ABSTRACT
The Mahasabha was clearly looking at the past for inspiration and espoused an ultra-conservative, socio-economic agenda. In the closing year, RSS was set up in central-western India with pan-Indian ambitions of a similar inspiration. Some strategic decisions of the Congress like linking Khilafat to the non-cooperation movement in 1920 gave the Hindu right a fastener to latch their anti-Islamic rhetoric on to, just as it would 80 years later in the post 9 November 2001 scenario. The far right will, therefore, intensify inequality and preserve it with militia and force if needed. Indian political consciousness was in arrested development to begin with, given the historical absence of people’s participation in governance and peoples movements, except at the micro level in some regions. In Mrs Gandhi’s telling of the past, the Nagpur session Congress in 1959 was an important pivot. It had adopted the resolution on cooperative farming which prescribed joint cooperative farming as the future model for Indian agriculture.
