The Rediff Special

Being once a physicist has somehow limited Rajendra Singh from injecting new life into the RSS

Last week,N V Subramaniam explored the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's quest for a new role in the changed political circumstances. This week, he examines the RSS's relationship with the Bharatiya Janata Party and focuses on the internal strife within the organisation

While top leaders of the RSS still lead austere lives, fewer youngsters in the organisation are moved by this. The old spirit seems missing. There is a feeling that the RSS is confused about economic and international issues and that it has messed up the Hindu-Muslim question.

Insiders also say that fewer RSS pracharaks and swayamsevaks are as dedicated as before, and that the quality for other RSS front organisations has deteriorated. Being once a physicist has somehow limited Rajendra Singh, the RSS chief, from injecting new life into the RSS, and he remains, perhaps, a swayamsevak who has not made the grade to being a sarsangchalak.

Plus there is the allegation that there is growing indicipline in the RSS. The organisation is also said to have a hand in the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Though senior leaders of the outfit deny this, anyone seeing the videotapes of December 6, 1992 will tell you that the discipline and dedication of the swayamsevaks have definitely eroded.

Would such a thing have happened in Golwalkar's lifetime? Devendra Swaroop smarts at the comparison, saying, "In the 1967 cow slaughter agitation, we had gone just for a pradarshini. But one or two agitators suddenly asked the crowds to gherao Parliament. The Naga sadhus became uncontrollable, and there was firing, and people died. The December 6 event was like that. A small mob acted like that. Who could have stopped it? Many of them were not RSS swayamsevaks at all."

It is not an argument that those concerned with the growing indiscipline in the RSS ranks find easy to accept. It is a matter of record that Giriraj Kishore of the VHP praised the demolishers in the foreward to a training handbook for volunteers of the Bajrang Dal, the stormtroopers of the RSS, in July 1993. And it is also a fact that these volunteers were put into uniform after the demolition.

What does that mean? Besides, the biggest loser from that demolition, aside from the Muslims, was the Sangh itself. "It brought the Hindus to the same level of disunity as before the demolition," says an RSS member. "The RSS got isolated. Muslims had their worst fears confirmed. Many many Hindus were repulsed. And, four BJP state governments fell. Golwalkar would never have let this happen."

Any one familiar with Golwalkar's two works, We, Or Our Nationhood Defined and Bunch of Thoughts, containing long diatribes against the way of Christians and Muslims, would find this bizarre. And, his ideal of a Hindu Rashtra based on Dharmasatta, where political authority would be subordinate to religious authority, represented by a collegium of sants from all Hindu sets to be brought together by the VHP, remains disconcerting.

Yet, few in the RSS take his writings seriously (both books have remained out of print for years), and fewer believe he was, as such, anti-Muslim or anti-Christian.

On the whole, however, it is easier to accept that Golwalkar would have withdrawn any movement that would ultimately harm the cause of Hindu unity. It would have taken him a lot of convincing to do within the RSS, but that being his forte, he would have done it.

Kind courtesy: Sunday magazine

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