The Rediff Special

RSS cadres have already revealed a deep revulsion for the new criminal and caste-based trends in politics

A hint of collective leadership had crept in with the death of Hedgewar himself and the ending of the principle of ekchalak anuvartita (following one leader) with him. Devendra Swaroop Aggarwal, for instance, has three letters from Golwalkar in which he articulated his opposition to an RSS movement against the first Communist government of E M S Namboodiripad in Kerala because it had been elected under the Constitution. "But when a majority within the RSS insisted, he gave in," says Swaroop.

But equally, he resisted pressure from the rank and file in Punjab to join politics in the immediate aftermath of Partition. This was for him a bigger issue than any movement against EMS. He had always been opposed to politics saying it was divisive. So, when many senior RSS persons left the organisation, and even Balasaheb Deoras and Bhaurao Deoras went out of the RSS for four years, Golwalkar was unmoved. Any movement like Ayodhya, therefore, with the potential of wrecking the long-term aims of the RSS, would have invited his censure.

"He fought on big issues and gave in on minor matters," says an RSS functionary. "This way he built up his position without formally abandoning the principles of collective leadership. There was no question of feeling constrained by it." And he had a classical way of consensus-building. "While Balasaheb Deoras would call all the people concerned with decision-making together and say, 'Haan bhai, tum logon ka kya sujhaav hein,' Golwalkar summoned people individually," says Bhide. This gave him a certain leverage with the others.

Then, being chosen by Hedgewar himself over such older RSS colleagues as Appaji Joshi and Babasaheb Apte gave Golwalkar more ballast. Besided, he was ideas-driven, ascetic, unpeturbable, and, above all, a prodigious traveller, rooming across the country without a break for more than 30 years. "He was in touch with the junior-most RSS worker," said a senior office-bearer. "He sat with us wherever we were. Balasaheb Deoras couldn't keep up his pace because of his illness. Now the same thing is happening with Rajjubhaiyya. He is very ill. The organisation has grown far too big. Naturally, some of the decisions which are now taken are not correct."

This is as far as an RSS functionary will go in finding fault with a serving sarsangchalak. And what is the criticism about? "Rajjubhaiyya objected to the BJP's choice of criminal candidates for the UP assembly election," the office-bearer said. "We all know the winning pressure that forces parties to give tickets to such persons. The BJP also has to win elections. But Rajjubhaiyya remains unconvinced."

It is specious to think that any RSS chief would take a different view. RSS cadres have already revealed a deep revulsion for the new criminal and caste-based trends in politics. In UP and elsewhere, they have not only kept off election campaigns of unsatisfactory BJP candidates but actively campaigned against those of them with questionable backgrounds. And in Gujarat, local VHP leaders decided on their own to oppose Shankarsinh Vaghela to defeat him in the last Lok Sabha election. Increasingly, then, there is a backlash from cadres unhappy with the ways of the BJP, and the RSS can do little about it.

This was bound to happen. When Golwalkar agreed to give RSS support, and a large tranche of its pracharaks, to Shyama Prasad Mukherjee to start the Jan Sangh, he did so against his own better judgment. When Mukherjee died, Golwalkar manoeuvered Deendayal Upadhyaya into a position of authority in the Jan Sangh to prevent its takeover by politicians who could have diluted the Sangh ideology. After Upadhyaya's assassination, Golwalkar was worried about the Jan Sangh, and expressed himself in those terms just before he died in 1973.

Golwalkar always feared a Congressisation of the Jan Sangh. Devendra Swaroop remembers him saying that Congressmen started out "honest" and "nationalistic" but that power had corrupted them, and that such a thing could happen to persons in the Jan Sangh also. "He always said of politics, 'Gajjar ki pongi hai, bajayenge, nahin to kha jayenge'," remembers Swaroop.

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