Hindutva advocates writing in the Indian media are always striking an oddly two-faced pose. On the one hand, they are eager to impress upon their readers that Hindutva is the "ethos" of the "mainstream", or the "majority" of Indians. On the other, there's a constant moaning about how Hindutva has been and remains completely marginalised in India.
The loudest moans, of course, are reserved for the sad state of the Indian press, which is apparently "controlled" by an overwhelming flood of "pseudo-secularists" and "Marxists", and so on. Yet these writers (which include stalwarts like M.V Kamath, Arun Shourie, Varsha Bhosle, Swapan Dasgupta, Arvind Kulkarni, A.R. Kanangi, Sudheendra Kulkarni, R.K. Karanjia, Olga Tellis, Jay Dubashi, Sanjay Raut, Bal Thackeray and Nilkanth Khadilkar) overlook their own numbers.
This strange dichotomy – brave claims to being the mainstream set against whimpers about "pinkos" -does not seem strange to these friends of the Sangh Parivar. Rather, a peculiar logic persuades them that in their dreamland, you can be in the mainstream and yet be one against the swarm.
Its not true that the press is overrun by Marxists; nor is it true that it is bristling with Hindutva heroes. What is true is that while most Indians are defined as Hindus, Hindutva is not the ethos most of them subscribe to. Therein lie some lessons for the propagators of Hindutva.