Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat with mountaineer Santosh Yadav and others participates in a Vijayadashami function in Nagpur. (PTI)RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s Vijayadashami speech exhibited the confidence of the organisation and its strong desire to intervene in the contemporary social and cultural churning in India. RSS’s ideological shadow has spread far beyond its organisational reach and cadres. Santosh Yadav, the chief guest at the function on October 5, said, “she was called ‘Sanghi’ despite her unawareness of the Sangh”. The Sangh’s new venture is to hold serious cultural dialogue with the so-called minority communities, especially Muslims and Christians, on the question of what constitutes Indianness and Hindu Rashtra.
Earlier too, RSS chiefs M S Golwalkar, Balasaheb Deoras and K S Sudarshan held interactions with minority groups. However, the new initiative aims at more constructive results. Bhagwat’s emphasis on the role of social power is an acknowledgement of the limits of political power in resolving vexed historical questions. The Lucknow Pact of 1916, signed by M A Jinnah and Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, representing the Muslim League and Congress, was a blunder. Instead of bringing the two communities together, it sanctioned the dichotomies between them. Lessons from pre-Partition history must be heeded.
Bhagwat has signalled a further need for dialogue to accomplish two objectives. The primary goal is to remove the perception, based on conspiracy theories, that the RSS is a threat to minorities. So, dialogue with the elites is required. This is to be followed by a cultural discourse on nationalism and the Hindu civilisation with the masses. This may seem utopian to those who fail to see the emerging social realities. It is also true that the task is riddled with complexities and risks. But letting anarchists and the political class occupy this space will worsen the situation. For instance, on triple talaq and Article 370, the elites were delegitimised by the masses. As the largest and most effective ideological force in the country, the RSS has a moral responsibility in making the forward movement.
Once criticised as an enemy of India’s diversity, the RSS has emerged as a vanguard of social and cultural pluralism. Its expansion has not been based on emotional appeals and has not been motivated by the desire to capture state power — organisations or movements that work on such lines are vulnerable to power dynamics and riddled with internal contradictions. The growth of the RSS has taken place in the face of contempt by those favoured by the state. In its history of more than nine decades, the Sangh has managed to tide over the occasional dissent by evolving a collective will and following it in letter and spirit. This is what makes the RSS exceptional. It succeeded in spreading the message of resurrecting India’s civilisational glory — this ethos is the soul of the RSS’s ideology and programmes. By working without a rigid blueprint, the Sangh interprets, contextualises and redefines its ideological understanding.
The RSS’s sense of purpose has led to the organisation being accepted among the working class, slum dwellers, women and tribals, traditionally the left’s domain. This was acknowledged by the CPI(M) in its ‘Organisational and Political Report, 2008’. The report stated that “apart from RSS front organisations, like the BMS, ABVP and VHP, many other front organisations (like the Seva Bharti, Vidya Bharti and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram) are working systematically to penetrate new sections of people in new areas”. Left trade unions have worked with the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) for decades.
No India-centric alternative to the RSS understanding of nationalism and culture has been proposed. Many in the Constituent Assembly, and later in the Congress and Socialist movements, showed partial or full solidarity with the Sangh. In an article in the Mahratta on November 18, 1949, G Kher, a senior Congressman and a minister in the United Provinces government, warned “Calling them (RSS) fascist and communal and repeating the same allegations… hardly serves any purpose”. The content of critiques of the RSS has remained unchanged for decades. This happens to social and cultural movements when the political class enjoys a convenient majority and intellectual legitimacy. The Nehruvian regime had both things. Its successors fail to realise their shrinking space and continue to practice ideological untouchability
Nehruvians and Marxists have borrowed the Western phrase “post-truth” to demean the popular mandate Prime Minister Narendra Modi enjoyed. Debates on news channels on social, religious and cultural issues add fuel to fire. Many self-proclaimed experts in such debates help to project binaries.
There is much to show that RSS’s role in history has been wrongly presented by the Nehruvian and Marxists. In a debate on the ideology and organisation of the RSS in the Legislative Council of the Central Provinces & Berar in March 1934, MS Rahman contested the government’s allegation that it was a communal organisation. All 14 members who participated in the debate vouched for its credential as a cultural organisation of the Hindus.
The contemporary debate also unfairly burdens the RSS to defend the Hindu Mahasabha’s deeds during the colonial era. The RSS never followed the Mahasabha’s line on national questions, whether participation in the Gandhian movements or war efforts during World War II. RSS’s adoration for V D Savarkar or B S Moonje did not mean subordination to the Mahasabha. RSS faced suppression by the colonial forces due to its refusal to be part of the civic guards and air raid precautions.
Bhagwat’s speech carries an unambiguous message: From a cultural perspective, the Hindu Rastra is the most appropriate adjective for the civilisational nation that has a rich trajectory of 10,000 years. It also restores the meaning and dimension of the concept “Hindu”, which had seen erosion due to communal and sectarian interpretations by colonial and Marxist historians.
The writer is a BJP Rajya Sabha MP