– Sudheendra Kulkarni, Columnist
This article originally appeared in Telegraph India.com
The RSS straddles the entire political-social-cultural space in India. No other organisation, with the possible exception of the Chinese Communist Party, enjoys this advantage
Here is a quiz on Indian politics. In 2025, which three organisations will be 100 years old or older? Which among them has never suffered a split and has been growing organisationally, in mass appeal, and also in political strength? The answer to the first question gives us three names — the Indian National Congress (1885), the Communist Party of India (1925) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (1925). However, the answer to the second question has only one name —the RSS.
Today, the Congress is a pale version of its old self. Its multiple splits, ideological confusion, organisational disarray and the fact that it has become a family enterprise have combined to cause its steep decline. The CPI and its offshoots, including the Communist Party of India (Marxist), have become marginalised to the point of losing their relevance in national politics. As it marks the centenary of its birth next year, the RSS is the only organisation that is growing from strength to strength.
A clarification is in order here. Howsoever much its leaders may claim that the RSS is a ‘cultural organisation’ that has nothing to do with politics, it is quintessentially a political body, though not a political party. It does not have to work like any other political party, fighting elections and aiming to run governments at the Centre and in the states. For this purpose, it has devised a unique innovation. Its offspring, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (from 1951 till 1977) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (from 1980 onwards), have served as the political arm of the RSS in electoral and governance arenas. The RSS thus straddles the entire political-social-cultural space in India. No other organisation in India or anywhere else in the world, with the possible exception of the Chinese Communist Party, enjoys this advantage.
By controlling the Jana Sangh (in the past) and the BJP (now), the RSS has sought to guide the political destiny of India. It has established dominance in the social and the cultural spheres through a number of other organisations in the sangh parivar — the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (in the religious sphere), Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (among students), Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (among workers and employees), Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (among farmers), Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram (among tribal communities) among others — that are inspired by a common ideology. RSS volunteers — women, lawyers, doctors, teachers, mediapersons, scientists, historians and even children — also work in scores of other domain-specific organisations. Furthermore, they also work extensively in the diaspora communities.
Hence, the aggregate strength and the mass appeal of the sangh parivar come not only from the BJP although BJP-led governments, especially after the advent of the Narendra Modi era in 2014, have created a highly fertile ground for its enormous growth. Rather, they come from the strategic vision and the organisational acumen of the mother organisation of the ideological family. A single comparative fact suffices to illustrate why the RSS has expanded and the Congress has atrophied. The All India Congress Seva Dal was established in 1923 to encourage and organise Congress leaders and workers to carry out a plethora of constructive social service activities, a mission to which Mahatma Gandhi attached utmost importance. The Seva Dal evaporated long ago in the Congress scheme of things after the party reduced itself to a power-seeking and internally-feuding machinery. The sangh parivar, on the other hand, has been continuously enlarging its seva (service) footprint all over the country, including among Dalits. It is also the only large organisation striving ceaselessly, though not always successfully, to unite Hindu society by overcoming caste distinctions and discriminations.
This strategic vision of occupying and influencing all areas of national life evolved gradually over the past hundred years although its seed — of creating jagruti (awakening) and shakti (strength) in Hindu society — was sown by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar (1889-1940), who founded the RSS in Nagpur. He was formerly active in the Congress. But he kept the RSS aloof from the freedom movement, guided by the belief that the first priority of Hindu society ought to be self-strengthening through the organised might of highly dedicated and ascetically disciplined swayamsevaks (volunteers) steeled in the ideology of Hindu nationalism. ‘Guruji’ M.S. Golwalkar (1906-1973), Hedgewar’s successor, steered the RSS through difficult times and developed a unique ethos of cadre-building and keeping the organisation united.
What accounts for the expansion of the RSS and the contraction of organisations opposed to it? The answer lies in the fact that the birth and the growth of the RSS are squarely located in the reality of age-old tensions in Hindu-Muslim relations in India. Had Islam not arrived here as a religion of invaders and conquerors who strove for the propagation of an exclusionary and evangelical version of the faith, India’s — also Islam’s — destiny would have been different. Muslim separatism impeded India’s national unity and social integration and ultimately led to the birth of Pakistan as a separate faith-based nation. Without India’s blood-soaked Partition and the Congress’s subsequent appeasement of the Muslim orthodoxy, the RSS could not have claimed to be the protector of Hindu interests. It did so by promoting a reactionary and utterly divisive concept of Hindu nationalism. The ultimate aim of this concept is to constitutionally declare India as a Hindu Rashtra, a kind of Hindu Pakistan.
The RSS could not make much progress in the immediate aftermath of Partition mainly because of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination for which it was blamed. Nathuram Godse, the assassin, was previously a volunteer of the RSS but later left it under the influence of V.D. Savarkar’s more extremist Hindu ideology. The RSS has neither embraced extremism nor completely rejected it. This dual and opportunistic character — of being moderate while appeasing anti-Muslim fanaticism — has defined the sangh’s split personality. This is the reason why it simultaneously appeals to diverse strands of Hindu opinion. So long as the Gandhi-Nehru thought (which, too, was essentially an enlightened Hindu thought) dominated political and social life in India, moderate Hindus stayed away from the RSS. But the steady degeneration of the Congress made them openly support the sangh.
In recent times, especially under the leadership of its incumbent chief, Dr Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS has made efforts to reach out to the Muslim community in a bid to promote social harmony and strengthen national unity. But his laudable efforts have lacked consistency, which is probably the result of internal disagreements within the organisation. The sangh parivar also seems to be divided over another question. The RSS has traditionally not encouraged autocratic functioning and a personality cult, the like of which Modi has built around himself. Nevertheless, it has tolerated this because its rank and file have come to believe that Modi is advancing the sangh’s Hindutva agenda more effectively than anyone else in the past.
Modi or no Modi, the RSS will continue to grow in its second centenary. Only two developments can significantly impact its future trajectory. First, the emergence of a strong secular and reformist Muslim movement in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh that is willing to ally with secular forces in the Hindu community to undo the negative consequences of the Partition and achieve a grand subcontinental reconciliation. Second, if the RSS allows itself to be corrupted by the lure of political power, a trend that is already evident.
