Author:
Publication: The Asian
Age
Date: November 13, 2000
The increasing political
space, which forces representing the saffron brigade have acquired, is
having its inevitable spin-offs. The conscious and deliberate attempt
being made by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to permeate the Indian armed
forces with what many consider to be its divisive ideology is a case in
point.
The RSS makes no bones
about what it stands for, and the main anxiety here, of course, is that
by its overtures towards the defence services, the Sangh will undermine
their uniquely multicultural and pluralistic character.
Further, the Sangh Parivar,
in trying to do so, will also be investing them with a malady that they
have successfully avoided thus far: outright politicisation. The
RSS is using the Bharatiya Janata Party's current predominance in the national
political discourse to push through its core agenda.
The process has taken
different forms; at one level, key academic institutions, especially those
dealing with history and other social sciences, are being subjected to
a sustained diet of Hindutva; at other levels, the bureaucracy per se has
also been steadily saffronised.
With the BJP's allies
in the National Democratic Alliance happily looking the other way, the
RSS gameplan is being projected quite blatantly and brazenly.
The fact that the most
numerous and in many ways, central, component of the defence forces is
the Indian Army, makes the RSS overture that much more problematic.
The Army is often required
to intervene in socially and communally sensitive situations, and needless
to add, if its vision is even remotely governed by the RSS world-view,
it will end up deepening existing fissures.
Till such time that its
political sibling did not enjoy the kind of political profile it currently
enjoys, such attempts were successfully resisted, but the situation has
changed radically over the last decade or so.
The steady erosion of
the so-called secular forces as exemplified by the Congress of yore as
also by the Left has made the Sangh Parivar's task that much easier.
In the event, the sections traditionally expected to fight the RSS type
of intrusion have been defeated politically.
They may say that the
battle on the ideological front is by no means over, but that is only a
minor consolation, if any. Using state power to spread its ideology
will thus be the obvious RSS gameplan.
The saffronisation of
the bureaucracy is part of this RSS dream-project, and till such time that
the BJP continues to be the numero uno in Indian politics, the RSS can
be expected to aggressively propagate the "truth" as it perceives it.
The social engineering
which the spin doctors of the Sangh spoke of in the late Eighties and early
Nineties was in the nature of a mild dose. But having tasted real
power, the Sangh Parivar will not let the opportunity slip by.
The fashionably secular
elite must sit up and take immediate note, otherwise the undisguised attempt
to "capture" key institutions will not be put on unilateral hold by the
RSS, which over the last few years has been particularly busy.