The 'Vinayaka Chaturthi' festival and Hindutva in Tamil Nadu

The increasing popularity of the Vinayaka festival in Tamil Nadu under the auspices of the Hindu Munnani is another example of the Sangh parivar's successful appropriation of localised, traditional Hindu rituals to create a wider 'Hindu unity'. Though internal divisions of caste and class remain, as does factionalism among different Hindu organisations in the state, the primary goal for the parivar in the utilisation of such rituals is to persuade all Hindus to become conscious of belonging to a single, majority 'community', rather than to initiate a campaign of social engineering to overcome caste divisions.