SEVEN OUT OF 10 ministers in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government come from the Sangh Parivar. Four out of 10 governors are former pracharaks and volunteers of the RSS and its affiliates. Chief ministers and deputy chief ministers in eight out of the 12 BJP-ruled states are swayamsevaks.
Many officials, trained and subscribing to the Sangh ideology, currently work under various union public services.
The Indian Council of Historical Research, Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Film and Television Institute of India, Indian Council of Medical Research, Central Board of Film Certification, among others, are all manned by the BJP-RSS members or sympathizers.
Paramilitary training: An answer to a question in the Rajya Sabha showed that the RSS has been providing paramilitary training. The RSS chief has publicly admitted that the Sangh is capable of raising its own military force (even faster than the state’s own forces). In 2016, the offspring of the RSS, the Bajrang Dal, was charged with conducting “mock drills” with rifles.
B S Moonje, a former Hindu Mahasabha leader, in 1935 in his ‘Preface to the Scheme of the Central Hindu Military Society and its Military School’, wrote: “This training is meant for qualifying and fitting our boys for the game of killing masses of men with the ambition of winning victory with the best possible casualties of dead and wounded while causing the utmost possible harm to the adversary.”
Nearly 90 years since, six out of 10 agreements to run Sainik School have been awarded to RSS sympathizers or allied organizations. Two of these are run by a Sangh stalwart who was among the 68 people accused by the 2009 Liberhan Commission of leading the country “to the brink of communal discord.” The Sangh-affiliated Bhonsala Military School, run by Central Hindu Military Education Society (which allegedly trained persons accused in the Nanded and Malegaon blasts) has also been approved to operate a Sainik school.
RSS role in freedom movement: Tomes have been written about how the RSS distanced itself from India’s freedom struggle. In the 1930s, when Mahatma Gandhi launched his Dandi March or Salt Satyagraha, K B Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, announced that the organization would not participate. During the Quit India movement, the Bombay Home Department, under British administration at the time, reported, “The Sangh has scrupulously kept itself within the law, and in particular, has refrained from taking part in the disturbances that broke out in August 1942.”
Post-Independence, the RSS has been banned thrice by the Government of India. The first instance was in 1948 following Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. While banning the RSS, Sardar Patel said, “Undesirable and even dangerous activities have been carried out by members of the Sangh. It has been found that in several parts of the country, individual members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity, and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition.”
Why has the RSS, which gives big talk about organizational discipline, not uttered a word about China grabbing land during Narendra Modi’s tenure? Or, about the BJP’s recruitment of corrupt leaders from Congress and other parties, and using bureaucrats to replace party men in the Cabinet?
The BJP-RSS link: RSS shakhas across India increased by 62 per cent between 2014-23. According to a Hudson Institute paper titled, ‘Hindu Nationalist Influence in the United States, 2014-2021: The Infrastructure of Hindutva Mobilizing’, “Between 2001- 2019, according to available tax returns, seven Sangh-affiliated charitable groups reportedly spent at least $158.9 million on their programming”. Half of this was spent between 2014 and 2019. Is the RSS a registered entity? It is neither a political party, a company, nor a charitable trust. So, what is it? It collects funds worth millions from multiple, undisclosed channels. Does it pay taxes?
The current Sangh-BJP leadership belongs to a generation that was raised with a commitment to the RSS ideology — one that thrives on the polarizing writings of its founders. M S Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts identifies Muslims and Christians as internal threats. In his 2008 book Jyotipunj, Narendra Modi retells the life and times of 16 RSS men who have inspired him. The longest piece is on Golwalkar. The invective Modi spewed recently at an election rally in Rajasthan shows that he is working tirelessly to outdo Golwalkar.
[This article was also published in The Indian Express | Friday, April 26, 2024]