context that the wobbling - and worse - of the Congress, and particularly
of the Prime Minister, before and after December 6 appears so disastrous, indeed
suicidal, even from the point of view of narrow party interests. There did exist
a possibility of retrieval just after the sixth. The much-quoted Vajpayee interview
was an indication that the BJP for a few days had been forced into the defensive.
But Narasimha Rao, to quote a rather apt comment by a journalist, then proceeded
"to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory". Sporadic, largely unimplemented,
obviously halfhearted measurers of repression, not backed up by any political campaign
by the Congress, have by now been succeeded by what appears to be yet another attempt
to compete with the BJP for the 'Hindu card'. Principles apart, elementary real politick
suggests that theof those sterile intellectuals
who are a threat to the nation". Hitler at the Nuremberg Nazi Congress next
year similarly exalted the "heart", the "faith" the "inner
voice" of the German volk over "hair-splitting intelligence." (7)

'Enemy' Image

This, however, has been a bit of an aside: far more central to Hindutva as a mass
phenomenon (or for that matter to Fascism) is the development of a powerful and extendable
enemy image through appropriating stray elements from past prejudices, combining
them with new ones skillfully dressed up as old verities, and broadcasting the resultant
compound through the most up-to-date media techniques. The Muslim here becomes the
near-exact equivalent of the Jew - or the Black (more generally, immigrants felt
to be inferior for one or another reason) in contemporary White racism. The Muslim
in India, like the Jew in Nazi