On April 7, exactly two weeks after the Vajpayee Government took its oath of office, an announcement was made by the Bajrang Dal convener, Surendra Kumar Jain, that "Hindu "Hindu youth" were to be trained in the martial arts of judo and karate, first through centres to be opened in all 750 districts and then expanded to cover 7500 blocks ... If the plan is implemented in the manner and for the purpose announced by Mr. Jain, it could signal the formation of an army of "Hindu youth" claiming to be the defenders of the faith and deciding what was culturally correct. The very idea of a Bajrang Dal, or any other organised force, taking on the task of a kind of religious police is too dangerous and uncomfortable to be glossed over.
"We have already set up 212 pickets for the checking of vehicles carrying cows and calves for slaughter ... ", Jain announced to the press. Mr. Giriraj Kishore, secretary-general of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad ... looked on patronisingly. Besides protecting cows, the "Hindu youth" would be trained in martial arts to enable them "to deal with such social problems as infiltration by the ISI conversion of Hindus by Christian missionaries and cultural invasion", Mr. Jain said.
How would the Bajrang Dal do this? What authority does it have to check vehicles at pickets st up by its volunteers? Is it going to take on the task of the Intelligence Bureau and identify "ISI agents" and then would its volunteers "deal" with those identified by it? And, finally, what is its definition of cultural invasion? Will men and women wearing jeans be at the receiving end of the "Hindu youth" trained in judo and karate? Will someone eating a pizza be attacked? Or, perhaps, someone speaking English or watching a Hollywood film?
Yet another announcement by the Bajrang Dal chief was that they would not allow "denigration or commercial exploitation of Hindu gods and goddesses" ... The question is whether the Hindus have appointed the Dal guardian of their faith ... And who is to decide what constitutes denigration of a god and what does not? Many think that the filmy' style Ramayana serial on television ... did constitute denigration of Hindu gods and, at the very least, the whole thing was certainly tasteless.
A senior BJP functionary ... close to ... Advani, as well as to ... Vajpayee, pooh-poohed he Bajrang Dal announcement saying it was simply not feasible. But the question remains. Even if it is not able to implement the idea, the idea itself is dangerous, even fascist. Hitler's idea of a "final solution" of the Jewish question would hardly have been considered feasible,, but it was carried out with a frightening efficiency.
What makes all this even more dangerous is the obvious fact that the Bajrang Dal, an RSS organisation, will naturally enjoy the political patronage of a government led by the BJP, in itself the political arm of the RSS
The BJP ... owes its allegiance to the RSS, which is anything but democratic. The RSS is the inspiration and the guiding force of the BJP, its conscience-keeper, or rather the RSS actually controls the BJP. There has been no major decision taken by the BJP, political or otherwise, for which the party did not seek prior RSS sanction.
Senior BJP leaders, including Advani and Vajpayee, have been RSS members since their teens and they virtually declared in Parliament that they would remain its loyal soldiers. The RSS is not just any ordinary club and its leading lights have stated in their books that their aim is the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra.
There are important issues related to the parliamentary democrati system which arise from this specific relationships between the BJP and the RSS. It was the BJP which contested the elections, but it may well be the RSS which will dictate the party's policies and programmes and the latter is clearly outside the parliamentary democratic system and is accountable to no one - not even to the BJP.
Having won the elections on the strength of the cadre of the RSS, it is the BJP which is accountable to the former, it is committed to taking forward the RSS ideas, to spread what it calls Hindutva or what is now being called "cultural nationalism" or even just plain "nationalism".
The next step may well be that all those who do not agree with the RSS-BJP view of what constitutes this "nationalism" will be described as "anti-national". And that is where perhaps the role of the Bajrang Dal will come in ...
The RSS is itself an entirely undemocratic organisation. Its chief, Sarsanghchalak, is appointed by the outgoing chief for a lifetime, unless he decides to resign for personal reasons. One Sarsanghchalak appointed another by simply writing his name on a chit of paper which is opened after his death. No questions are asked, and the new chief then "rules" over the entire ... Sangh Parivar which includes the BJP and all the other wings such as the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, the Durga Vahini and so on.
In the Lok Sabha, during the trust vote debate, a senior Opposition leader did question Vajpayee and Advani on what they had to say about the views of one of the venerated RSS gurus, Golwalkar, on the "minorities' problem" as stated in his book, We The Nationhood Defined. Golwalkar's views on the minorities were chillingly close to Hitler's ideas on the Jews ... Advani interrupted to say the book was out of print and that the author himself had changed his views later. But to this day, it is not yet clear where this has been done. Certainly, no senior BJP leader has ever publicly condemned Golwalkar for his views on the minorities.
Recently, when a controversy arose over an article supposedly written by Vajpayee in The Organiser, RSS mouthpiece, Vajpayee hurriedly said he was not the author. He dissociated himself from the views expressed in the article on the minorities and what "should be done" to "change" them. But again, the fact remains that the journal clearly approved of the views and senior BJP leaders did comment privately at that time that they found nothing wrong with the views expressed in that article as they conformed to the teachings of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.
The so-called "hidden agenda" of the BJP may not manifest itself in government policy - for it is a coalition government. But, surely, the RSS and its various arms will take forward the not-so-hidden agenda of Hindutva or "cultural nationalism" or "nationalism" as the BJP now prefers to call it - under the protective umbrella of the BJP. government at the Centre.
This could månifest itself in the Bajrang Dal attempting to put together an army of "Hindu youth" or the VHP starting once again to "raise Hindu consciousness" on Mathura and Kashi or even the BJP, through the Ministries of Human Resource Development and Information and Broadcasting, propagating the "new values" of the new Government ...
Vajpayee declared at the BJP national executive committee that the party would led the Government. It seems that the BJP, led by the RSS, will lead the Government, it will create the "climate" which will make events such as the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya possible, even dangerously acceptable. The Bajrang Dal will lay down what is "culturally correct". Perhaps, that is the party's "hidden agenda" (Source: The Hindu, 21 April, 1998)
