Does the RSS' intervention in politics go beyond the "prescribed" limits of a socio-cultural organisation? The question emerged from George Fernandes' percept to the RSS, which has been showing anxiety to restore ideological content and commitment in the BJP. As an individual, of course, he is free to express his views. But somehow there is a disconnect between this role and his maturity and experience in politics.
It seems that like many, he too suffers from some false notions of autonomy in politics and parties. Jawaharlal Nehru's hegemony in the Congress had been the result of an organised opinion outside the Indian National Congress. Many parties in the west owe their allegiance and origins to socio-cultural and trade union movements. The BJP is no exception. Only a novice in the business of political analysis can be confounded by the RSS' interests in the BJP affairs. And, of course, the latter's dependence on the former.
Different people have perceived the Sangh differently. Only two years after its formation in 1925, when communal riots broke out in Nagpur, the Hindus were convinced that there would be vendetta on the Muslims. It was proved wrong when Dr Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, responded: "We are not Friday reactionaries".
Moreover, the colonial forces had an impression that the Sangh was nothing more than a physical training club. But they were astonished to find that the RSS was at the forefront of the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1932 which, archival documents show, became the reason for the success of the Gandhian agitation in the land of the Tilakites. Soon after the movement, the colonial administration took revenge by imposing a ban on it in 1933 which, however, was revoked by the passage of one rupee cut motion against the government's arbitrary order in the Central Provinces Legislative Council on March 7, 1934.
Individuals or organisations who have a myopic vision of politics and are obsessed with personal ambitions, cannot be happy with the RSS. In this context, the case of the Hindu Mahasabha and its leaders is worth illuminating. The RSS has proved by its action that however big and popular one may be, he is not entitled to hijack the ideology and the organisation. Mahasabha leader Dr BS Moonje was a popular figure with a long association with Dr Hedgewar. In one of his public speeches he expressed apprehension over Muslims domination of Hindus and justified the continuation of the Raj till the Hindus could feel confident about their place.
It created a commotion in the RSS which rejected his thesis. Dr Moonje wrote in his diary on February 15, 1932, "In the morning Dr Hedgewar and Martand Jog (then second-in-command) turned up. Jog took me to task for my yesterday's speech. I was surprised and could not understand what could have offended him - I was disillusioned; the cat was out of bag.
However, this protest of Jog which assumes that I want to have a platform at the cost of the prestige of the Sangh has opened my eyes." Only a few in the Mahasabha could understand that in 1925 not an organisation but an idea of civilising mission was born. When their aspirations to use the Sangh as a volunteer corps shattered, Savarkar remarked, "The epitaph of the RSS volunteer is, he was born, he joined the RSS and he died without accomplishing anything."
The RSS leader, Sri Ram Gosavi, principal of the Academy of Hindu Culture, Nashik, responded to the Hindu Mahasabha's criticism in his speech of February 17, 1940, in Jalgaon: "The Congressmen call it communal and want to hang it; but when I see some of our indiscreet Hindu Sabhaites calling names to the RSS, I am stuck with pain and wish to ask, 'you , also Brutus?' Our critics say you call your organisation as a Hindu organisation, you stand for Hindus and yet do not participate in the activities which we start for the uplift of Hindus? Last year when the Hyderabad satyagraha was on the Sangh did not participate in it! Here are election contests fought by staunch Hindu Sabhaites but the Sangh does not help them! Where is your Hindu nationalism then? This is criticism that is made against us. What is our answer to it? It is one of the rules of the Sangh that it shall not associate itself with the activities of other associations." One can only imagine how the RSS sailed its boat with the young leadership of Hedgewar-Golwalkar in spite of popular, vocal and elderly Mahasabha leaders like Dr Moonje, Bhai Parmananda, VD Savarkar and others. Soon it had outgrown the Mahasabha.
The RSS' interest to form a political party was prompted by Nehru's petty power politics which betrayed the hope of decolonisation of the Indian mind and ruling philosophy. It was an ideological shadow of cultural nationalism which was struggling to survive in the face of Nehruvian onslaught within the Congress backed by the Marxists and Islamists. This crisis and dilemma led to the formation of the BJS.
His daughter, Indira Gandhi, too, accused the RSS for destabilising her government. Similar accusation was levelled against Jayaprak-ash Narayan, too. After the Emergency the praise for the RSS was shortlived as the clash of interests in the Janata party led the socialists to accuse the Sangh for all the ills in the party and the Morarji Desai government. Fernandes was witness to all that. It was the dilemma over dual membership which then led to the formation of the BJP.
In the present crisis a section of the media is ferreting out issues and people and using them to demean the RSS, unmindful of the level of the discourse. Sudheendra Kulkarni's "journalistic thinking", a term contemptuously coined by Karl Marx, does not deserve to be called a thesis. He raises the question of image forgetting that any individual or organisation that addresses the alternative formulations of Indian nationalism, culture and secularism cannot hope of an image based on secularist parameters.
It happened not only with the RSS but also great leaders of the Congress and the Constituent Assembly, too. The debate in the Constituent Assembly was so illuminating, convincing and self-introspective that people hurt by the partition and bloodshed were assured a future free from the politics of appeasement . For instance, Sardar Patel on August 28, 1947, responding to the demand for religion-based reservations said, "My friends, you must change your attitude, adapt yourself to the changed conditions. And don't pretend to say 'Oh, our affection is very great for you'. We have seen your affection. Why talk of it. Let us forget the affection.
Let us face the realities. Ask yourself whether you really want to stand here and cooperate with us or you want again to play disruptive tactics. Therefore, when I appeal to you, I appeal to you to have a change in your heart, not a change in the tongue, because that won't pay here." He further reminded the Indian Muslims: "You have got what you wanted. You have got a separate state and remember you are the people who were responsible for it, and not those who remain in Pakistan. You led the agitation in the majority Hindu province, you got the partition and now again you tell me and ask me to say for the purpose of securing the affection of the younger brother that I must agree to the same thing again, to divide the country again in the divided part, for God's sake, understand that we have also got some sense."
Patel had neither castigated Islam nor the Prophet, but for reasons best known to the secularists he got the image of a Hindu communalist. The Eastern Times called him "the most hated Hindu politician among the Muslims of the sub-continent". Kulkarni could tell the formula to change his image in retrospect. Had he competed Nehru in making his image, we would have a different map of India.
The RSS firmly stands against competitive minorityism, which has been internalised in the political culture of the country. In independent India, Shariat courts are increasingly outgrowing the constitution of the country. This shows the Index of Secularisation of Minorities (ISM). The old agenda of the BJP has become perhaps more relevant than the past.
Last but not the least, Fernandes has shown his concern for the NDA. It may be genuine. History has shown that the RSS has never undermined the importance of coalition politics. But it makes a distinction between compulsion and comfort levels. The present rigorous exercise of the RSS was to make them realise the implications of enjoying undue coalitional comforts. The French Socialist Party (PS) constructively used different stances of various ideological factions to broaden its support base in the 1960s and '70's. The NDA should learn this art rather than meddling into the RSS.
(The author teaches Political Science
at Delhi University and is a biographer of Dr KB Hedgewar, the founder
of RSS.)