The Brotherhood in Saffron Read online

  At the same time that secret negotiations were being held, the government was holding open talks with RSS mediators regarding a lifting of the ban. Ranade and two associates (P. B. Dani and Balasaheb Deoras) prepared a draft RSS constitution at the request of the government. While Golwalkar approved the draft, the home minister raised several objections.145 The government charged that the draft contained no specific rejection of violence, no statement of allegiance to the Indian constitution and the national flag, no provision for publishing RSS rules and instructions, no provision for a published audit of RSS accounts, and no system for the democratic election of office-bearers, particularly the sarsanghchalak. Golwalkar responded with a detailed response of the criticism on 17 May 1949, emphasizing the democratic nature of the RSS. On the critical point of succession, he wrote that the sarsanghchalak would nominate his successor in consultation with the executive committee of the RSS.146 In a letter of clarification to Mauli Chandra Sharma on 10 June, Golwalkar noted that ‘this nomination [by the previous sarsanghchalak] is a formal declaration of the person elected by the KKM [the karyakari mandal or the executive committee]’. In that same letter, he wrote that he was nominated by Hedgewar ‘in consultation with the then KKM’.147 In fact, neither he nor his successor was nominated formally by the executive committee. There may have been consultations with the members, but certainly no formal vote on the candidate and certainly no opposition candidate—which appears to be what the government had in mind when it talked about greater democracy in the RSS. In any case, the home ministry was not moved by Golwalkar’s 17 May explanation, and responded to him that

  The Government of India regrets to note that your attitude in regard to the activities of the RSS organization seems to have undergone no change. Not only do you see nothing wrong in the ideologies and activities of the RSS in the past but you suggest that the organization would be guided by the same ideology and pursue the same methods in the future.148

  The public negotiations seemed deadlocked; however, the secret negotiations between Patel and the RSS continued. Patel instructed Mauli Chandra Sharma to leave for Nagpur to work with Golwalkar in revising the constitution. Sharma, Ranade, and Deendayal Upadhyaya (a young pracharak who was to play a prominent role in the Jana Sangh) wrote the new draft version. On some fundamental issues, such as participation of pre-adolescents or the selection of the sarsanghchalak, they refused to compromise. The revised constitution, as clarified by Golwalkar in his letter of 10 June, was accepted by Patel, and the ban was lifted on 11 July 1949.

  RSS ADOPTS A MORE ACTIVIST ORIENTATION

  On his release from prison, Golwalkar was asked in what ways the RSS would be different. He responded that the RSS had ‘given up nothing’.149 At a reception in Nagpur, he stated: ‘There is no compromise undertaking of any kind given to the government.’150 Between August and November 1949 Golwalkar made an extensive tour of India. The large crowds at his rallies suggest that the RSS retained a large following. Despite Golwalkar’s disclaimers, the RSS was a different organization. Its leaders were now prepared for it to take on a more activist orientation.

  On 7 October 1949, while Nehru was abroad, the Congress party’s working committee voted that RSS members could join the Congress as primary members. The decision immediately set off a controversy within the ruling party, with Patel’s supporters generally supporting the action and Nehru’s supporters opposed to it. A. G. Kher, minister for local self-government in the United Provinces, and a staunch supporter of Patel, responded to the critics of the 7 October decision by predicting that an adverse decision regarding the participation of RSS members in the Congress might force the RSS into politics.

  The members of that organization [RSS] cannot take part in politics unless they join some political organization. The main political parties are the Congress, the Socialists, the Communities, the Hindu Mahasabha, the Muslim League, and the RSPI. Do we desire that RSS youths should join other groups which are opposed to Congress, or should we desire they should join us? Let those who desire that RSS should not be admitted even as primary members of Congress understand the implications of their attitude. They are compelling RSS men to join the opponents of Congress if they have to take part in politics.151

  Kher’s warning to the Congress proved prophetic, as RSS leaders began to consider seriously the question of political involvement. On 17 November 1949 the Congress Working Committee rescinded its earlier decision. It ruled that RSS members could join the Congress as primary members, but only if they first gave up their RSS membership. This decision virtually guaranteed that the RSS would assume some role in the political process.

  Even before the ban, RSS leaders were reassessing the organization’s role in an independent India.152 By RSS standards, Hindu society was far from united. A large part of ‘Mother India’ had been ‘lost,’ and the RSS was not reconciled to it. Some believed that the leadership of the Congress had neither the commitment nor the capacity to inspire the sacrifices needed for national rejuvenation. Many felt that the new political order rested on foreign concepts which not only undermined India’s Hindu identity but also were contrary to India’s historical, social and political legacies, and they were not prepared to admit that the ancient wisdom was irrelevant in the contemporary period.

  The negotiations between Patel and various RSS leaders during the ban period reveal that Golwalkar, at the beginning of these negotiations, was ready to accept some kind of relationship between the RSS and the Congress in which the RSS would be entrusted with character building and the Congress with politics. The evidence also suggests that Golwalkar did not want the RSS itself to become directly involved in political matters. With the Congress closing all doors to even minimal political involvement, Golwalkar was forced to deal with the RSS activists who wanted the RSS to play a direct role in the political process, and in other areas as well. The RSS experienced an internally divisive debate on the question, which involved fundamental questions of strategy and goals. The end result was a decision to get far more deeply involved in politics than Golwalkar had originally anticipated. Another outcome of the debate was the decision to sanction the establishment of affiliated organizations around the RSS. We shall analyse these developments in Chapter 4.

  3

  RSS: Ideology, Organization and Training

  Belief systems develop in response to cultural, social and psychological strains which develop when existing symbolic models of authority, responsibility and civic purpose do not adequately explain the social situation.1 They are cognitive road maps that point out the causal forces operating in society,2 indicate the legitimate authorities,3 and motivate activity in given circumstances to achieve certain desired ends.4 They reduce the ambiguity created by the structural strains which gave rise to the belief system, simplifying reality and giving meaning to complex political and social events. They are, to use Ernst Cassirer’s terms, a form of myth-making which organizes and expresses deeply rooted instincts, hopes and fears through linguistic metaphors which relate given phenomena to others which are like it, through signs that announce ideas (i.e., a flag), and through ritual that publicly expresses ideas.5 Because the RSS draws liberally from the Hindu past to construct its belief system, an investigation is necessary of how Hindu thought and practice inform the verbal symbols, signs, and rituals which the RSS employs.

  BELIEF SYSTEM OF THE RSS

  Hedgewar, like all revivalists, believed that the Hindu past possessed the conceptual tools with which to reconstruct society. Also like other revivalists, he was convinced that only Hindu thought would motivate the population to achieve independence and to restructure society. In the early part of the twentieth century, Aurobindo Ghose stated the case in terms that the RSS was later to emphasize:

  If you try other and foreign methods we shall either gain our end of national awakening with tedious slowness, painfully and imperfectly, if at all. Why abandon the plain way which God and the Mother have marked out for you to choose faint and d
evious paths of your own treading.6

  The Rig Veda, the oldest Hindu sacred text, pictures human society as evolving from the Supreme Person (Purusha) and compares the four social divisions7 to the mouth, arms, thighs, and feet of the Supreme Person.8 The concept of an organic society was a particularly persuasive argument for the purposes of social unity and nationalism; the revivalists employed it to emphasize the interdependence of all members of society and to suggest the necessity of a single political system.9 The metaphor conveyed the concept that the members of the body politic are bound together by mutual concerns and a common sense of self-preservation.

  RSS theoreticians maintain that the social body functions well only when individuals perform their economic, social and religious duties (dharma).10 The founders of the RSS concluded that the Hindu social body was weak and disorganized because dharma was neither clearly understood nor correctly observed. While the disintegration of Hindu society was perceived as advancing at a rapid pace in the contemporary period, the malady is traced back at least to the Islamic invasions of India (ad approximately 1000) when it is alleged that creative Hindu thought ceased to inform society about new ways to respond to changing conditions.

  A recurrent theme in belief systems is the identification of hostile forces which plot against the nation and which are responsible for the ‘disruptive’ strains in the country. These forces are often identified with particular social groups, which are usually defined as different, united and powerful.11 RSS writers identify two general types of potentially ‘disruptive’ forces in contemporary Indian society: (1) Muslims and Christians who propagate values that might result in the denationalization of their adherents, and (2) the westernized elite who propose capitalism, socialism or communism as solutions for Indian development.

  Christians consider themselves a community, and it is this community orientation—and not the dogma itself—that is considered a possible impediment to their identification with the larger nation. RSS writers allege that Christian values have tended to distance Christians culturally from the national mainstream in some parts of the country. From this proposition, a sub-proposition is deduced: because some Christians do not consider themselves culturally Indian, they do not experience a sense of community with other Indians. One could phrase the proposition in the more esoteric terms of the belief system: Because Christians are culturally different, they have separated themselves from the ‘national soul’. A weekly journal affiliated to the RSS charged that the subjects taught in the Christian schools of a tribal area in north-eastern India ‘are typically Western with no relation whatsoever to the Indian environment . . . It is these students who, on coming out of the missionary institutions agitate for the creation of an ‘Independent Nagaland’.12 Another writer noted that Christian converts ‘were given not only psychological affinity with the people of Western countries, but were weaned away from the national society—the language, the script, the dress, other modes of life, the festivals, names and nomenclature—all undergo a change’.13

  The case against Islam is stated in similar terms. However, Islam is viewed as a more serious problem because of the size of the Muslim community, the recent history of communal animosity between Hindus and Muslims, and the existence of Muslim states in the subcontinent. Golwalkar wrote:

  They [Muslims] look to some foreign lands as their holy places. They call themselves ‘Sheiks’ and ‘Syeds’. Sheiks and Syeds are certain clans in Arabia. How then did these people come to feel that they are their descendants? That is because they have cut off all their ancestral national moorings of this land and mentally merged themselves with the aggressors. They still think that they have come here only to conquer and establish their kingdoms.14

  Democracy, capitalism, and socialism, according to RSS writers, are Western concepts that have failed to improve the human condition. According to a leading RSS publicist:

  democracy and capitalism join hands to give a free reign to exploitation, socialism replaced capitalism and brought with it an end to democracy and individual freedom.15

  These concepts are considered contrary to the traditional principles of Hindu thought. The argument is that each of these concepts limits itself to the premise that man is a ‘bundle of physical wants’.16 While not disagreeing with the notion that ‘passion’ is natural to man,17 RSS writers argue that these ‘foreign’ philosophies stimulate the quest for material gratification which results eventually in greed and class antagonism, attitudes that lead to exploitation, social warfare, and anarchy.18 As an alternative to these socio-economic systems, the RSS offers a social blueprint that minimizes social conflict and functionally links the various social units together into an organic whole.

  The transformation of man is of supreme importance, for such a change is, in the RSS belief system, the necessary prerequisite for revitalizing society and for sustaining it. Golwalkar, in his major treatise of the RSS belief system, mentions four virtues that characterize the ideal person.19 The first is ‘invincible physical strength’. By this he does not mean physical strength in the conventional sense. Rather, he is referring to the calm resolve needed for commitment to disciplined activity. The second virtue, which Golwalkar calls ‘character’, is a personal resolve to commit oneself to a noble cause. These two virtues, however, must be guided by ‘intellectual acumen’, the third virtue. Lastly, ‘fortitude’ is a virtue which permits the honourable person to persevere in a virtuous life. To summarize, the virtuous life is, above all, characterized by industriousness combined with a zealous and painstaking adherence to dharma. As with the puritan ethic in the West, the RSS belief system proposes that disciplined activity is the sign of a virtuous life, a view that such revivalists as Tilak would surely have applauded. Life is considered a struggle against disorder and anarchy; and it requires organization, calculation and systematic endeavour. Because disorder and anarchy are presumably strengthened by human ‘passion’, the individual must diligently tame and discipline his energies.

  RSS writers are quite explicit that the new vision will not be brought about by politicians and bureaucrats. According to one writer:

  He [the politician] does not represent the soul of the people or its aspirations. What he does usually represent is all the average pettiness, selfishness, egoism, self-deception that is above him and these he represents well enough, as well as a great deal of mental incompetence and moral conventionality, timidity, and pretense. Great issues often come to him for decision, but he does not deal with them greatly; high words and noble words are on his lips, but they become rapidly the claptrap of a party.20

  Inspiration for fundamental reform would have to come from a more lofty source, from the RSS itself and through the character-building training which it employs.

  Advaita vedanta, a school of classical Hindu philosophy, provided the founders of the RSS with the core concepts around which the solutions for revitalizing society were constructed. There are several sub-schools of vedanta, and all are based on the Upanishads, a set of over two hundred texts which Hindu commentators have traditionally considered divinely inspired wisdom.21 Upanishadic speculation explores the relationship of the individual soul to the Universal Soul.22 Advaita (a form of non-dualist monism) was systemically formulated around ad 800 by Shankara, a brahmin vedanta philosopher. The material world, according to advaita doctrine, is created by a spiritual energy (shakti) which emanates from the Universal Soul.23 The Brahma as God (Isvara) knows that the created world is His object and only Isvara is the true reality. Illusion (maya) is manifested when the impermanent Divine object (the created world) is perceived as the real. The sheaths of maya are removed as the individual increasingly realizes that he is, in reality, the Brahma itself. The reward to this realization is release from the bonds of material existence, the merging of the individual soul with Brahma.

  Knowledge (jnana) of the truth, achieved through deep meditation, is necessarily preceded by correct observance of dharma.24 Moral perfection and religious devo
tion are acts which enable the seeker after truth to perform his worldly obligations with detachment and humility, the psychic state required for the final stage of the search for enlightenment. This doctrine was developed in the Bhagavadgita. Krishna informs Arjuna, the warrior-king, that an act performed without thought to its consequences (nishkama karma) leaves no karmic bonds that link the soul to a future material existence.25 The metaphysical foundation on which the lesson was based is the Hindu notion that every act (meritorious or sinful) leaves an impression on the soul and serves to identify it in its next material existence.26 Krishna informs Arjuna that he must act, but in a way that leaves no karmic bonds. Arjuna, as a seeker of release from earthly bonds, could then proceed to the final stage of enlightenment, confident that his ‘acts’ will not predestine him to a reincarnation. Krishna reveals to Arjuna that each person has a divinely implanted set of obligations (dharma) which the seeker after truth must honour. To act contrary to them is an egocentric act that is disruptive of the social order ordained by the divinity. While not clearly indicating the way one could determine dharma, he does describe its determinants.27