important locus of socialization for the Hindu minority, as much through its athletic activities as through cultural events. It was also one of the crucibles for the Hindu Council of Kenya, which was to become the main political organization for the defense of Hindus in that country. A similar development also occurred in Uganda (Bhatt 2000:577).
These East African beginnings are not irrelevant to our comprehension of the development of the Sangh Parivar in the West, because many full-time cadres that would operate in Great Britain and North America first went through Uganda or Kenya. The African experience of nearly one-quarter of the Hindu community living in Great Britain has considerably influenced British Hinduism and has given it a strong diasporic dimension. The same African and Caribbean detour can be found among many Canadian Hindutva adherents.3When Rajenjra Singh, the successor of Deoras, went to Kenya in 1997 to commemorate the golden jubilee of the development of the RSS overseas, he emphasized:
Outside Bharat, Kenya is the place where Sangh work is established thoroughly according to our technique. Last time when I came, I visited a shakha the Karyavaha [activist in charge] of which could give full particulars of the families of all the 16 or 17 swayamsevaks. Our relationship should be with the entire family of swayamsevaks. Then only a swayamsevak can develop properly and through him a change will come even in the family. Such shakhas exist in Kenya from where swayamsevaks went out and started shakhas in England, Canada, etc. We meet karyakartas [activists] who say ‘I am a swayamsevak for the last 50 years, made in Kenya’. (Rajaram Mahajan 1997:5–6)
The RSS operated under still a different name, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (The Hindu Volunteers Corps) in Great Britain and then in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Trinidad, and Hong Kong. To begin with, the HSS gave absolute priority to multiplying the number of shakhas, as the RSS had done in the years from 1925 to 1948. In Great Britain shakhas were thus rapidlycreated in cities such as Birmingham and Bradford where they attracted Hindu immigrants eager to convey Hindu culture to their children (Burlet 2001:13).
The organization of the shakhas was nevertheless adapted to the diaspora population. Less time was spent reciting prayers, and team sports replaced martial arts training. Moreover, certain shakhas are mixed and meet on Sunday or during school vacation in order to attract the largest possible audience. Despite these variations, the HSS shakhas attest to the transposition of the Indian model of the RSS in diaspora. Another common feature lay in the fact that an important network of temples offered the HSS a logistic base, the same way as the RSS had benefited from the support of the Hindu temples in India when it developed its organization.
The HSS took on new importance in the eyes of the ‘‘mother organization’’ during the Emergency in 1975–1977. During these 18 months when the rule of law was suspended by Indira Gandhi, the RSS was banned for the second time in its history (the first dated back to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by a former movement member). It then found in its international affiliates valuable advocates of its cause and an alternative source of funding. The RSS headquarters in Nagpur at that time kept a secret register of swayamsevaks who had applied to emigrate, putting them in contact with those already settled in the destination country and encouraging them to join a shakha or to start one (Goyal 1979:106, note 91).
In 1976, swayamsevaks settled in Great Britain founded the Friends of India Society whose primary aim was to organize and defend Hindutva principles abroad. This organization is still very active in Great Britain and continental Europe, particularly in Paris (Andersen and Damle 1987:212–213). The existence of family links has sometimes helped a lot in the development of this network.
Like the RSS in India, the HSS in the United Kingdom adopted a centralized structure divided into geographic sections each headed by a movement cadre. The highest leadership council, the Akhil UK Pratinidhi Sabha (a copy of the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha—Delegate Assembly of All India) meets once a year like its Indian counterpart, and the Kendriya Karyakari Mandal (Central Executive Committee) every 3 months like its Indian counterpart and homonym.
Likewise, every year the HSS holds training camps for the movement cadres: Instructors’ Training Camps for shakha leaders, Officers’ Training Camps for those of a higher rank. These weeklong camps also decide on the content of the ‘‘teachings’’ delivered daily in the shakhas. The duplication of the RSS modus operandi is all the better insured since emissaries are regularly sent from Nagpur to oversee the camps, or even to hold standard training sessions.4
Reflecting the RSS strategy which, after having created a network of shakhas, gave rise to a multitude of affiliates forming a so-called family—the Sangh Parivar—the HSS created a network of sister organizations. The Vishva Hindu Parishad UK was founded some 8 years after the VHP in India, in 1972, as an affiliate of the VHP in the United Kingdom (Bhatt 2000:559). The Overseas Friends of the Bharatiya Janata Party (OFBJP) became the correspondent for the BJP in the country. The Rashtra Sevika Samiti (Committee of the female servants of the nation)—the women wing of the RSS founded in 1936 in India—also has an alter ego in Great Britain in an organization of the same name. The main Hindu student Union in Great Britain, the National Hindu Students Forum (NHSF), is likewise the official correspondent for the ABVP. Lastly, Bharat Sewa (Service of India) is the functional equivalent of the RSS affiliate devoted to social work, Sewa Bharti.
Like their Indian counterparts, the various components of the British Sangh are in constant contact but strive to mask the links they have with the RSS to avoid being overtly stigmatized by too strong an ideological branding and thereby circumvent the legislation in force. Indeed, the British Charity Commission prohibits the funding of political and sect activities, while section 5 of the Indian Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act of 1976 (FCRA) forbids the RSS and its affiliates from receiving funds from abroad without prior authorization from the central government on a case-by-case basis. It is thus of the utmost importance for the components of the Sangh Parivar to distinguish themselves from transnational political movements which would be illegal to fund. Thus, the Press Officer of the NHSF stated in November 2005 that ‘‘we have no direct link with them [HSS UK]; we are not funded or bonded to them, but there is a moral affiliation as with every other Hindu organization.’’5
This tactical distance nevertheless conceals real collaboration that AWAAZ, a network of anti-communal individuals and organizations based in India and the United Kingdom and set on exposing the illegal foreign funding of the Sangh Parivar, sets out to demonstrate in its report.6 It points out that the leader of the HSS sits on the board of directors of the VHP UK, whose representative for religious education issues is also a leader of the HSS and the former editor-in-chief of Sangh Sandesh, an HSS publication. The same interpenetration can also be observed among grassroots activists. The homology between the RSS and the HSS is thus mirrored in the networks formed by the Sangh Parivar in India and Great Britain.
In the United States, Hindutva adherents reproduced the same system, except that the first organization to have been created on American soil was not the local equivalent of the RSS but the Vishva Hindu Parishad of America. This is totally atypical as the RSS generally comes first. Founded in 1971, at the time when a wave of qualified emigrants arrived in the United States, the VHP-A today is one of the most active branches of the Sangh with 40 operational subranches and over 10,000 members.7 In May 1990, the Hindu Students Council (HSC) was formed, and today claims some 50 branches in universities throughout the United States and Canada (Rajagopal 2000:476). Its growth is remarkable given that the first HSC chapter was founded only in 1987 at Northeastern University in Boston. As for the alter ego of Sewa Bharti, in the United States it is called the India Development and Relief Fund.
Canada followed the same path as the United States. VHP-Canada was created in 1970 and built a temple in Vancouver the following year. It was only later, in 1973 on the recommendation of M.S. Golwalkar that L.M. Sabherwal, an RSS member since his youth who had arrived in Canada in the early 1970s, founded the HSS (initially under the name of Bharatiya Swayamsevak Sangh) (Jain 1998:19). Throughout the entire 1980s and 1990s the American swayamsevaks attempted to reproduce the development of the Sangh Parivar in Canada. VHP-Canada, of little importance until then, got a second wind in 1987 (Lele 2003:85). Similarly, the HSC in Canada came about with the help of activists from the neighboring United States. Thus still today, the VHP and the HSC, together with Sewa International, the charity arm equivalent locally to Sewa Bharti, constitute the pillars of Canadian Hindutva.
The Sangh Parivar has thus managed to reproduce most of its structure abroad, except that the HSS is not at the system’s hub: the center continues to be the RSS. Hindu nationalist movement affiliates either in India or abroad therefore swear allegiance to the same decision-making center, which certainly makes this movement qualify as a network. Not only do the members of the British Sangh regularly attend events organized by the Indian Sangh, but reports on the RSS activities in India are also presented in meetings of the HSS UK. More importantly, Rajendra Singh, the leader of the RSS from 1994 to 2000, presented his organization’s ‘‘Code of guidelines to workers’’ to HSS members in London on April 24, 1995.8 Interestingly, the RSS has divided the world into geographical areas, one of its senior cadres being in charge of each of them.9 Similarly, since 1984, the VHP center in Delhi has been exercising its jurisdiction over the entire organization all over the world.10 It is thus to India that the overseas components of the Sangh Parivar look for their material and ideological leadership.
Adapting the RSS modus operandi abroad Sangh Parivar representatives working outside India have naturally sought to reproduce the modus operandi that were successful in the homeland. And so the functioning of shakhas was transposed overseas: swayamsevaks in other parts of the world are also supposed to get together morning or evening, if possible dressed in the standard uniform, for physical training sessions including the virtually military raising of the flag and ideological get together that vary according to circumstances but the targets of which are usually the Muslims in the West and whose heroine is always eternal Hindu India. However, we shall see in this section that the RSS has been obliged to adapt its techniques to the new environment.
As for the VHP, its effort to unify Hinduism in diaspora uses some of the methods employed in India: this involves the construction of ‘‘Pan Hindu temples’’ destined to welcome all sects and castes and the organization of Dharma Sansad (Dharma parliaments) throughout the world. These assemblies bring together Hindu religious figures that have come from local ashrams and temples and who strive to establish and disseminate a Hindu code of conduct by inventing a sort of catechism. Like in India, the British, American, and Canadian branches of the VHP also hold huge rallies in the form of ethno-religious events.
The first such gathering was probably the Virat Hindu Sammelan (Great Hindu Assembly) which took place in Milton Keynes, in the suburbs of London, in 1989. For the first time in Great Britain the VHP had managed to bring together hundreds of Hindu organizations (officially 300) and from 50 to 100,000 participants. In United States an even larger rally took place in 1993 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Vivekananda—a religious reformer with nationalist leanings—in Chicago and his famous speech to the world parliament of religions in 1893 in which he had criticized the materialistic West and praised the virtues of a spiritual Orient. This gathering was called ‘‘Global Vision 2000,’’ which was an apt reflection of the international ambitions of Hindutva adherents. Although from traditional shakhas to ethno-religious mobilization campaigns, Hindu nationalists in diaspora seem to reproduce the initial model of the Sangh Parivar, they function in a highly specific manner.

The Primacy of Religious Figures

The role of religious figures in the Sangh Parivar abroad is much more significant than in India. The fact that the VHP-America and VHP-Canada werefounded before the North American equivalent of the RSS is not by chance; it reflects the long-standing presence of Hindu gurus in the United States and Canada and the strength of their networks. In North America—but also in Great Britain—the Hindu nationalist movement therefore relied on the action of various sects founded by gurus recognized abroad, like the Arya Samaj, established in 1875 by Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the Ramakrishna Mission, founded in 1897 by Vivekananda, the Swaminarayan movement, which was created shortly afterwards and to which we shall return below, the Divine Life Society founded in 1936 by Swami Shivananda, the Chinmaya Mission founded in 1953 by Swami Chinmayanand, the Sri Aurobindo Society founded in 1960 and the International Sai Organization founded in 1972 by Sathya Sai Baba.
Interestingly, in 1973, M.S. Golwalkar, still at the helm of the RSS, wrote to a young swayamsevak who had migrated to Canada, that he should ‘‘meet the holy men who leave our country to spread our religion’’ and that he ‘‘would gain a lot from these acquaintances’’ (Golwalkar 1973).11 Swami Chinmayanand, the cofounder of the VHP—the movement was created in 1964 in his Bombay ashram—enjoyed such a popularity in the West that he became an international entrepreneur in religion. After a world tour in 1965, he decided to invest his energy in the United States where he started to go every year from 1968 onwards. The first Chinmaya Spiritual Camp outside India was held in 1973 in California. Six years later, Swami Chinmayanand started ‘‘an ashram-school’’ (Patchen 1989:238) in northern California. Though the Chinmaya Mission had many branches12 out of the United States, this country was its stronghold and Swami Chinmayanand therefore played a major role in establishing the VHP America (McKean 1996:178).
Another guru, Satyamitranand Giri, also contributed to the movement’s development in Great Britain in a decisive manner. In fact, the VHP-UK is officially placed under the patronage of this man who was first known for his religious activities aiming to federate Hinduism in India. In 1983 in the holy city of Haridwar, he thus founded a Bharat Mata Mandir, of which each of the seven stories brings together figures that symbolize aspects of the Hindu nation (Dharma Marg 1984:39–41).
Beyond this guru, the Sangh Parivar finds in the Swaminarayan movement a most valuable ally in Great Britain.13In 1995 the building of a huge temple in Neasden, in the London suburbs, reflected the growing influence of the Swaminarayan movement in England, especially among the affluent Gujarati community. Not only does this temple present all the deities of the Hindu pantheon as does Satyamitranand Giri’s Bharat Mata Mandir, but its permanent exhibit entitled ‘‘Understanding Hinduism’’ adopts a very nationalistic tone, the faithful being informed of the fact that Hindus not only discovered the zero, but also geometry, astronomy, plastic surgery and quantum physics! (Mukta 2000:461).
Beyond the channel offered by the Swaminarayan movement, the Gujarati milieu—most of whose members subscribe to this movement—has given Hindu nationalism countless specific advantages. First of all communication relays: a radio station, Radio Sunrise, three newspapers, Garavi Gujarat, Gujarat Samachar and the weekly Asian Voice, all media serving to echo the debates concerning the Christian ‘‘threat’’ constituted by the conversions of tribals in India. Second, it wields considerable financial clout, as we will see further on.

Drafting a New Catechism and Educating Youth

If the religious factor plays such a considerable role in the promotion of Hindutva abroad, it is not only due to the influence of gurus and sectarian movements like the Swaminarayans, but also to the demand for Hinduism. Hindu migrants want their children to know their religious tradition. One Hindu leader thus explained in The Organiser, the RSS weekly:
The American Hindu is perpetually concerned that his children are brought up in the Hindu tradition, that he gets acquainted with the Hindu gods and goddesses. Some of the parents are highly exercised over their children being tainted by the Western culture. Some they are now repenting at leisure that in their blind pursuit of wealth they had abandoned their children to absorb the Western culture. Others have awakened to the danger. (The Organiser 1996:40)
The difficulties that young people encounter when they have to justify aspects of their culture that arouse astonishment or sarcasm partly helps to understand the success of the VHP. Here is an organization able to explain the Hindu ‘‘catechism’’ clearly to the young generations. It has even undertaken to train teachers.
The VHP UK published Explaining Hindu Dharma: A Guide for Teachers in 1996. In the United States in 2005, the VHP-A sought to influence the rewriting of history textbooks in the state of California, giving rise to a debate among experts between community representatives and India scholars opposed to this fallacious rewriting for ideological ends (Jaffrelot 2007).
The VHP-UK follows the same line. Seeta Lakhani’s textbook, for instance, pretends drawing its inspiration from Hinduism to pronounce negative opinions on cloning, contraception, precocious sexual intercourse, divorce, adultery, and homosexuality. The author’s efforts to fashion the mentality of second and third generation Hindu youths go so far as to warn this population against the BBC and what she deems its partial treatment of Hinduism. Her map of India naturally encompasses the portion of Kashmir under Pakistani control, as per Hindu nationalist ideology  (Lakhani 2005:58, 105–106).
To appeal to the youth, the Hindutva movement often has recourse to apparently inoffensive activities such as summer camps or language courses (Mukta 2000). They also offer student cultural evenings such as Mastana, a student night of ‘‘fun’’ organized on the campus of the Cambridge University, UK. In the United States and Canada many temples also host VHP classes aiming to explain their culture to children and to inculcate a Hindu pride that denies the diversity or even the ambiguities of Hinduism. The situation, however, is not the same in all the countries under review. In the United States as well as in Great Britain, various offshoots of the Sangh Parivar focus on the most affluent Hindus.
The high rate of academic success among young Americans and British of Indian stock, mainly Hindus, and from more affluent families than the rest of Asia, is often held up as proof of an intrinsic superiority. This justifies the cam- paign to dissociate Hindus from the mass of ‘‘Asians’’ conducted in various Sangh publications that target a young audience. In Canada, where the Indian community has been firmly established since the early 20th century, the HSC has on the other hand adopted an inclusive strategy aiming to highlight the numerical—and therefore political—significance of Hindus in the country, and the universal and encompassing dimension of Hinduism. But the Hindu nationalist propaganda in Great Britain and in the United States is not always the same.
The adaptation of certain moral codes to make room for homosexuality, living out of wedlock, and divorce, for instance, and the negation of caste distinctions constitutes a major difference of British and American Hindutva with respect to its Indian version.However, aside from these exceptions, the causes and ideology defended by the pro-Hindutva movement in Great Britain, United States, and Canada have been imported from India and these organizations claim inspiration from the same mentors. And indeed the same idea of a besieged community prevailing in India is found here and the low proportion of Hindus in the British and North America populations lends it even greater strength.

Cyber Hindutva

If the HSS was founded after the VHP-A in the United States, it is not only because of the religious demand emanating from the Hindu community; it is also due to the lack of enthusiasm of the latter for the modus operandi of traditional shakhas. There was no way that business executives, the prime HSS target, were going to get up at dawn to salute the saffron flag reciting a Sanskrit anthem—and even less do calisthenics in khaki shorts! It is thus also because the HSS has had to adapt to a new sociology that, instead of emphasizing the classical functioning of shakhas, it has invented cybershakhas.
The Hindu nationalist movement has thus multiplied Internet websites enabling its members to remain in contact, to keep informed of Sangh Parivar actions and to follow its analysis of current events. The most important of these sites in the United States is probably the Global Hindu Electronic Network (http://www.hindunet.org). As for the most radical of them, it is beyond a doubt Sword of Truth (http://www.swordoftruth.com) which includes a blacklist of ‘‘anti-Hindu’’ people. These websites also offer instant answers to the questions the Hindu diaspora is confronted with, as evidenced by headings such as ‘‘Eternal Hindu Values’’ or ‘‘Hindu Customs.’’ Besides, several blogs backing the Sangh Parivar have cropped up in the past few years. Most of the pro-Hindutva blogs inventoried on September 25, 2006 using the Google search engine are either anonymous or originate from enterprises such as Dharma Today. Bloggers who identify themselves are moreover, all men.

The Key Role of Fund Raising

The importance of fund raising in the activities of the Sangh parivar abroad is naturally explained by the spectacular financial and social success of the diaspora. In United States, the 2000 census revealed an average income of $67,000 for Indians as opposed to $30,000 average overall income. Such an accomplishment gives Indians—and especially the Hindus among them—the sense that they form a model minority. In Great Britain, over 30% of Hindus aged from 16 to 30 years hold a university degree, and 5% of the Hindus in any age brackets are doctors.14
These achievements make them the preferred target of fundraisers based in India. The Sangh Parivar managed to tap these resources for the first time in 1989 when it undertook a huge fundraising campaign aiming to finance the (re)construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, a little town in northern India where Hindu nationalists claim that the Muslims had demolished a Ram Mandir to build a mosque in 1528—the Babri Masjid. The Ram Shilas (bricks stamped with the name Ram) funded by gifts from abroad were carried to Ayodhya with great care and placed in display cases. Indians in the United States had sent $350,000 to India to rebuild the Ram Mandir in the year following the demolition of the Babri Masjid, on December 6, 1992 by Hindu nationalist activists.
Since that time the main source of Sangh funds has come from abroad, as shown by the 2002 report on the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) and the one published in 2004 by the AWAAZ network, a humans rights organization in South Asia, entitled In Bad Faith? British Charity and Hindu Extremism, on Sewa activities in the United Kingdom.15The authors of these two reports, which caused a scandal in India, the United States, and Great Britain, lay bare the whole foreign financing structure of the Sangh Parivar through the IDRF and Sewa-UK, and reveal theinstitutional and personal relations that link the Hindu diaspora in these countries to the Sangh.
The Maryland-based IDRF, conveyor belt for Sangh-destined funds in the United States, presents itself to its donors as a nonprofit charity NGO. It collects funds throughout the United States for development projects in India. This organization has been presided since its inception by a former economist at the World Bank, Vinod Prakash. From 1990 to 1998 it raised $2 million and the Hindu Heritage Endowment that it formed in 1994 raised $2.6 million in pledges (Biju and Prashad 2000:529). According to another source, from 1995 to 2002, it raised $5 million that it distributed to 284 organizations involved in social programs in India. IDRF rules stipulate that 20% of the funds that it collects are earmarked for beneficiaries whose name is been specified by the donors, whereas 80% of the remaining donations are distributed at the movement’s discretion.
As it turns out, among the 75 organizations affiliated with the IDRF—the primary beneficiaries of this gold mine of $5 million between 1995and 2002—60 of them were Sangh Parivar affiliates, including the Sewa Bharti, the Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram (Ashram for the tribals’ welfare—the RSS offshoot devoted to aboriginals and fighting Christian proselyte activities among them) or other affiliates of the Hindu nationalist movement. As it turns out, four of the six IDRF vice presidents at the time were HSS members and one of them belonged to the VHP-A National Governing Council.16
Once again, the Hindu nationalists have managed to hide their hand, this strategy being made easier by the multiplication of screen companies constituted by the countless offshoots of the Sangh. Although the Sangh Parivar’s fundraising activities abroad have particularly taken off in the United States, drives also take place in Canada, via Sewa International (also known as Sewa Canada), and in Great Britain. According to Sat Wadhwa, the founder and secretary general of Sewa Canada, this organization came about in the early 1990s and raised $225,000 in 2005. He sends a sizable check on behalf of Sewa Canada (the sum was $150,000 in February 2006) earmarked for seven or eight projects in India. Some of these projects are directly managed by Sewa Bharti and others, particularly in the tribal zones, by the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. Fundraising is mostly done ‘‘by word of mouth. We put our leaflets in various temples and in one gurudwara [sikh temple].’’17
Although it is still difficult to evaluate the scope of Canadian funding of the Sangh for lack of complete reports on this subject, the British contribution is well known now thanks to the AWAAZ investigation.18Sewa-UK, the main Hindu nationalist fundraising agency in Great Britain, proved to be extremely effective following the Bhuj earthquake in Gujarat in 2003, the Gujaratis forming the most solid Hindu nationalist support network in England. Altogether, Sewa UK has allegedly collected £2.3 million nearly all of which—£1.9 million of it—was transferred to the Gujarati branch of Sewa Bharti. A third of these funds apparently served to build Hindu nationalist schools, particularly in the tribal areas, whereas it was supposed to go to rebuilding destroyed villages.
These revelations sparked great indignation in the United States and Great Britain where many donors totally ignored the final destination of their donations. It would appear nevertheless that in the United States many of them have a clear conscience about the ideological orientation of the IDRF. Its director in fact had to apologize to them after having given money to victims of a fire in a mosque at Mecca!19Whether the donors had consented or not it is obvious that one of the specificities of Hindu nationalism in the United States has to do with its function as a ‘‘money pump.’’
This dimension is naturally highly appreciated by the BJP whose funding needs are constantly growing due to the rising costs of election campaigns.20 It is therefore not surprising that the party has given pride of place to Non Resident Indians rather early, in its 1996 election manifesto, at a time when other Indian political parties largely disregarded the diaspora. Besides, BJP leaders—Vajpayee, Advani, etc.—toured the United States several times to raise funds among wealthy Indians during gala dinners completely at odds with the ideal of austerity advocated by the RSS. The financial stakes now represented by the Indian diaspora in the United States is clearly reflected by the attraction this destination holds for the political class. It is precisely to prevent Ashok Gehlot, Digvijay Singh, and Sheila Dixit—all Congress Chief Ministers—from poaching on its preserves that Prime Minister Vajpayee government denied them permission in 2003 to travel to the United States. These three Congress heads of state governments wanted to look for handouts in North America before elections in their state.21
Vijay Prashad considers that the Hindu diaspora’s ‘‘generosity’’ can be explained by ulterior motives. According to him, ‘‘at least their advertisements and their cringing servility would, they hoped, earn them a few contracts and investment deals when Hindutva began the ‘privatization’ fire-sale of India’s public sector assets’’(Prashad 1997:9, 2002:10). Others see it as a means of assuaging the conscience of those who, having been successful abroad, feel a certain sense of guilt at having left other poor country where they were initially educated. We are wary, however, of such instrumentalist and psychological interpretations that tend to conceal other substantial factors.

The Mechanisms of Success

Throughout the 1990s the Sangh Parivar developed considerably among the Hindu diaspora, especially in Great Britain and the United States. In this country where the HSS was virtually nonexistent in the 1980s, it grew rapidly throughout the following decade. In the late 1990s, the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut alone already counted 150 shakhas (Rajagopal 2000:480). These inroads, which were long in coming, are not only explained by factors internal to the Hindu milieu, but also by features of the host societies.

Internal Factors

Arvind Rajgopal explains the attraction of Hindu nationalism for the Indian diaspora in the United States by their sociological characteristics. Hindus in America count among their ranks a growing number of computer scientists and small business owners that come from the ‘‘little-exposed strata of Indian society, completely bypassing the usual socialization of the bigger cities’’ (Rajagopal2000:482). Certainly, the core of Hindu nationalism has been historically recruited among what Bruce Graham has called the ‘‘middle world’’ of the Hindi belt, small business executives and professionals, all who come from upper castes (Graham 1990:158.) But to attribute the Hindu nationalist leanings of a new wave of migrants to their lack of cosmopolitanism is not convincing when the most cosmopolitan ones are no less attracted by the Sangh parivar. Indeed, since the end of the 1980s, the Sangh Parivar has made its way into the upper middle
class in big cities.
Jayant Lele suggests another interpretation of the development of the Sangh Parivar in Canada. Whereas most of the Indians who came to this country before the Second World War were workers and farmers, the more recent wave of immigration, particularly beginning in the 1960s, was mainly made up of members of the upper middle class. According to Lele, these affluent Indians find in the Brahmanical, unifying and flattering dimension of Hinduism as it is presented by the Sangh Parivar confirmation of their dominant position within Canadian society and within the Indian community (Lele 2003:93–98).
These two opposite readings suggest that the internal factors of the Hindu nationalist movement’s success may still lay elsewhere. First of all in the consolidation of its network in the course of time and in an increased mobilization drive on the part of the Sangh Parivar. This could be seen in the Milton Keynes (1989) and ‘‘Global Vision’’ (1993) rallies, but also in Rajendra Singh’s 1995 tour and those of his successor, K. Sudarshan. The importance of these tours has been considerably overlooked. Never before had an RSS leader traveled outside of India. Neither Golwalkar nor Deoras had felt the need to set out into the world to which they had nevertheless decided to extend the Sangh Parivar.
Rajendra Singh’s visit to Europe thus marked a turning point. The RSS leader presented his ideas in a very moderate tone, which suited what was basically an exercise in public relations. At the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, for instance, he gave a provocatively entitled speech, ‘‘The 21st Century: A Hindu Century,’’ but the content was reassuring. He claimed to be open to a third way between socialism and capitalism, true to the holistic qualities of Hinduism, a model, if he were to be believed, of social cohesion and fraternity (Raj 2000:549). Singh’s visit showed a new style that is better suited to international relations that the RSS’ usual lectures peppered with references to a glorious Hindu past.
The second factor of success that one can attribute to the Sangh parivar has to do with the ‘‘mainstreamization’’ of the Hindu nationalist movement. From the mid-1990s onwards, particularly after the 1996 elections that gave the BJP the largest number of seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament), Hindutva gained respectability. As a result, the diaspora was less afraid to show its face during its rallies and fundraising drives.
The third factor, internal not to the movement but to the Hindu diaspora, has to do with its political culture, which indeed became more radical in the 1990s. For the first time the Sangh Parivar was no longer popular among the diaspora merely because it met a religious demand, but also because of its ethnic nationalist project. Why did the Hindu diaspora prove receptive to this ideology at that point of time in its history? To understand this, specific factors having to do with the situation in countries of immigration must be taken into account.
Islamism, Racism, and Multiculturalism in the Host Societies
The radicalization of the Hindu diaspora is partly a reaction to the epitome of the Other that is the Muslim, in India as well as abroad. In India, the conversions that took place in 1981 in Meenakshipuram—a little town in southernIndia where thousands of Dalits (ex-untouchables) ‘‘went over to Islam’’—and the Shah Bano incident in 198522prepared the ground for the Hindu nationalist mobilization in the 1980–1990. Abroad, the Rushdie affair of 1989 and Hizb ut Tahrir’s campaigns had a similar impact, especially on university campuses where cohabitation among students from different communities was becoming more and more problematic. At the SOAS in London, for instance, Hindu and Jewish students joined efforts to get the Hizb banned. At the same time they also led a campaign against the conversion of young Sikh and Hindu women to Islam when they marry a Muslim (Raj 2000:555 notes 15 and 19). Besides, Hindu nationalist organizations have cashed in on a very specific socio-political context in Great Britain and in North America, two countries which, especially in the 1980s–1990s, combines a certain amount of ordinary racism and a strong sense of multiculturalism. Such alchemy tends to exacerbate communitarian mobilizations as Peter Mandeville has shown Muslim movements (Mandaville 2001).
In the United States multiculturalism has fostered the organization of the Indian minority, first because of the affirmative action policy underlying it. In 1977 the Association of Indians America fought to include Indians as ‘minorities’ expressly ‘‘to benefit from the modest affirmative action provided by the state in its contracts’’ (Biju and Prashad 2000:519–520). In 1982, the US Small Business Administration accepted a petition from the National Association of Asian Indian Descent requesting that Indians be recognized as a ‘‘socially disadvantaged minority in need of special preferences’’ (Leonard 1995:83). In 2000, the United States census gave Indians a specific category, enabling them no longer to be
tallied together with Pakistanis.
In Canada, known for its social-mosaic rather than melting-pot ideal, the federal and provincial authorities, confronted with the demands of French-speaking Canadians, strengthened community groups by granting them tax advantages and giving them a role in the decision-making process at the municipal level. Thus, in both Great Britain and in North America, Hindus benefited from communitarian policies. In these three countries, Hindutva adherents seek to assert their ‘‘genteel multicultural presence’’ to use Arvind Rajagopal’s expression and take on the most ordinary attributes in order to appear harmless (Rajagopal 1997:51–65 and 47).
But alongside multiculturalism Anglo-Saxon style, British, American, and Canadian societies have multiplied forms of discrimination. Here, it is important to distinguish between the xenophobia of extreme rightwing movements and everyday expressions of ordinary racism. Bhatt and Mukta point out that ‘‘the American and British New Right language of the 1980s […] carried similar themes of ‘majority discrimination’ and an attack on minority rights and protection’’ (Bhatt and Mukta 2000:437). And thus Senator Pat Robertson slammed Hinduism, which he described as diabolical in the context of a campaign aiming to reduce the flow of Indian immigrants in a ‘‘dominantly Christian’’ country. Besides, these political developments, one must not overlook more benign forms of racialism. Children are the first victims of this refusal of otherness.
How many second-generation immigrants in primary or secondary school have been the butt of classmates who were taken aback not only by the color of their skin but by Hindu customs such as vegetarianism, cow worship, arranged marriages, wearing the sari, or the sacred rope worn by upper caste men?This cultural context explains the founding of Hindu defense organizations not belonging to the Sangh Parivar. For instance in the United States the Federation of Hindu Associations vehemently protested against Sony’s and Gap’s use of Hindu deities in their advertising campaigns. Both companies had to cancel the ads and apologize for them. Similar protests were leveled at the American series The Simpsons, when in one of its episodes one of its characters threw peanuts at a statue called Goofy Ganesh. The scale of the challenge posed by these practices in the eyes of militant Hindus prompted them to create the American Hindu Anti-Defamation Coalition (ADHADC) in 1997, modeled after the Anti-Defamation League initially founded to combat anti-Semitism. The primary aim of the ADHADC is to monitor that the iconography and vocabulary used regarding Hinduism does not convey prejudice against it. This approach was only possible because American law—in keeping with the official multi-culturalism—recognizes everything dear to the followers of one religion as worth protecting.
Across the border, several organizations such as Canadian Hope and the Hindu Conference of Canada pride themselves in monitoring and protecting Hindus’ image in the national media.23The Hindu Conference of Canada has also set itself the aim of increasing the number of visas granted to Indians and facilitate the establishment of Indian and Hindu managers by granting degree equivalences. Moreover, it publicly backed the conservative party in the 2006 federal elections.24
This example thus shows that multiculturalism enables communitarian defense groups to form associations, which quickly turn into ethnic lobbies. Great Britain provides the most accomplished example of this evolution. Since September 2003, Hindutva organizations resolutely present themselves as ethnic lobbies. On this date, some of them, including Hindu Forum UK, as well as several MPs of Indian stock launched an ‘‘Operation Hindu Vote’’ modeled after the ‘‘Operation Black Vote.’’ This campaign sought at once to identify Hindu population centers and people who openly support a nationalist and extreme vision of Hinduism, in order to supply them with the necessary lobbying material, such as press packets.25This national lobbying effort is combined with growing participation in local politics. The NHSF, for instance strongly encourages its members to be active in the National Union of Students and in student politics. The penetration of champions of Hindutva in student unions enables this ideology to benefit from legitimate forums. British Hindutva activists see in these various sources of political support, fostered by a policy of multiculturalism and a lack of information on Hindu extremism, a means of legitimation and a way to position themselves as spokespersons for the entire Hindu community, even the entire Indian community in the country.

Conclusion

The case study just explored enables us to qualify, even invalidate Benedict Anderson’s theory of long-distance nationalism. Far from being the product of a one-way flow moving from the diaspora to the homeland, the migrants’ ethno-religious mobilization is also the result of concerted action on the part of very well structured organizations. Western Hindu community involvement in Indian politics for the sake of promoting the majoritarian culture owes much to the way in which the RSS and its affiliates have established themselves overseas andorchestrated a veritable process of ‘‘re-Hinduization.’’ To expand its network overseas the RSS has been obliged to adapt its modus operandi, without denaturing it though. But its success was also due to the very specific context of host countries combining racism and multiculturalism.
These conclusions rehabilitate the role of political actors in a field where social forces are often analyzed as largely autonomous and almighty. Arjun Appadurai, for instance, defines the ‘‘ethnoscapes’’ resulting from the intensification of migrations as the creations of the diasporas alone. By ignoring the role of political agencies such as the Sangh Parivar, one takes the risk of disregarding new forms of overseas nationalism to conclude that diasporas belong to a post-national world, simply because they are incapable of giving a territorial dimension to their national imaginaire (see Appadurai 1997).
Our approach does not only reevaluate the role of ideological movements but of another actor too, the state. Not only the nature of the state of the host countries matters, as evident from the impact of multiculturalist public policies mentioned above, but the role of the state of the original nation must be taken into account here. Indeed, the state can stimulate the national allegiance in those who have left their homeland, as well as their offspring. In the case of India, such a phenomenon clearly manifested itself when the Hindu nationalists came to power in 1998. The Hindu diaspora then became a target and a major resource for the ruling BJP. It now appeared not only as a bridgehead in the RSS millenarist mission or, more prosaically, a source of funding, but also a source of influence, a lever for Indian diplomacy. Jaswant Singh, BJP minister in the Vajpayee government, for instance considered that the Indians of the diaspora ‘‘now […] have to carry the message that India is preparing to be in the forefront as a global power to reckon with—not in the combative or confrontationist sense—but as a cultural and economic superpower’’ (Singh2000:‘‘conclusion’’).
This message warranted dissemination first throughout the United States, the first world power where ethnic lobbying was accepted practice. For Brajesh Mishra, the then security advisor of Vajpayee, the ‘‘brain drain’’ feeding the American economy with a supply of Indian engineers and doctors was an investment he readily consented to because it gave India the means of influencing American public opinion—particularly in Congress.26 He appreciated the fact that to do so, the Hindu diaspora had to follow the example of the Jewish lobby.
The Vajpayee government experience was thus the framework of an attempt to instrumentalize the diaspora. This time the instrumentalization was not the work of an ideological group but of the Indian state itself. For the authorities it was not only a matter of using the diaspora as a new group ambassador, but also to attract new investors. This is the spirit in which the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, the ‘‘Overseas Indians Day,’’ an annual event organized for the first time by the Government of India in January 2003 and presented as a meeting of NRIs with the Indian authorities, was started. Interestingly, Manmohan Singh’s Congress alliance government pursued the approach undertaken by the Vajpayee regime after the 2004 alternation in power, not only by continuing the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas meetings, but by appointing a Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs, Jagdish Tytler, whose ideas are very close to those of his predecessor, the Hindu nationalist L. M. Singhvi.
Whatever the color of the government in New Delhi, the Indian state is thus a party to the rise of the diaspora’s ‘‘long distance nationalism.’’ This notion, indeed, must be analyzed as the outcome, not only of social forces, but also of political actors, ideological minded organizations and the state itself.
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NOTES:
1. The Ocean waters are thus named in Hindu orthodoxy for to cross them means taking the risk of no longer being able to comply with Hindu rituals and especially, to expose oneself to impure contacts that cannot be washed away if one is far from places of purification such as the Ganges.
2. Bhai Parmanand, for instance, traveled through southern Africa and Guyana at the turn of the 20th century as an Arya Samaj updeshak [see Parmanand (1982:27 ff)].
3. Kavita Sukhu, vice-president of the Hindu Student Council (HSC), local student branch of the Sangh Parivar, at the University of Toronto, Saint George campus, is a good illustration of this. Her grandparents, originally from the north of India, belonged to the Sanatan Dharma Sabha, an ultraorthodox Hindu organization, and her grandfather was a priest. They finally settled in British Guyana. The following generation then migrated to Canada (Interview with K. Sukhu in Toronto, March 27, 2006).
4. The founding of the VHP Overseas (led by B.K. Modi, also president of VHP India) in November 2002 to coordinate VHP activities throughout the world fits within this same logic.
5. Interview with Rujuta Roplekar, November 22, 2005, London.
6. AWAAZ—South Asia Watch Limited (2004:14, 51) http://www.awaazsaw.org/ibf/index.htm [accessed on May 6, 2004].
7. See the VHP website.
8. AWAAZ—South Asia Watch Limited op. cit.:13, 50.
9. Ibid., 46.
10. Ibid., 51.11For more information see Therwath (2007).
11. For more information see Therwath (2007).
12. The Mission, all in all had 97 branches in India and abroad in the 1990s.
13. Its founder, the ascetic Neelkanth, born in 1781, emphasized social work in cities and villages, monotheism rather than idolatrous polytheism and superstition, and to counter the Christian missionaries he structured the sect into dioceses according to the model of Christian churches. See Williams (1984, 2001).14National Hindu Students Forum UK, ‘‘Focus on religion folder,’’ op. cit.
14. National Hindu Students Forum UK, ‘‘Focus on religion folder,’’ op. cit.
15. The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the American Founding of Hindutva, Bombay, Sabrang Communications Private Limited.
16. The Foreign Exchange of Hate, op. cit. See also The South Asia Citizens Web, http://www.stopfundinghate.com. November 20, 2002.
17. Interview with Sat Wadhwa, Toronto, March 29, 2003.
18. AWAAZ—South Asia Watch Limited, op. cit.
19. Sword of Truth website: http://www.swordoftruth.com/sworoftruth/archives/oldarchives/bjprss.html
20. Keeping in mind that the BJP is obliged to go through other branches of the Sangh Parivar to receive funds from the diaspora because the law forbids an Indian political party from receiving contributions from abroad.
21. The BJP spokesperson in Rajasthan moreover justified its refusal to Gehlot by explaining that ‘‘the real purpose of Gehlot’s visit to the US is to raise funds from expatriate Marwaris [merchant caste] for the forthcoming elections’’ (cited in S. Mishra, ‘‘BJP sniffs cash stink in trip,’’ The Telegraph, July 1, 2003.)
22. This incident involved a Muslim woman repudiated by her husband by virtue of Koranic law, who, through the courts obtained maintenance payments despite the opposition of Muslim organizations for which this decision challenged the status of the Sharia as a source of law in India. In 1986, Rajiv Gandhi had a constitutional amendment passed exempting the Muslim community from the article of the Criminal Code by virtue of which the Supreme Court had ruled. He did this in order to ensure the continued support of Muslim opinion leaders. But his tactic resulted in a resurgence of Hindu nationalist activism.
23. See the Canadian Hope website: http://www.canadianhope.org/aboutus.html
24. See the website of the Hindu Conference of Canada: http://www.hccanada.com/media/HCCEndorsement.pdf.
25. http://www.redhotcurry.com/archive/news/2003/hindu_vote.html26Interview with Brajesh Mishra in Paris, summer 2001.