HINDU CHAUVINISM

N.V. Subramanian on RSS at the Crossroads – I

Austerity has been a way of life in the RSS since its establishment in the Twenties. It has even been a source of its strength. There can be criticism of its Hindutva ideology or of its concept of a Hindu Rashtra but equally there are no stories of scandals in the RSS of fudged accounts, say, or of embezzlement, or of faction-fighting, oneupmanship, and so on.

Nearly everyone who has come into the RSS came not from reading its literature from being impressed by someone already in it. For instance, M.S. Golwalkar (called "Guruji"), RSS' second chief, was struck by the RSS' founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. Bhaurao Deoras, younger brother of the third RSS chief, Balasaheb Deoras, moved many men in the United Provinces, where he was pracharak (or preacher) for many years, and Rajinder Singh remains even now beholden to Madhusudan Waman Moghe, who was sent to work at the Allahabad University in 1942. Several others in the RSS or who are now with the BJP or the VHP have written or spoken to their own exemplars. Its capacity to cement was enormous. It was a force. Now, it is less and less so.

Outwardly, little has changed. The daily shakhas are being held as usual and they have grown in numbers (45,000 plus). There are more pracharaks, perhaps, than ever before. And, senior leaders, like in the earlier times, are on prayaas 20 days, in a month, meeting swayamsevaks, addressing rallies, fashioning new themes in closed-door conferences, and guiding the fate of the RSS and such affiliates as the BJP, the VHP, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, working with tribals or the Sewa Bharati attached to slums through open discussions, like at the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha or through gentle nudges in smaller get-togethers.

"And yet, somewhere", says a senior RSS member "the spirit has gone. Since the Christian era, no such institution has been built. The instrument is there, but the issue has not been addressed. The RSS has no conception of economic matters. Nor is it clear about international or scientific issues. It worked on the Hindu-Muslim question and messed it up. The RSS could well end up as a vast bureaucracy if it does not meet its end before that"

There are no obvious signs of apocalypse just now. But the organisational iron-frame of the RSS is showing up rusty patches. There is erosion at the level of the pracharaks, the corps of volunteers who forms the crucial link between the rank-and-file and the top leadership Finger-pointing is more open now than at any time before.

Since a full-time pracharak should be celibate, many in the RSS clock in six to 12 years on the job now, and, assured of there being no serious impact on their prospects within the RSS, leave to make a family.

The RSS accepts it. There is considerable stress in recent RSS writings on the family as a means to roll back the "benign" western "cultural invasion". But the relaxation of the old rigours has come at a time when the quality of intake into the shakhas that contribute to the legion of swayamsevaks has sharply deteriorated.

"All those who become swayamsevaks come from society", explains Yadav Rao, an old RSS hand and editor of Manthan, a magazine of the Deendayal Research Institute. "And the prevailing atmosphere in the country is bound to affect the whole social structure. The picture in the university campuses is different from that in our times. There is definitely a degradation in the quality of the swayamsevaks. The major cause of this is the lives of the leaders which are unable to inspire the new generation. It is becoming a hazardous task to mould them.

What manner of deterioration has taken place? Is it the Congressisation of the BJP indicated by the rise of corruption, casteism and factionalism (as in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan)? Or is it the "deficiency" of the Samskar Bharati, the RSS' cultural front organisation, in countering western "satellite cultural influences"? Could it be the absence of a consensus between the BJP and the Swadeshi Jagran Manch on the issue of swadeshi? Or would it mean the deep differences between the VHP and the BJP on starting Ayodhya-like movements in both Kashi and Mathura?

Are individual sangathans blameworthy at all? Or is the RSS, the progenitor of them all and their supposed ideological motorforce, at fault? Is Rajinder Singh, as sarsangchalak, to blame? Or is the collective leadership of the RSS the pranth pracharaks, heads of front organisations, and so on, to be held responsible?

Or is it that sangathans have grown so far apart, with their separate objectives, constitutions, functionaries and work cultures, that to expect them to fall into any line drawn by the RSS would be taken askance? Is there, to carry this further, anything like a concept of a sangh parivar anymore then?

Would these questions have arisen, at all, if the RSS leadership style of the Forties, Fifties, Sixties and Seventies were in force today.

Singh was a physicist of considerable promise at Allahabad University in the 30s and 40s before he joined the RSS full-time. It is often the norm in such organisation as the RSS to overrate their top leadership, but Singh's reputation in his field of work, spectroscopy, stands independent of this.

(Few) in the RSS wish to start a debate on Rajinder Singh's leadership qualities. This is both because Singh is a much-respected figure in RSS circles and also due to the comfort men of the RSS derive from their belief in the ultimate invincibility of the collective leadership. But how invincible is it? And how responsible? Does it constrain a sarsangchalak?

There are no straight answers. There is the relief of having a collective leadership in the sense that work does not stop. "Balasaheb Deoras was very ill for most of his term as RSS chief", says a senior functionary. "Rajju Bhaiyya and the others ran the RSS. We managed well". Hardly, if you consider the demolition of the Babari Masjid. Who, from the sangh parivar, could be held responsible for it? "No one," says Govind Acharya.

"There is," he explains, "a major difference between an organised movement and a mass movement. It was an unfair demand on 6,000 volunteers to control 1.5 lakh kar sevaks. The controllable crowd would be between 30,000 to 35,000. One is to seven is the right ratio. In Ayodhya, it was one is to 40. So, the whole thing collapsed". He will not accept any blame on the part of the UP government, then of the BJP, or of the top RSS and BJP and VHP leadership in Ayodhya in failing to limit the influx into Ayodhya.

Others say in private, however, that a few persons in the sangh hierarchy, notably Thengdi, were disgusted with the whole affair, seeing it as a breakdown of the RSS discipline. Asks Yadav Rao, the Manthan editor. "Won't you be hurt? No one in the sangh planned that demolition. But anyone seeing the videotapes of 6 December will tell you that the discipline and dedication of the swayamsevaks has definitely eroded".

It is not an argument that those concerned with the growing indiscipline in the RSS ranks find easy to accept. It is a matter of record that Giriraj Kishore of the VHP praised the demolishers in the foreword to a training handbook for volunteers of the Bajrang Dal, the stormtroopers of the RSS, in July 1993. And it is also a fact that these volunteers were put into uniform after the demolition. What does that mean? Besides, the biggest loser from that demolition, aside from the Muslims, was the sangh itself. "It brought the Hindus to the same level of disunity as before the demolition", says an RSS member. "The RSS got isolated. Muslims had their worst fears confirmed. Many Hindus were repulsed. And, four BJP state governments fell. Golwalkar would never have let this happen".

Anyone familiar with Golwalkar's two works, We, or Our Nationhood Defined and Bunch of Thoughts, containing long diatribes against. Christians and Muslims, would find this bizarre. And, his ideal of a Hindu Rashtra based on Dharmasatta, where political authority would be subordinate to religious authority represented by a collegium of sants from all Hindus sets to be brought together by the VHP, remains disconcerting. Yet, few in the RSS take his writings seriously (both books have remained out of print for years), and fewer believe he was, as such, anti-Muslim or anti-Christian.

On the whole, however, it is easier to accept that Golwalkar would have withdrawn any movement that would ultimately harm the cause of Hindu unity.

Golwalkar was not, of course, all powerful. A hint of collective leadership had crept in with the death of Hedgewar himself and the ending of the principle of ekchalak anuvartita (following one leader) with him. Devendra Swaroop for instance, has three letters from Golwalkar in which he articulated his opposition to an RSS movement against the first communist government of E.M.S. Namboodiripad in Kerala because it had been elected under the Constitution. "But when a majority within the RSS insisted, he gave in", says Swaroop.

But equally, he resisted pressure from the rank and file in Punjab to join politics in the immediate aftermath of Partition. This was for him a bigger issue than any movement against EMS. He had always been opposed to politics saying. It was divisive. So, when many senior RSS persons left the organisation, and even Balasaheb Deoras and Bhaurao Deoras went out of the RSS for four years, Golwalkar was unmoved. Any movement like Ayodhya, therefore, with the potential of wrecking the long-term aims of the RSS, would have invited his censure.

"He fought on big issues and gave in on minor matters", says an RSS functionary. "This way he built up his position without formally abandoning the principles of collective leadership".

Then, being chosen by Hedgewar himself over such older RSS colleagues as Appaji Joshi and Babasaheb Apte gave Golwalkar more ballast. Besides, he was ideas- driven, ascetic, unperturbable, and, above all, a prodigious traveller, roaming across the country without a break for more than 30 years. "He was in touch with the junior-most RSS workers", said an office-bearer".

"Rajju Bhaiyya is very ill. The organisation has grown far too big. Naturally, some of the decisions which are now taken are not correct".

This is as far as an RSS functionary will go in finding fault with a serving sarsangchalak. And what is the criticism about? "Rajju Bhaiyya objected to the BJP's choice of criminal candidates for the UP-Assembly elections", the office-bearer said.

 (Source: The Sunday, 16-29 March, 1997)