The Brotherhood in Saffron Page 19

  The leadership prepared the party cadre for a major leftward thrust at its eighteenth annual session in Kanpur in early 1973. At that session, Lal Krishna Advani, former Jana Sangh speaker in the Delhi Metropolitan Council, was selected to replace Vajpayee, who was placed in charge of the campaign for the important 1974 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.92 Advani’s presidential address to the delegates focused on the nation’s economy. It included attacks on ‘monopoly houses’; it advocated a policy of enforced austerity through strict controls of imports and a consumption tax on family expenditures above Rs 2500 per month. He advocated an income policy which would permit the highest salaries to be no more than 20 times the lowest.93 Resolutions were passed directing the party leadership to speak out publicly for the dispossessed and to organize mass demonstrations on their behalf.

  Conferences of women, farmers, and youth met concurrently with the eighteenth annual session. The women’s conference proposed that men and women receive equal pay for comparable work and that nurseries be established for the children of working mothers. The farmers’ conference demanded a massive public works programmes in rural areas, rural drought relief, and a need-based wage policy for the rural labourer. The youth conference proposed the reduction of the voting age from 21 to 18, as well as a government-funded unemployment benefit scheme, joint participation of teachers and students in university policy-making bodies, and a termination of imported technology, foreign investment and aid. Vajpayee, in his address to the youth conference, advocated a two-year compulsory national service scheme for every sixteen-year-old man and woman. He suggested that the service include job-oriented instruction suited to the ‘aptitude’ of the participants as well as military training for both men and women.94

  After 1972, the Jana Sangh embarked on a much more activist strategy, and party volunteers in several places participated in demonstrations against the rise in prices and against the government’s handling of the severe drought situation. In a speech in Bombay on 23 April 1973 Vajpayee told his audience that the party would not hesitate to encourage people to break those laws which, in its view, tended to keep basic commodities scarce. He even expressed sympathy for those who looted government fair price shops to get food for their families.95 The party had now officially adopted agitation as a tactic to express its dissatisfaction, and agitation provided the party with new opportunities to mobilize support.96

  REVOLT ON THE RIGHT

  The party’s rapid shift in policies and tactics left Madhok and other conservatives an isolated minority. Following the working committee’s deliberations at Kanpur in February 1972, Madhok left for Delhi without participating in the plenary session of the party. The working committee had discussed and rejected a twenty-two page list of recommendations from Madhok, in which he recommended a new set of party policies and a restructuring of the party organization. Regarding party rules, he advocated changes which would give more power to the lower units of the party hierarchy. Besides proposing the abolition of the position of organizing secretary, Madhok suggested that the delegates to the plenary session themselves elect half of the party’s working committee and that they nominate presidential candidates. Under Jana Sangh rules, the president selected the working committee, and the state working committees nominated presidential candidates. The intent of his proposals was to transfer power from the secretarial network to the grass-roots level of the party.97

  With the firm backing of the secretarial network and the RSS leadership, Advani dealt firmly with Madhok. In a letter to Madhok, Advani detailed Madhok’s ‘indiscipline’. He pointed out that Madhok had opposed the Central government employees’ strike even when the party had officially backed the workers’ demands. He reminded Madhok of his circulation of a pamphlet at the 1969 Patna plenary session which criticized the party’s policies. He pointed out that Madhok had bestowed respectability on groups of expelled Jana Sangh members in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh by addressing their meetings. To demonstrate how isolated he was from the other party leaders, Advani reminded Madhok that the general council was unanimous in its opposition to his activities.

  Not only did Advani question Madhok’s ‘character’, but he refused to submit Madhok’s case to Golwalkar, as Madhok had earlier suggested. He informed Madhok that Golwalkar ‘would also emphasize the importance of discipline and collective functioning in any organization’. On a matter as important as this, Advani very likely had already conferred with Golwalkar before writing to Madhok.

  Madhok refused to apologize for his ‘indiscipline’ and asked for the ‘trust’ and ‘confidence’ of his colleagues. Advani expelled him from primary membership in the party for three years.

  Madhok informed the press that his expulsion was another sign of a ‘fascist attitude’ within the Jana Sangh.98 In a letter which he circulated among the party cadre, he wrote that the Jana Sangh had developed into an RSS front organization and, while not personally opposed to the RSS, he was against its ‘dominating’ influence in the party.99 He wrote that the Jana Sangh was not able to mobilize additional support because of RSS influence. He identified Vajpayee as the leader of the forces which were subverting the party’s traditional ideological orientation. Madhok wrote that Vajpayee’s affiliation with the pro-communist Students’ Federation during his youth could explain his ‘leftist’ ideology and his ‘softness’ for the Nehru family.100 Madhok left the Jana Sangh to establish his own political party.101

  The Madhok episode did not deter the Jana Sangh’s efforts to make itself a ‘party of the common man’. In early November 1973 the Jana Sangh leadership called upon its members to agitate against mounting inflation. The party resorted to its new agitational approach by loaning cadre to Jaya Prakash Narayan’s movement of ‘Total Revolution’ in Bihar.102 That campaign grew into a national political challenge directed against the prime minister, and the Jana Sangh became one of the constituent units in the National Coordination Committee, established by the leadership of the Jana Sangh, the Samyukta Socialist Party, the Congress (0), and the Bharatiya Lok Dal in late 1974 to assist Narayan’s movement.103

  The closer links among the opposition parties were to pay rich electoral dividends. In March 1975 the four opposition parties participating in the National Coordination Committee formed the Janata Morcha to contest the June state assembly elections in Gujarat. In those elections, the Congress party won a higher percentage of the vote (41 per cent compared to 38 per cent for the opposition party alliance), though it won fewer seats (75 compared to 86).104 The four opposition parties formed a United Front ministry in the 182 member assembly, with the support of the twelve-member Kisan Mazdoor Lok Paksha, a party representing the interests of rural landlords. The Jana Sangh itself won 18 of the 40 seats it contested.

  The revolts against the Jana Sangh leadership between 1972 and 1974 could not elicit much support from the organizational cadre. The party, by recruiting a majority of its cadre from the RSS, was guaranteed a high degree of organizational stability. The party organization gave its organizing secretaries sufficient power to enforce compliance with party directives. Most of the organizing secretaries were swayamsevaks; many were pracharaks. For them to break loose from the party would mean separating themselves from comrades with whom they had worked for many years. When interviewing Vasantrao Krishna Oke, who had rebelled against both the RSS and the Jana Sangh, it was obvious that his most painful recollection was the memory of separation from former RSS colleagues who ignored him during his ‘fall from grace.’ It was equally obvious that their acceptance of him was perceived as a kind of personal redemption. These men believe in the value of organized effort and are loathe to tolerate any person who threatens to splinter either the RSS or its affiliates.

  The organizing secretaries, many without families or other social or economic commitments, orchestrated the party’s more populist orientation, as Madhok and other dissident conservatives recognized. By and large, pracharaks appeared to take seriously the social and economic implic
ations of reformist advaita vedanta. As gatekeepers to party recruitment and advancement, the organizing secretaries and senior-level secretaries established the boundaries within which party policy was set. Those who sought to influence Jana Sangh policy had first to convince them that the proposed policy was consistent with the Hindu-oriented integrationist belief system of the RSS. The organizers, in turn, also had to translate the belief system into strategies and policies capable of mobilizing support.

  THE SWAYAMSEVAKS IN POLITICS

  Our initial fieldwork suggested to us that the secretarial network of the Jana Sangh, drawn almost exclusively from the RSS and guided by the full-time pracharaks, enforced commitment both to the world view of the RSS and to acceptable patterns of organizational behaviour by recruiting other swayamsevaks to fill party positions. To test this, we interviewed a sample of cadre at all levels of the party organization in three parliamentary constituencies (Allahabad City in Uttar Pradesh, Sadar in Delhi, and Bombay North-east in Maharashtra) between 1968 and 1971. The 190 interviews were taken starting at the bottom of the party hierarchy from officers serving in committees at the sthaniya (block, level I), the mandal (neighbourhood, level II), zilla (district, level III), the nagar (city, level IV), as well as in the state (level V) and national working committees (level VI).105

  Table 5 shows that 90 per cent of the office-bearers in the sample had an RSS background. Notice that no non-RSS members were in the two highest party categories, and that non-RSS members were weakly represented at the district level (6.7 per cent), the most important decision-making body for the day-to-day activities of the party.

  Table 5: RSS Membership by Jana Sangh Position Level

  Similarly, we expected the secretarial gatekeepers of the party to select for higher party positions those who had already proved themselves in the RSS. Table 6 strongly backs the proposition that advancement in the Jana Sangh is related to prior advancement in the RSS. The swayamsevak who had already done well in the RSS, we assumed, had developed those organizational skills and behavioural values which gave him an advantage over others in the party. If socialization in the RSS provides the skills and attitudes required for holding a high party position, as Table 6 suggests, it follows that such socialization would also influence the rank at which swayamsevaks entered the party. This proposition is strongly supported by Table 7. Those given greater responsibilities in the RSS tended to enter the party at a higher rank than those who had not been given such responsibilities. Indeed, none of the other variables tested (see Appendix B) with party position gave as high a correlation as that between prior advancement in the RSS and party position.

  The data in Tables 6 and 7 helps to explain the high degree of cohesion in the Jana Sangh (and in the other members of the ‘family’ which have a comparable recruitment policy). Group commitment is one of the most highly valued, of RSS norms, and one that lends itself to organizational cohesion. Consequently, the advancement of those swayamsevaks who have demonstrated leadership capacity is conducive to maintaining support for the goals of the party. A substantial body of research has shown that commitment to leaders tends to generate support for the leaders’ norms and the norms of the organizations they represent.106 Recruitment of local RSS achievers strengthened group cohesion in the party since many RSS members worked under their former RSS teachers within local party units. The deliberate recruitment of local RSS leaders strengthened not only compliance not only within the local party unit but also cohesion horizontally (between units on the same level) and vertically (between units at different levels). This could explain the comparatively low degree of factionalism within the party’s organizational wing, even in those cases where the local leadership was instructed to support unpopular decisions (e.g., official language in Punjab). It could also explain the comparative lack of factionalism in the other members of the RSS ‘family’.

  Yet RSS informants admit that there is a rather heavy attrition rate from the RSS, particularly during late adolescence and early adulthood. Among the reasons are the concern of swayamsevaks (or their parents) that RSS membership will hinder their career possibilities or undermine their social status. Also, their commitment to the RSS might be weakened by new, and possibly conflicting, socialization experiences. Nevertheless, many members continue their participation—despite possible family opposition, various objective liabilities and counter-socialization. The extensive peer group contacts which the RSS provides for its members clearly has induced sufficiently strong consensual norms among a large number of swayamsevaks to resist pressures to leave it.107 Those who remained had developed strong cohesive bonds in the RSS prior to membership in the Jana Sangh. It is likely that peer group cohesiveness was transferred to the Jana Sangh when the RSS member shifted to the party, since many shakha colleagues worked together in the party. Cohesiveness was also reinforced by continued participation in RSS activities after joining the Jana Sangh.

  Table 6: RSS Position by Party Level

  Table 7: RSS Position by First Party Position

  Long association with colleagues in the Jana Sangh also strengthened group bonds. At all levels of the party, the cadre commented that they were content to remain mere ‘soldiers’ in the cause, satisfied to serve in whatever capacity party leaders deemed them best suited. Whatever the accuracy of such statements, the data reveals that the cadre tended to hold their positions for rather long periods of time. Over half of the sample held only one position in the party. Almost 60 per cent held their current position for at least four years,108 and slightly more than 40 per cent for at least six years. Given the extended time the Jana Sangh members remained in their positions and interacted with a common peer group, it was likely that the cadre in an organization unit had a high degree of loyalty to each other. Research on groups with a low turnover among group members suggests that the members of the group are likely to be committed to those norms which encourage continued participation in the group.109 This might explain the apparent lack of ambition for higher position among many RSS participants.

  Universal suffrage in a system of single members constituencies110 forced the Jana Sangh leadership to mobilize support on a larger scale than any of the other RSS affiliates, thus causing a higher degree of tension between the sometimes conflicting urges for ideological consistency and group solidarity on the one hand and electoral support on the other. Selective recruitment of the cadre promoted organizational cohesion, but it also placed limits on the party’s mobilizing capacity. The belief system on which the party was grounded threatened the world view of a substantial part of the population—Muslims, Christians and those committed to Western models of modernization, among others. The relatively controlled recruitment system made the Jana Sangh a less attractive political instrument for local notables than those political parties which enabled group and factional leaders to exert exogamous influence on party policy. The centralized decision-making system managed by the organizing secretaries of the Jana Sangh sometimes resulted in situations where the cadre was required to support policies which, while ideologically ‘correct,’ resulted in widespread loss of electoral support (e.g., advocating Punjabi as an official language in Punjab).

  We asked the interviewees a set of questions regarding their opinions on a set of political issues to determine how closely their personal views coincided with what we considered to be the RSS position. The interviewees were asked to state their reaction (agreement or disagreement) to a series of normative statements. Each statement in Table 8 is a paraphrase of the situational statement used in the interview schedule.

  Table 8: Value Orientations of Jana Sangh Cadre Value Statement % Agree % Disagree

  1.Income variations should be narrowed. 97 3

  2.Cow slaughter must be prohibited. 94 6

  3.Class identification weakens nationalloyalty. 83 17

  4.The state has responsibility for maintaining minimum living standards. 79 21

  5.Workers should share in ownership and management
of industry. 76 24

  6.Strike is a legitimate technique for workers to employ. 72 28

  7.Foreign aid and assistance would help India to overcome its economic problems. 71 29

  8.The powers of the Central government should be strengthened. 71 29

  9.Religious leaders provide valuable services to preserve national well-being. 43 57

  10.Caste loyalty should disappear. 41 59

  11.The major industries should be nationalized. 39 61

  12.The government should take control of all educational and social welfare activities. 28 72

  13.A democratic form of government cannot generate the strong leadership required for national progress. 28 72

  14.Agriculture should be organized on cooperative basis. 24 76

  15.It is socially wrong to permit inter- caste marriages. 22 78

  16.English should be retained as a link language. 14 86

  17.Since creation of Pakistan, Muslims have been loyal to India. 10 90

  A central theme of the RSS belief system is the restoration of social harmony by more equitably distributing access to economic and political power. Relating to this theme are statements referring to collapsing income differences (Table 8: No. 1), eliminating class and caste exclusiveness (Nos 3,10,15), and entrusting ownership of the productive process to the workers (No. 5). On all these statements, we compared the answers with RSS position and party position, and discovered that those in the higher ranks of the party and/or the RSS were more likely to give answers that conformed to the RSS belief system than those in the lower ranks. On the question of the patriotism of India’s Muslims (No. 17), those who had held a higher position in the RSS and in the party also indicated a greater willingness to accommodate Muslims, perhaps reflecting their greater commitment to eliminating those social and cultural barriers which separate Indians from each other.