Author: G. S. Bhargava
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: November 23, 2000
The natural allies of
the exploiters were the Christian missionaries. Christianity in India
is as old as St Thomas; but with the coming of the Europeans it became
inextricably bound up with imperial domination. Who said this?
"Who else but KS Sudarshan,
chief of the fascist RSS," will be the prompt answer of pandits in the
media. However, it was none other than Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan,
former President of India and renowned philosopher and thinker. He
knew because he had observed at first hand the missionaries at work in
south India during his scholastic years. In the last quarter of the
19th century, the number of converts to Christianity in the south more
than tripled, he observed.
The media pandits couldn't
care less. Some of them have been keen sighted to spot similarities
between fundamentalists among Muslims who had taken exception to proselytisation
of poor Muslims by the Church and their Hindu counterparts who have been
campaigning against the reigning Pope's project of "liberating" Asians
into Christianity. Fundamentalism among the followers of Islam is
a misnomer because the faith itself is fundamentalist in the sense that
it does recognise religious plurality. According to it, Islam is
the ultimate faith superior to other religions.
So it is with the Catholic
Church. It does not also stand co-existence with other faiths.
Compounding it is its colonial complexion when it was transported to India
during the British period. As a functionary of the indigenous Church
put it, Christianity did not make the empire Christian but the empire made
Christianity political. When CF Andrews was sent to Delhi as a conventional
young clergyman in 1904, he was told by the British community: "Never,
under any circumstances, give way to a native, or let him regard himself
as your superior. We only rule India in one way by safeguarding our
position."
The prospective Deenbandhu
was not cut out to be an accessory of imperialism in the garb of a man
of religion. He called it a day. To this day we revere his
memory. In Calcutta, Raja Rammohan Roy had to fight a running wordy
battle with the Serampore missionaries when he embarked on his mission
of reform of Hindu society. Dr Sarvepalli Gopal sums it up in his
father's biography: "Stripping bare the mind and spirit of the people fortified
imperial rule; and missionaries did what they could do to help in the process
of damaging the identity of the Indian people."
Thus, while the indigenous
Church (the members of which later came to be known as Syrian Christians)
thrive as a national institution, the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Baptist
and related versions were engaged in sustaining imperialism in areas outside
politics and administration. The missionaries vetoed prescription
of Dr Radhakrishnan's early writings as textbooks in Madras Presidency
because of their accent on religious plurality and rejection of the uniqueness
of Christ.
More importantly, unlike
the assorted Hindutva outfits, which in 1998 endorsed violence against
Christian institutions and personnel, Mr Sudarshan did not question the
patriotism of Christians while putting nationalism above religion.
Still, instead of taking up the RSS leader at the intellectual level, the
reaction has been largely vituperative. Demonising the RSS has a
political angle as well. How could the Union Home Minister attend
the RSS camp? Worse still, instead of disowning the RSS he has acknowledged
that several BJP leaders, including the Prime Minister and the BJP president,
had started their public life in the RSS. Then comes the operative
part: the allies of the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance should
part company with it. QED
One can understand non-BJP
parties arguing along those lines. But journalists' doing it, especially
through concocted reports, is a bit too thick. Be that as it may,
this is not the first time that the "guilt" of association with the RSS
is being used as a political weapon against the BJP. It happened
first in 1979 before Charan Singh split the Janata party to pull down the
Morarji Desai Government. Madhu Limaye had asked the Jan Sangh to
sever its links with the RSS at peril of being thrown out of the Janata
conglomerate. He also served notice on Morarji Desai to choose between
the Jan Sangh and prime ministership.
Mr LK Advani, who was
Minister of Information and Broadcasting, issued a rejoinder on behalf
of the Jan Sangh members. I was Principal Information Officer then.
When he showed the statement to me before issuing it, I asked why he should
be so categorical about the ideological origin of the Sangh in the RSS.
He cited three reasons for it. First, they did not feel apologetic
about it and so no need to soft-pedal the issue. Second, having had
their upbringing for public life in the RSS they would be untrue to themselves
to deny it. Third, denying the link would hardly carry credibility.
He has recently reiterated the position after attending the Agra camp of
the RSS, and has been the target of many editorial wrath. It is no-win
situation for the BJP in the eyes of such critics.
There have been very
few instances of the RSS taking a public position on a political matter.
The first was perhaps during the 1975 Emergency when the then RSS chief
had entered into correspondence with Indira Gandhi on the advice of "friends."
The Jan Sangh leaders were locked up then. Again after the assassination
of Indira Gandhi, the RSS perceived a threat to national security and wanted
the Government and the Congress party to be supported. The BJP disagreed
and did not perhaps get the full backing of RSS cadres during the 1989
general election. There was groundswell of sympathy for Rajiv Gandhi
who had initially shown promise of being different from his mother.
For a political party like the BJP, with aspirations to be the main opposition,
it would be suicidal to compromise with the ruling party. So there
was parting of political ways with the RSS, despite ideological proximity.
A near parallel is the
Communist movement. Years after the CPI had taken to parliamentary
politics it pledged commitment to Leninist tactics including dictatorship
of the proletariat. The CPI(M) does so even now. It means that
when the party gains power, may be with adequate majority to change the
Constitution, it will do away with the bourgeois practice of free elections
and seek to establish a one-party state. Within the party it is democratic
centralism which is like Sonia Gandhi's essay in internal democracy in
the Congress party. At the height of Sino-Soviet rift, Moscow nudged
the CPI to distance itself from the CPI(M), which was seen as toeing the
Beijing line. If tactical differences of lasting political significance
are possible in the Communist church at the zenith of its orthodoxy and
power, why can't the RSS and BJP disagree, as they do now on a number of
issues? The BJP president, Bangaru Laxman, has spelt them out.
Even when the CPI(M)
cadres are running amuck in West Bengal, nobody has questioned the credentials
of the party to participate in elections and form government. Its
claimed ideology is not held against it. Instead it aspires to lead
the "Left and democratic forces" to provide an alternative to the NDA.
But the RSS is judged differently and the BJP has to treat it as an untouchable.
And when the BJP says it does not go along with the RSS on some issues,
there is hunt for "a hidden agenda". Gen. Pervez Musharraf
of Pakistan gets a certificate of being a secularist editorially from a
national newspaper but Mr Vajpayee is a mask for the "ugly" face of the
RSS.
