The Brotherhood in Saffron Read online

  RSS-AFFILIATED STUDENTS ASSOCIATION

  Few organizations excluded swayamsevaks before the 1948–49 ban. The situation changed drastically after the ban, and swayamsevaks found themselves excluded from the politically dominant Congress party, from all its affiliates, and from many other organizations as well. The activists who had been lobbying for the RSS itself to establish new channels of influence had a very good case now. Not only were individual RSS members prevented from participating in the political process, but the very existence of the RSS was threatened. During the ban, swayamsevaks established a wide variety of organizations, such as devotional groups, sports clubs, students associations, etc., to sustain group solidarity, and to provide general support for RSS objectives.17 The leadership was hardly in a position to oppose these developments, nor was it in the interest of the RSS to do so during that time.

  Students were perhaps the most active organizers during the ban period, and many of the front groups were established on campuses. Hedgewar himself had recognized that college students could play a vital role in mobilizing support. They were receptive to its nationalist ideology and were prepared to sacrifice for an ideal. Moreover, he recognized that it was relatively easy to create a substantial movement among students in a short period of time. The first members of the RSS were students, and the young organizations effectively used them to recruit other adherents. The new student recruits were soon to establish RSS units outside of Nagpur. Indeed, they were probably the most effective agents of its early expansion.

  Prior to World War II, many student swayamsevaks participated in activities of the All-India Students’ Federation (AISF), the largest association of students. RSS informants claim that the AISF itself became a fertile ground for recruits and some of those recruits were later to play a prominent role in the RSS and in the affiliates.18 In 1940, the AISF split into the pro-communist All-India Students’ Federation and the pro-Congress All-India Students’ Congress (AISC). Most RSS members, according to RSS informants, opted for the latter. During the 1942 Quit India movement, the AISC sponsored a wide range of anti-British activities, and many RSS members claim to have participated in these activities.

  The failure of the 1942 Quit India movement and the inability of the people to sustain a revolutionary movement against British authority disillusioned many students, some of whom began to question Mahatma Gandhi’s tactics.19 Some of those disillusioned by developments during World War II, according to RSS informants, were attracted to the RSS.20 Many students were seeking a new approach to revitalize the country, and the RSS certainly offered a new approach.21 While the RSS did not oppose the British openly during the war, it was not stained by any compromises with British authority, and non-violence received no philosophic support from its leaders. Gandhi’s espousal of non-violence and the pro-British policy stand of the Communist Party of India which were not popular among many student activists, provided RSS organizers with an opportunity to proselytize among students looking for a nationalist alternative to either the Congress or the CPI. It is likely that few of the college students recruited during World War II fully appreciated the implications of character building. They, like the RSS activists in general, did not accept the traditionalist argument that character building would be effective only if the RSS teachers and its training programme were insulated from the temptations of power, prestige and money. Many wanted the RSS to organize students and to take an open stand on the major political questions of the time.

  The 1948–49 ban offered the activists an opportunity to organize students. The first students’ group formed during the ban was at Delhi University, and similar groups were established at many other colleges and universities soon after. The swayamsevaks were most active in Punjab were Balraj Madhok, a young RSS pracharak and a college teacher, was particularly successful in recruiting refugee students. Madhok claims that the RSS leadership did not direct his activities.22 While this is probably true, the RSS in mid-1948 did assign pracharaks to work with RSS student activists.23 Some student organizers, all RSS members, met in Delhi in July 1948, to draw up a constitution for an all-India organization that would link the scattered groups together. The new national body was the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, and it was registered with the government. Fewer than half of the early participants in the Vidyarthi Parishad were RSS members, according to informed estimates, and the percentage of swayamsevaks has declined much more since then.24 The Vidyarthi Parishad provides the RSS an opportunity to mobilize support among students who might not be attracted to the strict discipline of the shakha.

  The Vidyarthi Parishad differs significantly from other students organizations. It is explicitly committed to reconciling the interests of all parts of the academic community. It is opposed to the ‘student trade unionism’ espoused by other student groups. Teachers and administrators are welcomed into it, and they play a major role in its activities. Most of the Vidyarthi Parishad presidents, at both the state and central levels, are teachers. It has a special ceremony (vyas puja) in which students pay homage to their teachers. At the same time, it expects teachers to take an active interest in the well-being of their students.

  As late as the mid-1960s, the Vidyarthi Parishad tended to avoid campus politics and student protests. On both matters it has radically altered policy.25 Had the Vidyarthi Parishad not changed its stand, the group probably would have lost much of its largely lower-middle-class student constituency. Lower-middle-class students have a variety of complaints with the inadequate educational facilities provided them and with the bleak employment prospects which face them upon graduation. As colleges and universities have expanded, bringing in many students from the lower-middle classes, the Vidyarthi Parishad has also grown, and it now claims to be the largest and most active student group in India. Its repeated student union victories on many campuses, particularly in Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, suggest that the Vidyarthi Parishad has succeeded in developing a loyal student following.26 Many of its members come from families who respect the symbols of Hinduism and the value of community bonds. An organization like the Vidyarthi Parishad which relies heavily on the symbols of Hinduism and which offers a surrogate family environment has attracted such students.

  Few Indian universities and colleges provide students a wide range of extra-curricular opportunities or counselling services. A major attraction of the Vidyarthi Parishad, and one that makes it unique among student as organizations, is that it does both. In contrast to most other students associations, campus politics, though important, has a lower priority than indoctrination. When a student first enrolls, the Vidyarthi Parishad actively seeks to recruit him and expose the student to its ideology. It operates ‘Welcome to New Students’ programmes, which are a kind of orientation to college life. It operates ‘Study Circles’, usually presided over by faculty members, at which the Vidyarthi Parishad subtly advances its own ideology,27 besides introducing the new student to teachers and students.

  The Vidyarthi Parishad conducts a wide range of programmes that involve students in spreading the world view of the RSS. At the larger, more cosmopolitan universities, the Vidyarthi Parishad operates Indo-foreign students bureaus to bring Indian and foreign students together and to introduce foreign students to Indian culture. ‘My home is India’ and ‘Students experience in interstate living’ are two programmes which both tap students’ idealism and have a nation-building purpose.28 In the first programme, young tribals, boys and girls between eight and twelve, are sponsored to live in the homes of older Vidyarthi Parishad members. One Vidyarthi Parishad brochure describes the programme as ‘another humble attempt of ABVP to bring nearer to the main current of nationalism, the smaller currents flowing freely throughout our Motherland’.29 The Vidyarthi Parishad organizes student tours to the tribal areas during summer vacations so that students may, in the words of a Vidyarthi Parishad pamphlet, ‘experience how unity in diversity is the characteristic feature of India’. Stude
nts from tribal areas are also invited to live with Parishad members during summer vacations.30 In addition, it operates clubs for students interested in sports and the natural sciences, vacation employment bureaus, book banks, tutorial centres, and health clinics. Like the other members of the RSS ‘family’, it also conducts a series of indoctrination camps.

  By the early 1970s, the Vidyarthi Parishad had become a significant force on the campus and in students union politics. In 1974, it claimed 160,000 members in 790 branches and 24 full-time workers.31 It became more willing than before to participate in activities that involved confronting university and political authorities, though the Vidyarthi Parishad opposed the use of violence, which in its view undermined the desired end objective of establishing a consensus that each of the various sides in a dispute could live with.

  Perhaps the most dramatic example of the Vidyarthi Parishad’s activism was its involvement in the 1974–75 students agitations in Bihar and Gujarat. In both instances, protests addressing purely campus issues grew into a massive campaign against alleged corruption on the part of the state government. Vidyarthi Parishad literature suggests a mix of motives behind its decision to participate in these protest movements: to limit the influence of such radical groups as the Naxalites (revolutionary communists), to mobilize additional support for itself, and to force a perceived unresponsive state government to heed legitimate student demands.

  In Bihar, the Vidyarthi Parishad fully backed the student movement’s invitation to Jaya Prakash Narayan, the respected leader of a rural reform movement, to shape the tactics and policies of the student campaign. Narayan broadened the scope of the student campaign to include ‘total revolution’, a kind of participatory democracy. In Gujarat, the Vidyarthi Parishad participated in the Nav Nirman (new society) students movement, which eventually forced the Congress party state government there to resign in February 1974. Emboldened by the success of the students movements in Bihar and Gujarat, state leaders of the Vidyarthi Parishad assembled at Nagpur in March 1975, to discuss the possibility of similar movements elsewhere, but the declaration of the Emergency three months later blocked the implementation of such plans.32

  When the Emergency was declared on 25 June 1975, the Parishad adopted a cautious, wait-and-see attitude. While it was not banned, the leaders of the Vidyarthi Parishad could not be sure that the government would not take this step since it had been deeply involved in students agitations and because of its own links to the RSS. But the arrest of over 4000 Parishad workers,33 including Arun Jaitley, one of its most prominent student activists,34 in the first two months of the Emergency prompted it to act. 60 of its 80 full-time workers reportedly went underground.35 Over 11,000 Vidyarthi Parishad members, according to its own estimates, were arrested during the November 1975–January 1976 protest against the Emergency. At the same time, the Vidyarthi Parishad used its overground activities (debates, concerts, etc.) to preserve its infrastructure and to sustain the morale of members.

  After the victory of the Janata Party in 1977, the Vidyarthi Parishad experienced a rush of new members, as did the RSS itself. Over the next five years, it grew from 170,000 members to 250,000; from 950 branches to 1100; and from 80 to 125 full-time workers.36 As the only pro-Janata Party youth group with a functioning grass-roots structure, it was under considerable pressure to merge with other pro-Janata Party youth groups. The Parishad leadership was initially willing to discuss the idea as long as the objective was a youth organization independent of any political party. It sent delegates37 to a conclave of pro-Janata Party youth groups on 17 April 1977 at Sarnath (Uttar Pradesh), but the Parishad representatives walked out on the first day when it became clear that other participants wanted to link the united youth group to the governing party.38

  The same manoeuvring for power that racked the Janata Party between 1977 and 1979 existed among its affiliated youth groups. The Janata Party was never able to establish a unified youth group. Indeed, the delegates that remained at the Sarnath meeting formed two groups. One was the Yuva Janata, which included the Congress (O) youth group and several socialist groups; the other was the Janata Yuva Morcha, a pro-Jana Sangh group. Neither had a cadre or significant membership; and without the Vidyarthi Parishad, these pro-Janata Party groups were unable to build a substantial base of support among students. In the wake of this failure to establish a united pro-Janata youth party affiliate, Prime Minister Morarji Desai drew up a compromise that he hoped would satisfy the Vidyarthi Parishad’s demand for independence of political parties while at the same time drawing the various pro-Janata Party youth groups closer together. He suggested the formation of two groups both of which would subscribe to Jaya Prakash Narayan’s philosophy. One would be independent and the other linked to the Janata Party. But his efforts failed.

  Despite the growing activism of the Vidyarthi Parishad during the 1970s, the leadership refused to permit its members to contest the 1977 state assembly elections, even though the Janata Party had offered tickets to it, as it did to other pro-Janata Party youth groups.39 The Parishad leadership believed that the students had already become overly politicized and that any deeper involvement in politics would destabilize the campus. They also feared that ‘constructive work’ and ‘nation-building’ activities, two vital elements of its programmes, would suffer if the trend towards political involvement continued. Vidyarthi Parishad members even refused to serve on the Janata Party’s organizational bodies. Arun Jaitley, for example, turned down an invitation to sit on the party’s national council.40

  The Vidyarthi Parishad, however, did contest students union elections in 1977, and it did very well. In a reversal of policy, the Vidyarthi Parishad’s national executive decided in June 1978 that the organization would withdraw even from students union politics, and concentrate on ‘constructive work’ and ‘nation building’, justifying the move on the grounds that politics should be removed from the campus.41 While the Vidyarthi Parishad may genuinely have considered this a step in the direction of insulating the campus from partisan political strife, the rapid turn about regarding students union elections probably had something to do with insulating the Vidyarthi Parishad itself from the internal Janata Party controversy regarding the question of RSS members in the ruling party. While a majority of Vidyarthi Parishad members are from non-RSS backgrounds, the senior organizational level is heavily RSS.42

  Four years later, the Vidyarthi Parishad again shifted course and decided to contest students union seats. Its leaders were probably under enormous pressure from the ranks to move in this direction because of the prestige that comes from winning students union elections. In addition, the Vidyarthi Parishad’s links to the RSS were no longer as salient an issue as in 1978 since the Janata Party lost power in 1979 and the Jana Sangh group left the Janata in 1980.

  The Vidyarthi Parishad continued, however, to involve itself in confrontational activities against political authority in situations which were perceived as threatening to national integrity. For example, it supported the agitation of the All-Assam Students Union (AASU), an umbrella organization of mainly student groups in the north-eastern state of Assam, which advocated deleting a large number of Bangladeshi immigrants from the electoral rolls and deporting them on the grounds that they had illegally migrated to India.43 The decision of the Vidyarthi Parishad to get involved in the 1979–86 Assam agitation was prompted by the Parishad’s fear that radical political groups might steer the agitation towards demanding an independent state.

  RSS AND THE POLITICAL PROCESS

  One of the most difficult issues faced by the RSS in the immediate post-ban period was the kind of political role it would assume. No other issue aroused as much internal disagreement, perhaps because the leadership was forced to rethink the strategy and goals of the RSS. During the ban, Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel demanded that the RSS avoid political activities. The largely traditionalist leadership agreed with him on this point, and Article 4 (b) of the RSS constitution states that the RS
S ‘had no politics and is devoted to purely social work’. However, the RSS activists never interpreted Article 4 literally. They argued that it was impossible to separate ‘politics’ from ‘social work’, and to force such a separation would undermine the nationalist objectives of the RSS. During the first round of negotiations on lifting the ban, Golwalkar explained his personal opposition to a political role for the RSS:

  After the ban has been lifted and swayamsevaks have an opportunity to meet together, they can if they like, convert the Sangh into a political body. That is the democratic way. I for myself cannot say anything. I am not a dictator. Personally, I am outside politics . . . But why should people drag us into politics? We are happy with them as politicians and ourselves as swayamsevaks.44

  When the negotiations broke down, Golwalkar issued a press statement coming down even harder against any reorientation of RSS activities:

  At the outset let me make it clear the R.S.S. is not a political party with any ambitions for political power in the country. All these years of its existence it has steered clear of politics with its party rivalry and scramble for power.45

  This statement was probably issued both to reassure Home Minister Patel that the RSS was not a potential political opponent and to notify the activists inside the RSS that the breakdown of the talks was not sufficient cause to launch a political front.

  When the ban was finally lifted in 1949, it appears that Golwalkar expected some kind of agreement with the Congress which would allow individual RSS members to join the Congress and its affiliated front organizations, leaving the RSS free to pursue its more traditional character-building activities. This option was eliminated on 17 November 1949, when the Congress Working Committee decided to exclude RSS members. Several other options now faced the RSS leadership. It could (1) transform itself into a political party, (2) form a political affiliate, (3) make some kind of arrangement with the Hindu Mahasabha or another compatible political group, (4) abstain from any political involvement, (5) continue to negotiate with the Congress. The activists tended to support the first two options, and the traditionalists the last two. The possibility of cooperation with the Hindu Mahasabha was never seriously considered. The Mahasabha had performed very poorly in the post-war Central Legislative Assembly elections; a cloud of suspicion hung over it because of its alleged involvement in a conspiracy to kill Mahatma Gandhi; and, outside of Bengal and Maharashtra, it was controlled by rich landlords and businessmen who were not anxious to see it develop into a mass-based political party. A major problem blocking cooperation, and perhaps the critical one, was Savarkar’s bitter feeling towards Golwalkar, who had not supported the Hindu Mahasabha in the 1945–46 central assembly elections.