The Brotherhood in Saffron Read online

  The RSS also contributed directly to the opposition Janata alliance campaign prior to the March 1977 general elections. So worried was the government by its support to the Janata alliance, according to M. V. Moghe (RSS baudhik pramukh, the official in charge of propaganda), that Prime Minister Gandhi instructed a ‘high official’ to meet underground RSS leaders two weeks prior to the polling to discuss an offer to lift the ban if the RSS would withdraw its support from the Janata alliance.20 The ban on the JRSS, however, was not lifted until 21 March 1977, after the victory of the Janata alliance.

  SUCCESSES AND CHALLENGES:1977–1980

  The RSS emerged from its 21-month ban (4 July 1975–21 March 1977) far more self-confident about its role in Indian society than at any time since Independence. The cadre had developed a sense of mission (as they had during the first ban in 1948–1949) that envisaged a programme far more ambitious than character building. And this time—unlike 1949—there was a sarsanghchalak, Balasaheb Deoras, who was inclined in that direction himself.

  Regarding politics, the RSS—whose cadre had campaigned vigorously for the Janata alliance candidates—took at least partial credit for the defeat of Prime Minister Gandhi in the 16–20 March 1977 national elections. That defeat was most dramatically registered in the seven Hindi-speaking states, where Gandhi’s Congress party won only 2 of the 237 parliamentary seats. The Janata Party, in contrast, swept this area and won 298 out of 542 seats nationally. The share of the Jana Sangh group, whose support base was in the Hindi-speaking states, was 93 seats, making it the largest element in the Janata alliance.21

  The Janata alliance, which became the Janata Party on 1 May 1977, formed India’s first non-Congress national government, and Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s cabinet included three Jana Sangh members (all RSS members): Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Lal Krishna Advani, Minister of Information and Broadcasting; and Brij Lal Varma, Minister of Industry. After the 20 June 1977 assembly elections, Jana Sangh chief ministers (all RSS members) presided over three state governments (Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan) and one Union Territory (Delhi), and members of the Jana Sangh group were included in the cabinets of other states where the Janata Party won majorities.

  The Janata Party from the start was a fragile coalition. Party leaders battled against each other to improve their own standing and that of their group. The RSS, closely identified in the popular mind with the Jana Sangh group, inevitably became an issue as the groups manoeuvres for influence. In addition, the RSS had taken a direct political role during the Emergency and during the 1977 campaign, and many wondered about its long-range political intentions.

  The RSS for its part continued to reject publicly a direct role for itself in politics. A direct political role would have undermined the RSS self-conception as a moral guide above the mundane conflict of personalities. Its leaders probably realized that direct involvement in politics would again make the RSS the object of intense political attack, which would lead to renewed demands for restrictions on its activities. However, the RSS leadership did envisage some kind of cooperative relationship with the government. Indeed, the RSS probably expected favourable treatment from the government. Deoras, for example, told newsmen on 11 May 1977 that the RSS and the government could cooperate in such areas as education, social welfare, youth affairs, but ‘the Swayamsevaks of the Sangh are not volunteers who will spread the durries and fix the mike for some leaders to come and make speeches’.22 But the political situation was so radically different from the past that the RSS leadership probably did not know how it would work out the anticipated cooperation. Moreover, the Jana Sangh ceased to exist as a separate party, and its own members had to work out a relationship with the other constituents of the Janata Party, some of whom were deeply suspicious of the RSS.

  Outside the political arena, the RSS leaders must have been pleased by the post-1977 experience. The RSS (and its affiliates) experienced a surge in membership. Its general secretary reported in early 1978 that the number of shakhas had increased from 8500 in 1975 to 11,000 in 1977.23 One year later, the RSS announced the addition of another 2000 shakhas.24 Assuming 50–100 participants per shakha, this represents an additional participation rate of 225,000 to 450,000 within two years, the fastest growth of the RSS to that date. (It was to grow even faster during the next several years.) The general secretary reported that the number of shakhas had increased to 17,000 by 1981, an increase of 3000 over the previous year.25 He reported still another 3000 new shakhas during 1981.26 The most rapid expansion was in the four southern states in which the RSS previously was weakly represented.27 According to one survey, by the mid-1980s the RSS had shakhas in nearly all the 5000 villages of Kerala, undoubtedly because of Hindu apprehensions over growing assertiveness of the state’s communists and Muslims.28 A Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, report claimed that regular attendance nationally in 1981 was nearly one million, and that the financial contributions at Gurudakshina were over 10 million rupees (about $1.1 million at that time).29

  The RSS affiliates also expanded rapidly. For example, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, its labour affiliate, claimed that it had grown from about 1.2 million members in 1977 to about 1.8 million in 1980, making it the second largest national union after the Indian National Trade Union Congress.30 The Vidyarthi Parishad, its student affiliate, grew from 170,000 to 250,000 members between 1977 and 1982,31 further strengthening the Vidyarthi Parishad’s position as the largest student group in India.

  But this apparent success had its costs. It aroused suspicions within the Janata Party that the RSS would use its impressive organizational resources to strengthen the position of the Jana Sangh group, already the largest single element within the Janata Party. Suspicions of the Jana Sangh group’s links to the RSS were fuelled by the participation of many of its members in RSS activities. In addition, Jana Sangh members continued to meet with RSS leaders, as they had done in the past, to talk about mutual problems.32 Fearing that the RSS would act as a parallel political cadre not subject to party discipline, a growing number of Janata Party figures called for the RSS to merge with one of the Janata Party’s affiliated organizations. Initially, the demand was restricted largely to members of the Socialist Party’s faction, though Charan Singh’s Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) adopted a very critical approach to the RSS in 1978 when the Jana Sangh group stood in the way of Singh’s national ambitions by its steadfast backing of Prime Minister Morarji Desai.

  Not surprisingly, the RSS leadership fiercely resisted the merger proposal as did the leaders of the various affiliates. On 23 August 1977 the general secretary of the RSS stated, ‘It should be clearly understood that we are nobody’s Boys [sic] Scouts.’33 He doubted that the labour or student affiliates of the RSS would merge with their Janata Party counterparts. They did not.

  THE DUAL-MEMBERSHIP CONTROVERSY

  When it became clear that the RSS leadership would not consider the merger proposition, its critics shifted tactics. They demanded that all Janata members sever their ties with the RSS as a condition for membership in the party. They argued that the Janata Party’s interim constitution had an exclusionary clause denying membership to anyone belonging to another ‘political party, communal or other, which has a separate membership, constitution and programme [sic]’.34 The Jana Sangh group dismissed this argument on the grounds that the RSS is not a political party. The critics of the RSS then proposed an amendment to the exclusionary clause that would remove the word ‘political’; but the Janata Party working committee at its 21 December 1977 meeting, facing stiff Jana Sangh resistance, took no action.35

  But the dual-membership issue, as the question came to be called, refused to go away. Indeed, it became an even more strident and divisive problem. The controversy was one of the proximate causes for the break-up of the Janata Party in mid-July 1979, when Charan Singh and his Bharatiya Lok Dal group (as well as others) walked out of the party. The persistence of the issue underscored the
fragile nature of the Janata Party, more a governing coalition than a party. The dual-membership issue re-emerged with each major jolt to the balance of power within the party. It was used both to gain leverage against the Jana Sangh group and to damage the Jana Sangh group’s capacity to mobilize additional support within the party. The issue reflected the fear that the relatively cohesive Jana Sangh group would use its organizational strength to take over the party. This fear was a major reason the Janata Party was never able to hold organizational elections, forcing the party to function on an ad hoc basis at all levels.

  The dual-membership question could be contained as long as the two largest groups in the Janata Party—the Jana Sangh and the BLD—cooperated, and they did work together rather amicably for about a year. For example, after the June 1977 state assembly elections, the two groups were able to arrange for a distribution of power in the six Hindi-speaking states captured by the Janata Party (Bihar, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to the BLD group; and Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to the Jana Sangh). This state-level cooperation, however, could not be insulated from the jockeying for power between party barons at the national level. The Jana Sangh group’s steadfast support of Prime Minister Morarji Desai, against whom Charan Singh was engaged in a struggle for power, eventually earned it the enmity of the BLD group. This development at the national level in turn exacerbated the relations of the two groups at the state level. The BLD by mid-1978 had become one of the major advocates for barring RSS members from joining the Janata party.36

  Jana Sangh leaders for their part publicly resisted any move to deny RSS members the right to participate in Janata Party activities.37 Atal Bihari Vajpayee, during the height of the controversy in early 1979, warned that the Jana Sangh group might pull out of the government and the party if the critics of the RSS had their way on this question.38 Leaders of the Jana Sangh group could not accept an exclusion of RSS members and still expect to retain their strong bargaining position within the Janata Party. Their bargaining position was based on the size of the Jana Sangh group, and many Jana Sangh legislators, if forced to choose between loyalty to the Janata Party and continued membership in the RSS, would have chosen the latter. The only way out of this impasse would be for the RSS itself to bar its members from holding elective offices. Not surprisingly, Janata Party leaders, seeking to preserve party unity, began to make overtures to the RSS to do just this. Balasaheb Deoras, for his part, made a public announcement in early July that the RSS would stay aloof from the next general elections, a statement that could well have been intended as a warning that the Janata Party could lose a valuable resource if the attack continued.39

  A fundamental problem between the Jana Sangh group and its opponents on the dual-membership issue was their differing interpretation over what is political. Charan Singh (and others) defined politics broadly to mean influence, while the Jana Sangh group (and the RSS) defined it narrowly to mean direct organizational involvement in elections and in governing. The RSS leadership clearly intended to keep the RSS outside the formal structure of politics, but the critics of the RSS insisted that its potential to influence Jana Sangh politicians also had to be limited.

  When the Janata Party finally began to unravel in mid-July 1979, many of those who left the party mentioned, to justify their action, both the unresolved dual-membership controversy and the exclusively Hindu nature of the RSS. On 9 July Raj Narain, perhaps the most outspoken critic of the RSS, left the Janata Party to form the Janata Party (Secular) to distinguish his party from the ‘unsecular’ Janata party, and his exit was followed soon after by Charan Singh and others. Manoeuvring began immediately inside the Janata Party to excise the RSS issue in a way that would stem the flow from the party, while not alienating the large Jana Sangh group. Senior party leaders, including Vajpayee, worked out for party consideration a formula barring the membership of anyone who espoused a theocratic state.40 However, the Jana Sangh group issued a statement on 13 July announcing that its members had not altered their stance towards the RSS.41 Many Jana Sangh legislators pointed out that the RSS did not define Hindu rashtra, the RSS term for the ideal state, as a theocratic state. Indeed, Balasaheb Deoras issued a statement on 16 July stating that the RSS supported a secular state and respected all religions.42

  By 15 July, Prime Minister Desai had lost his parliamentary majority and was forced to resign, though it was still possible that the Janata Party (with some 200 members still the largest group in parliament) might regain power by working out an alliance with one or more of the other party leaders. As part of their strategy, the Jana Sangh and the socialist groups unsuccessfully requested Desai to step down in favour of Jagjivan Ram, a respected Scheduled Caste politician who might have brought support from other parties. By this move, the Jana Sangh group could also erode the popular image of itself as a representative of the interests of traders and brahmins. Besides such tactics, defusing the RSS issue remained a high priority item as the various party barons tried to put together a parliamentary majority.

  The Janata Party could not specifically exclude RSS members from holding party office since such a step would drive most of the Jana Sangh group out of the party at a time when their votes were desperately needed. The only feasible option was to convince the RSS itself to bar those swayamsevaks holding party office or an elected position from taking part in activities of the RSS. With this objective in mind, Chandra Sekhar, the president of the Janata Party, met with both Balasaheb Deoras and Rajendra Singh (and other RSS leaders) to get their backing for this step. On 24 July Chandra Sekhar told newsmen that Deoras had given him a ‘positive’ response on the question of barring Janata Party office-bearers and elected officials from the RSS. Complimenting the RSS leadership for their help on this thorny problem, he stated that ‘for all practical purposes the Janata Party stands delinked from the RSS, if there was any link’.43 Rajendra Singh issued a statement on the same day pointing out that the proposal would have to be placed before the central assembly of the RSS, its highest policymaking body, since only it could revise the RSS constitution.44 Chandra Sekhar in his statement said that he expected the RSS to act quickly on the matter, though the RSS general secretary gave no such public assurances. In fact, he gave no assurance that the central assembly of the RSS would back the proposal—only that it would consider the question.

  In all this flurry of activity on the RSS issue, the apparent objective of the party leaders was to give the impression that the party was secular and thus a legitimate contestant for power. Symbolism was very important. For example, the ban on membership to those who supported a theocratic state had proved to be a non-starter, but the party would continue to use this formulation for propaganda purposes. Accordingly, the Janata Party national executive on 29 July unanimously amended the party constitution by adding a provision specifying that ‘no member of any organisation having faith in a theocratic state can be a member of the party’.45 General Secretary Ramkrishna Hegde stated, incorrectly, that from 29 July no Janata party member remained a member of the RSS.46 When two senior Jana Sangh figures announced the next day that the restriction did not apply to them, Chandra Sekhar criticized them for damaging the reputation of the Janata Party.47

  One of the more dramatic examples of this public relations campaign was an article critical of the RSS written by Vajpayee and appearing on 2 August 1979 in Indian Express (Delhi). Vajpayee argued that the political activities of the RSS affiliates (e.g., attacks on senior political figures in the RSS-affiliated media) ‘do not help an organization [the RSS] to establish its apolitical credentials’.48 He further argued: ‘It is possible that some people genuinely feel apprehensive about the RSS. A certain onus accordingly devolved on the RSS, an onus that has not been discharged effectively by the RSS.’ Elaborating on this theme, he wrote

  Its [the RSS] repudiation of the theocratic state was welcomed. Yet the question could legitimately be asked—why does it not open its doors to Muslims? Recent statements of the RSS
chief, Mr Deoras, indicate that non-Hindus are being encouraged to join the organization. A natural corollary of this process would be clear enunciation by the RSS that by ‘Hindu rashtra’ it means the Indian nation which includes non-Hindus as equal members.

  Many critics of the RSS praised Vajpayee’s published views and concluded that the members of the Jana Sangh group were not necessarily pawns of the RSS, a conclusion which both the Janata leadership and Vajpayee must surely have wanted them to draw.49 Vajpayee might also have been prompted to write the article to prod the RSS into taking quick action on the dual-membership question.

  However, the central assembly of the RSS did not meet until its regularly scheduled sessions in March 1980. Why did the senior-most RSS figures in July 1979 agree to consider the dual-membership issue, and then wait so long to act? It is very likely that the RSS leaders, like their Janata Party counterparts, intended the 24 July 1979 announcement to be largely a public relations gesture to buttress the position of the Janata Party as it sought to retain power. But there may have been other compulsions driving the RSS leadership at that time to consider placing such unprecedented restrictions on its members. The leaders were perhaps under considerable pressure from the traditional elements in the RSS, always apprehensive that any activities that involve the RSS in politics would undermine its character-building mission, to insulate the organization from the political arena. They had a good case. Restrictions had been placed on RSS activities in some places (e.g., the denial of public grounds to RSS shakhas by a Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh), largely for political reasons. Many in the activist school were also prepared to pull away from politics since their own high expectations regarding cooperation with the new government had been dashed.