http://www.newsweek.com/id/170301

To get a sense of the shift, consider the BJP's candidate for prime minister this time around. Lal Krishna Advani is an aging rabble-rouser who in the mid-1990s helped gather a huge Hindu mob that tore down the 16th-century Babri Mosque, leading to riots that killed more than 2,000 people (Advani was later cleared of criminal charges). He is far more radical than his predecessor, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who served as prime minister from 1998 to 2004. And Advani's heir apparent is Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra Modi—who has been denied entry to the United States for his alleged role in the 2002 riots in Gujarat that killed more than 1,000. Not long after the riots, Modi warned a crowd that Muslims were trying to erode India's Hindu majority by having many children. "We have to teach a lesson to those who are increasing the population at an alarming rate," he said.
You might assume that such ties, unless repudiated, would hurt the RSS's popularity and the BJP's electoral chances in India, which is the world's largest democracy and a secular one at that. Unfortunately, that's not how things have transpired in the past. In fact, some of the BJP's prior electoral victories followed bouts of incendiary anti-Muslim hatred and actual violence. Vajpayee was first elected prime minister following the Babri Mosque riots, for example, and the mayhem in Gujarat in 2002 helped Modi win a thumping victory in that state, even though—or because—he was blamed for delaying police action to protect Muslims. Now, by casting the government's terror investigation as an anti-Hindu conspiracy, the BJP hopes to repeat this formula today and unite the faithful. "The various wings of the [RSS]—and it's a vast organization—will rally together," says Rangarajan.
India's reaction to these attacks will very much shape their future.