Of Saffron Flags and Skullcaps: Hindutva, Muslim Identity and the Idea of India

Foreword by Dr Nirmala Lakshman,
Director, the Hindu Group

Review
This book is a must-read for every Indian. It brings out the frightening growth of religious communalism in India, which threatens to tear apart the delicate fabric woven by the Indian people over the centuries. Yet the author is optimistic that what will endure is this very practice of the Indian people living together for centuries evolving a syncretic, plural, multi-cultural society which our nation builders tried to promote as the ‘idea of India’. (Aditya Mukherjee, Professor of Contemporary History, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)

This is a searing exposé of the violence, hatred and narrow communal prejudices that are integral to the Hindutva DNA. In tracing the trajectory from Savarkar to Modi, Ziya Us Salam shows that nothing has changed and how, therefore, our secular nationhood is currently threatened. He sums up by explaining how the Muslim community might best meet this challenge through internal social reforms. A balanced account with a wise ending, I would highly commend the book to general and specialist readers.

(Mani Shankar Aiyar, Author of Confessions of a Secular Fundamentalist)