NEW DELHI -- India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has now begun to play a tune which is embarrassingly jarring to its much-touted Hindutva ("Hinduness") policy.
The BJP -- which traces its lineage from the rabid Hindu nationalist (some call it fanatical) Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) -- may only be seeing ground realities and acting accordingly. In a world that is fast shrinking into a global village, nay a hamlet, and where politics is often dictated by the economics of market forces, the BJP increasingly finds itself disobeying its mother party, the RSS.
The BJP has a ready excuse to make: it cites the compulsions of heading a large number of coalition partners -- which do not profess the Hindutva ideology -- as a reason for being out of synch with the RSS-orchestrated symphony.