Imagine a janeudhari Bengali with a trident-shaped red tika offering prayers at a Kolkata temple and then heading straight to buy, hold your breath, Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries from a book shop run by comrades.
He would probably end up buying Thomas More’s Utopia—for that’s where today’s Communists seem to live nowadays. The Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s latest internal review document speaks of installing “permanent book shops, medical centres and water facilities” in temple premises.
As the comrades also wish to install “secular-minded believers” in the temple management, one can only guess how they would indoctrinate them with a little help from Marx in whose words: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of the soulless conditions. It’s the opium of the people….”
There are reams of writing on Marx’s understanding of religion, but Indian communists have always been ambivalent about this. While many saw atheism as a basic tenet of their ideology, others would argue that Marx didn’t see religion as a disease but as its manifestation. Remember late Subhas Chakraborty, the former West Bengal transport minister? Every time his temple visit would stir controversy, he would say, “I am first a Hindu and then a Brahmin…how can I deny it?”
Anyway, the CPI(M) doesn’t bar believers from becoming a member.
What is more interesting in the CPI(M) document is the reason cited by the party: “We cannot leave the temples and other religious places to the mercy of the RSS and its various outfits.” Haven’t you heard it before?
If there is one factor that unites the opposition in India today—apart from power, of course—it’s the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or their contempt for it.
The big, bad RSS
Be it Mayawati or Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee or Sitaram Yechury, Nitish Kumar or Lalu/Tejashwi Yadav, anti-RSSism dominates their politics. Rahul Gandhi is ready to go to jail, but he won’t apologise for his allegedly defamatory remarks against the Sangh.The Bhim Army of Chandrashekhar Azad was gloating over the fact that he hoisted the tricolour near the RSS headquarters in Nagpur on Saturday. “Manuvaad will end only with a ban on the RSS,” Azad said there.
Even the ambitious poll strategist, Prashant Kishor, launched his debut as an aspiring opposition politician in Bihar with a Godse-versus-Gandhi jibe against Nitish Kumar. It was a bit rich for the former health expert who had closely worked with Narendra Modi’s BJP — and RSS functionaries — in Gujarat elections as also in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. That was before his fallout with Amit Shah, which forced him to seek his fortune in the opposition camp.
So, why do opposition politicians love to hate the RSS? First, it sustains their delusion—or what they would have people believe — that it’s not Prime Minister Narendra Modi but the RSS that is keeping the BJP in power. It’s their way of denying Modi’s mass appeal and their own failures. As if he would be a Rahul Gandhi without the RSS.
Of course, the RSS has been the ideological factory and assembly line for regular production of Jana Sangh/BJP leaders. Its socio-cultural activities in far-flung areas of India also lay the ground for the BJP’s expansion. The RSS imprint on the Modi government is unmistakable today, with a former pracharak as the Prime Minister of the country.
The wrong tree
Yet, the opposition leaders are barking up the wrong tree with their constant attacks on the RSS for its alleged involvement in fomenting communal riots and for its stated goal of a Hindu Rashtra. If these leaders were to hold a survey on how many votes these attacks fetched for them, they would get a rude jolt. If at all, they have ensured a more curious audience for the Sangh.
The so-called fight to protect the ‘spirit’ of India from what opposition leaders call a Hindu supremacist ideology fails to hide their weakness and inability to counter the RSS. The Hindustani Seva Mandal, the precursor of the Congress party’s Seva Dal, came into existence in 1924, a year before the founding of the RSS. The Seva Dal exists today, but only in name, thanks to the Congress leadership’s lack of interest.
The Communists in Bengal seek to blame the RSS for their plight but the latter was irrelevant in the state when Mamata Banerjee dislodged them from power in 2011. If Dalits are abandoning Mayawati and theYadavs are leaving Akhilesh and Tejashwi Yadav, it’s not because of the RSS’ influence; it’s because they are no longer happy being mere instruments of power and comforts for individual leaders.
Look in the mirror
However much opposition leaders might demonise the RSS and blame its communal ideology for the rise of leaders such as Narendra Modi, the fact is that they can’t blame the Sangh for losing their own political credibility and mass appeal. As it is, it’s the RSS that depends on Modi for its expansion today and not vice versa.
In 1956, during his visit to the US, Jawaharlal Nehru had given a talk to then US President Dwight Eisenhower, telling him how Communism had the seeds of destruction in itself and the US President shouldn’t worry about it. Nehru was proved right decades later. The RSS is not a big fan of Nehru. Nor does it see any such seeds in its ideology so far, I guess.
For now, before heading to temples, the comrades may like to try selling the Communist Manifesto at sites where the RSS has the least influence—probably at Shaheen Bagh, to start with.
ThePrint is now on Telegram. For the best reports & opinion on politics, governance and more, subscribe to ThePrint on Telegram.