CPI: Central Secretariat's Statement, 5 January, 2000

The decision of the Gujarat government to ... is a  clear indication that the BJP state government is out tosaffronise the administrative apparatus in the state. The revelation by the Gujarat Home Minister that this has been done with the sanction of the Centre only underlines the culpability of the Centre in this move. To glorify the RSS as a 'patriotic' service oriented, nation-building organization is to gloss over (its) fanatically communal character ... with a fascist ideology ..

Mass infiltration by RSS volunteers in the Police Force, or permitting policemen to become its members will further communalise the police force and make it .totally partisan in tackling any communal outbreak ... Allowing teachers to openly flaunt their RSS ideology and membership while teaching, is to condition the young generation and indoctrinate them with a communal outlook ... This will spell disaster to the secular fabric of the country.

All this is to invite open intervention of the RSS in administration ... We condemn this partisan move ... All secular forces must unitedly launch a movement against it. (Source: The People's Democracy)

The Gujarat Government's January 3 decision to lift the ban on participation of government employees in RSS activities served as a balm. The RSS had been on the banned list since 1986 along with 30 other fundamentalist organisations.

Some fear that open participation of the government employees - policemen and teachers in particular - in RSS activities would mean blatant saffronisation of Gujarat and lead to further victimisation of the minorities. But Minister of State for Home Haren Pandya maintained that the RSS was a cultural organisation of patriots.

Bureaucratic circles were agog with rumours that the Keshubhai Patel government had succumbed to pressure from the hard-liners after initial resistance. The RSS was reportedly unhappy with the chief minister who had come into his own after the party's resounding victory in the Lok Sabha and municipal elections ...

The lifting of the ban was a mere formality, according to a top bureaucrat. Thousands of state government employees were known to be associated with RSS activities for years.

(Source: Anosh Malekar in The Week, 23 January, 2000)

Ominous Signals Editorial, The Hindustan Times, 8 Feb., 2000

... For the last two years, the BJP has been telling us that it is not the communal, Hindu fundamentalist party of caricature. Instead, it says, it is as moderate as any other national party. It has no fundamentalist agenda, has placed contentious issues on the backburner and follows the NDA agenda. This image of cautious moderation has been accepted by the country largely because of the force of Vajpayee's own personality. Most Indians see him as an essentially decent man and believe that as long as he is in charge, the government will not be swayed by fundamentalist pressures.

But while Vajpayee may have ensured moderation in Delhi, members of his party have not been as restrained elsewhere in the country ... Now, his government is embarrassed when members of the Parivar either speak out of turn - as the UP Chief Minister did on Ayodhya – or follow their own agendas - such as the campaign against Deepa Mehta's Water. But there has been no greater blot on the BJP's new-found reputation for moderation than the performance of its government in Gujarat. Minorities have been terrorised because the Parivar treats the State as a laboratory for perfecting a new kind of Hindutva. It is in keeping with this fundamentalist approach that the state government recently announced that government servants were free to join the RSS.

This move has been widely attacked and some of Vajpayee's admirers hoped that he would have the courage to ask the state government to retrace its steps. Sadly, not only has the Prime Minister done no such thing, he has even given the government a clean chit ... Even Vajpayee doesn't really think that the RSS is "a social and cultural organisation". He has been battered so comprehensively by the RSS since the early 1980s that he knows exactly what the truth is. Why then is he taking the path of least resistance? Why is he refusing to stand up for his brand of moderation? And is this new unwillingness to fight for the things he believes in a portent for the future? These are worrying questions ...