.. Thakre's focus is, expectedly, on the latest embellishment to the RSS thesis on Hindutva

One nation, one people, one culture, he says as he calls on the minority communities to "break free of the peddlers of vote banks" and join the BJP. The minorities' future, Thakre ... says lies in "new India we all aspire for, not in the morass of minority-majority politics or appeasement that may benefit regressive elements, but deprives them (the minorities) of progress and justice". Too true, Kushabhau Saheb ... But for the minor fact that you do not care to explain why do you fall back on the RSS agenda of Hindutva if it is not to appease the more stringent and nefarious segments of society to keep them intact as your vote bank. The inaugural speech, and the political resolution are a long litany of appeasement, not to the underprivileged and the downtrodden, not to the minorities and those who feel under stress because of the hooliganism of your hoodlums whose idea of celebrating a BJP victory somewhere is to rush to the nearest place of worship, or group of worshippers and pummel them ...

Would there be some appeasement also in the corny relationship with the Akali Dal, India's only theocratic party, and the men in Amritsar who have been given a few more vassals to control in the latest gift of places of worship now forced to listen to the diktats of what one time supercop K.P.S. Gill calls "former murderers and their friends ... One nation, one people, one mode of expressing self-interest. The country is going to have an enjoy his good friends. And for the intellectuals, he promises a riddle a day. Yesterday's riddle is to find a common thread between his four statements.

Statement one: All organisations inspired by the RSS are free to take their own decisions. This is because the very idea of centralised control is non-Hindu.

Statement two: It is the common way of life that we call Hindutva or cultural nationalism.

Statement three: Ghauri was the first Muslim invader to attack Delhi in 1191, and Pakistan is warning that history is repeating itself.

And finally, statement four: Samanvaya or synthesis is the overarching principle which helped to create one nation from diverse influences, revitalised by the ancient Hindu texts and the scriptures of the Buddha, the Jain munis and Guru Nanak.

Some of us, pseudo-secularists, thought that the people of Christ who are in two years' time celebrating 2,000 years of Christianity in India, and the Sufis ... had also contributed to the shaping of the one culture, if one may call it that ... Thakre ... may want to make the definition of One Nation, One People, One Culture more cultured.                                                                                                                                        (Source: The Indian Currents, 9-15 May, 1998)