ABSTRACT
In January 1989 the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – a Hindu nationalist organization – held an opening ceremony for its newly constructed branch office at Maniktala, a poor area of northeast central Calcutta. The ceremony was well designed and carried out, and also well attended with more than a hundred guests – most of them local activists. There were several speeches in Bengali by Calcutta-level RSS leaders. And on the wall facing the audience were displayed large posters of Hedgewar (founder of the RSS) and the Bengali ‘hero’ Swami Vivekananda, a major religious reformer of the late nineteenth century.
