Hindu Vivek Kendra
A RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE PROMOTION OF HINDUTVA
   
 
 
«« Back
Armed with saffron

Armed with saffron

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.
 


Back                          Top

«« Back
 
 
 
  Search Articles
 
  Special Annoucements