The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right

by Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay

In the initial years of the VHP’s campaign, its leaders had argued that the claim of a Ram temple at the disputed site would be eventually ‘proven’. However, the findings by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as part of its Archaeology of Ramayana Sites project, suggested that there was no evidence of any human settlement in contemporary Ayodhya before eleventh century BC. What this meant was that if events described in the epic did occur as believed by several Hindus, they perhaps may have, but not necessarily in the location that the VHP insisted they did. At a time when the sangh parivar was in a conundrum over faith and fact, it was Advani who had come to their rescue by proclaiming that Ram was a matter of faith.2 His master stroke of a statement, which was in a way an assertion of belief over rationality, gave the RSS and its affiliates instant nirvana from the burden of confronting historical facts.