The book has 15 contributions—mainly essays, plus an introduction, a report from a women's delegation that visited Bhopal, Ahmedabad and Surat, and interviews with 'communal' women, that is, female Hindutva activists. The authors are drawnfrom a wide range of scholarly interests and, I suspect, feminist persuasion. Purushottam Agarwal, who weighs in with Surat, Savarkar and Draupadi: Legitimising Rape as a Political Weapon, plays Achilles among these women. The book seeks "to break new ground by posing questions about women's activism within the Hindu Right". In the days of our innocence, it had been assumed—against historical evidence, for example, from Hitler's Germany—that since the khaki-shorted gentlemen with their aura of homophilia spoke about 'tradition', they would be averse to mobilising women for the public political sphere. This might have been reinforced at some subconscious level by a sentimental-feminist assumption that women were 'naturally' soft and kind and therefore not amenableto the intrinsically violent politics of communalism. The evidence of the last few years is not pretty—but perhaps one mustn't grudge Sikata Banerjee, who examines the 'feminisation of violence in Bombay' under the aegis of the BJP and its electoral ally, the Shiv Sena, her loyal adjective—"surprising". Still, it must be part of the objective of such a book to ensure that we aren't "surprised" again. And again.