It was the summer of 2016. I was part of a play in which a minister said to his PA that Lord Ganesha’s was the world’s first successful head transplant. The Qutb Minar, another part of the script, had the minister say, was actually a Vishnu Stambh. It left the audience in splits. But soon thereafter, I stumbled upon an article which claimed that they were actually parts of textbooks taught in RSS schools. I felt I could use this material in a novel I was plotting at that time. I needed to speak to teachers and students in these schools.

But then RSS schools, I discovered, did not allow outsiders on their campus. Infiltrating the Sangh seemed the only way out for conversing with the teachers. Thankfully, the RSS was desperately trying to establish itself in Bengal and was looking for converts.

I submitted an online application and received an automated reply with the number of an RSS member. The next day, I was subjected to an extensive telephonic interview. Several other phone calls followed from different people. They did not appear to have bought my story that I was a playwright. And they were all wary as to whether I was a journalist. I was eventually advised to attend the daily RSS shakha in a locality of my choice.

I had, of course, taken precautions. The name I gave on the form was of Saibal Majumdar. If they had searched for Saibal Dasgupta (I write my name with an ‘o’), it would have led them to my namesake, a journalist with The Times of India. Saibal Majumdar was already 100 per cent Google-proof and I was reasonably certain that my fake identity would hold.

At the shakha at Chinar Park, we would sing songs and salute a somewhat soiled saffron flag that I reckoned had not been washed for a year or two. We would also perform light exercises. We discussed neither religion nor much of politics. The routine was fixed and the lectures dwelt on how the RSS helps a man develop through discipline and the need for us to serve the nation.

At the end of the session, however, we would be engaged in animated conversations involving glorification of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Unofficially, we would also be handed out video clips of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat pontificating on Hindu culture, patriotism and nationalism.

I must confess I developed a liking for the Sangh during those initial days. This was the period when I devoted much of my time in reading Hindu right wing literature. As days passed, I gradually wormed my way into the inner circle of the RSS in Bengal. I was no longer an outsider but a part of the RSS.

What was disconcerting was to find the utter contempt many of them had for Bengal and Bengalis. For them, all Bengali-speaking people were Bangladeshis, who were conspiring to stop the Sangh’s juggernaut. I once overheard even as young a member as Ashutosh Jha, a first-year law student in a better-known law college, being harangued by one Mayank Jain, a Bhopal resident, to beat up 50 Bangladeshis or leave the Sangh.

Others would openly ask members to collect arms to take on Muslims and the state police.

I was lucky to enter the good books of some senior Sangh members. From Prashant Bhatt to Dr Vijay P Bhatkar, almost every senior Sangh intellectual known to me, admired my existing works on Hinduism.