The vernacularisation of Hindutva: The BJP and Shiv Sena in rural Maharashtra

The recent conquest of political power in Maharashtra by the Shiv Sena-BJP combine was premised upon the advances made by these parties into the rural districts of the state in the late 1980s. This political expansion was made possible by a growing dissatisfaction with the immobility of the Congress organisation, which in the course of the 1980s proved incapable of incorporating the new upwardly mobile groups thrown up by the intensified commercialisation in the rural areas. Taking four village studies in the Aurangabad region as its point of departure, the article argues that it was the Shiv Sena's and BJP's successful assumption of the discourse of 'aggressive Hindus' in a region marked by long-standing communal tension, along with a growing opposition to ineffective Congress policies in the region, which made the region into a stronghold of the two hitherto urban-based parties. It is finally argued that it was especially the Shiv Sena's translation of the Hindutva discourse into the dominant political idiom of Maratha valour and rustic virtues, rather than the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation, that provided a crucial impetus to Hindu communal politics in the state.