The sangh parivar's run of judicial good fortune continues. Its most recent stroke of luck is the dropping of charges by the special court constituted by the Central Bureau of Investigation against its more important leaders and allies: Advani, Joshi, Uma Bharti, Thackeray and others. The high court had pointed out a technical deficiency in the notification issued by the Uttar Pradesh government and the magistrate of the special court deferred to the high court verdict and reprieved the accused. On an earlier occasion, a technical snag had let Bal Thackeray off the hook in Mumbai and in 1996 the Supreme Court had struck down high court verdicts that had annulled the election victories of leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena on grounds of corrupt electoral practice. The 1996 verdicts of the Supreme Court were important for the sangh parivar and its ideological ally, the Shiv Sena, not only because Shiv Sena and BJP leaders were absolved of corrupt electoral practice but also because the judgments set out the apex court's understanding of that contentious term, 'Hindutva'. The Supreme Court became embroiled in the definition of Hindutva because the Bombay high court had ruled that the elections of certain Shiv Sena and BJP leaders (the two parties being allied) stood cancelled because they had indulged in the corrupt practice of soliciting votes in the name of religion. India's election law forbids appeals to religion, community and religious symbols, or attempts to promote feelings of enmity amongst communities in the course of electioneering. While hearing the appeals against the high court judgments, the Supreme Court had to decide whether the lower court was right in concluding that the politicians in question had made an appeal to religion and community. In arriving at its conclusions, the Supreme Court set aside a great deal of 'evidence' on procedural and technical grounds because annulling an election is a grave matter and the most stringent standards and procedures needed to be applied. More substantive issues of interpretation, such as Hindutva and its meaning, became important because in these cases one of the charges against the accused was that they belonged to parties that had based their campaigns on the plank of Hindutva and the high court had equated Hindutva with the Hindu religion. The Supreme Court, while striking down the high court judgment (Manohar Joshi v. N.B. Patil) observed that '...that the word 'Hindutva' by itself does not invariably mean Hindu religion and it is the context and the manner of its use which is material for deciding the meaning of the word 'Hindutva' in a particular text. It cannot be held that in the abstract the mere word 'Hindutva' by itself invariably must mean Hindu religion.' The court went on to observe that the ideological plank of the political party could be used to establish the context in which an election speech was made but was not in itself sufficient to prove that a particular candidate was guilty of corrupt practice merely because he belonged to a party that subscribed to that ideology. While it is hard to follow the court's distinction between Hindutva and the Hindu religion (given that the term is commonly understood to mean the religious and cultural practice of Hindus) it is just about possible to argue that the apex court, in its anxiety to establish strict standards for annulling elections, was trying to rule out the promiscuous use of large ideological positions as a reason for disqualification. The court's reasoning becomes more intricate when in the course of the same judgment it deals with the allegation that the respondent, in his capacity as a candidate fighting an election, stated in a meeting at Shivaji Park that '...the first Hindu State will be established in Maharashtra'. The bench ruled that 'in our opinion, a mere statement that the first Hindu State will be established in Maharashtra is by itself not an appeal for votes on the ground of his religion but the expression, at best, of such a hope. However despicable be such a statement, it cannot be said to amount to an appeal for votes on the ground of his religion'. A conventional reading of the sentence '...the first Hindu State will be established in Maharashtra' would normally conclude that it was an assertion of intent, not an expression of anything as tentative as a hope, unless the speaker had qualified it by adding 'I hope the first Hindu State etc...' or by substituting the tentative 'might' for the categorical 'will'. When a statement as unequivocal as the one quoted in the judgment is made in the course of an election campaign it is reasonable to infer that a Hindu candidate is promising a Hindu state in return for Hindu support. On the other hand, perhaps it is possible to argue that in a matter as grave as the annulment of an election, the court discounts inference and demands more explicit proof that the candidate is using religion as political currency. Such rationalization becomes more difficult when the Supreme Court in another judgment in 1996 (Dr Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo v. Prabhakar K. Kunte) tries to establish that Hindutva is normally understood as a synonym for Indianization. Instead of paraphrasing this vital section of the judgment, I quote it in full: 'Ordinarily, Hindutva is understood as a way of life or a state of mind and it is not to be equated with or understood as religious Hindu fundamentalism. In Indian Muslim - The Need for a Positive Outlook by Maulana Wahiuddin Khan (1994) it is said (at p.19): 'The strategy worked out to solve the minorities problem was, although differently worded, that of Hindutva or Indianization. This strategy briefly stated, aims at developing a uniform culture by obliterating differences between all of the cultures coexisting in the country. This was felt to be the way to communal harmony and national unity. It was thought that this would put an end once and for all to the minorities problem.' The above opinion indicates that the word 'Hindutva' is used and understood as a synonym of 'Indianization', i.e. development of uniform culture by obliterating the differences between all the cultures co-existing in the country.' The troubling thing about the Supreme Court's position here is that in trying to show that Hindutva has nothing to do with Hindu fundamentalism or sectarianism, it quotes a Muslim theologian and takes his description of a political strategy for an endorsement of it. If Hindutva is at all understood as a way of life it is understood as a Hindu way of life. The proposed obliteration of difference and the development of a uniform culture is to be effected by making minorities sacrifice their own identities at the altar of Hindutva, that is, the religious and cultural practice of the majority community, the Hindus. This isn't a hostile definition of Hindutva: it is how the protagonists of Hindutva themselves see their project. Hindutva is used and understood as a synonym of 'Indianization' only by those for whom Hindu is a synonym for the ideal Indian. Surely such a majoritarian construction of the nation and citizenship is contrary to the plural secularism mandated by the Constitution? That a judgment by the republic's apex court should, even inadvertently, coincide with a narrow and divisive view of the republic's identity should make all Indians anxious. The annulment or upholding of individual elections is a relatively small matter; for public life in India, it is much more important that the Supreme Court find a way of reviewing its current reading of Hindutva. mukulkesavan@hotmail.com