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the conscious level, the BJP, among political formations, has chosen
to be an instrument of India's cultural and civilizational recovery
and reaffirmation. As such, it is natural that it will figure
prominently in the reshaping of India in the coming years and
decades. But others too will play their part in the gigantic
enterprise. V.P.Singh, for instance, has already rendered yeoman
service to the cause by undermining the social coalition which has
dominated the country's politics for most of the period since
independence 2
When a master idea seizes the mind,
as socialism did in the twenties, and as Hindutva has done now, it
must usher in radical change. In the twenties and the decades that
followed before and after independence, conservative forces were not
strong enough to resist the socialist idea. Similarly, conservative
forces are not strong enough today to defeat the Hindutva ideal.
There is a difference, though, for while the socialist ideal related
primarily to economic reorganization and was elitist in its approach
by virtue of being a Western import, Hindutva seeks, above all, to
unleash the energies of a whole people which foreign rule froze or
drove underground.
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