THEY haven’t a clue about diplomacy on the big stage nor about getting along, leave alone being popular, with the neighbours. Hindutva and its leaders are all about a parochial and violent quest at home they want to fulfil by tearing up a centuries-old social fabric, a challenge in which they will likely never succeed. Their USP was their anti-communism. The West needed it for its Cold War objectives. The West backed a military coup in Pakistan where communist parties were banned. In India, they had Nehru’s Fabian socialism to keep them in check. In any case, the comrades quarrelled with each other so furiously that they lost the plot. The Hindu right remained united and fleet-footed. It used the left to come to power first in 1977 and then in 1990. It didn’t need help after that.

Successful at home, the Hindu right fell on its face, dealing with the wider world on equal terms. The Congress had inherited its instinct for diplomacy from Nehru and Indira Gandhi, which the Hindutva right lacked. Its anti-communist USP was of little use post-Cold War, so it found other ways of courting the US, for example by joining anti-China military measures. Hindutva’s obsequiously pro-Western diplomacy found earlier occasions to bungle. When A.B. Vajpayee was foreign minister, Moshe Dayan paid a secret visit to Delhi, but the story was leaked. Jimmy Carter came, but lost the election.

The Shah of Iran was invited, but was overthrown soon after visiting Delhi. This is hilarious. Vajpayee struggled to find a Shia maulvi as a conduit to the new Khomeini regime. It picked the wrong cleric, who was publicly berated by Khomeini as a pretender. Hindutva’s........

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