Available insights into the state of mind of the RSS are battling. For instance, ... Cardinal Ratzinger's speech .. refusing to put Christianity on par with other religions which does nor bother anyone in this country, apparently put the bee in the RSS sarsanghchalak's bonnet ....

Sudershan would appear to have other bees in his bonnet: for example. the receipt of money from abroad – VHP sympathizers send vast sums into this country but this is of course all right ... But there is a cultural dimension too: Christianity is suddenly seen as a threat to the affirmation of Hindu identity. It is doubtful whether anyone outside the RSS's inner circle sees any problem or at least in the same way ... What is happening in the North-East has nothing to do with Christianity: the Nagas are revolting as Nagas, their religion is just another marker setting them apart, not from Hindus ... believe but from all Indians.

Had the neighbourhood been full of Christians, the Naga problem would have been just as acute. Problems peculiar to the RSS remain. The fact is that attendance at shakhas is dwindling while front organizations devoted to political action are flourishing ...

The RSS has an idiom problem. Sudershan now speaks of farmers, something the RSS rarely did earlier. It means that the core Hindutva ideology is made to cater to an increasingly literate, possibly culturally disaffected, peasantry besieged by television and metropolitan values ... Hindutva needs redefinition and the quest of Hindu identity reformulated in a rural context.

The original flare-up, over the BJP's declared move to woo the Muslim electorate, should be seen from this strategic perspective. Sudershan tells them that they have "the blood of Rama and Krishna in their veins". In other words, Muslims are either foreigners or Hindus, they cannot be Muslims. Which takes everybody well over the brink of sanity.