Years ago, I asked an English friend whether she ever read Kingsley Amis. "But they are men's books," she said dismissively.
I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when I asked another friend why there were no women in the RSS. "But it is a men's organisation," she said.
I am bringing this up because a few days ago Mr K S Sudarshan, the head of the RSS, was reported to have expressed the view that, thanks to the exigencies of having to govern, the BJP was losing its uniqueness. Mr Sudarshan said that the BJP was no longer a "party with a difference".
It is certain that when he said this Mr Sudarshan did not have the BJP's slightly liberal attitude to women in mind. Such a thought -- women, what do you mean women? -- would never cross his uniquely Hindu mind. The reason is simple: for the RSS women exist only in the very abstract, e.g. shakti, or the very practical, e.g. housewives. There is no other role for them.
The RSS could deny this, of course, by pointing to the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti which was set up in 1936 -- and hasn't been heard of since. Its founder was one Lakshmi Bai Kelkar, the mother of a swayamsevak.
In their classic study of the RSS, The Brotherhood in Saffron, which in 300 pages devotes two paragraphs, one footnote to women, and the RSS, Walter Anderson and Sridhar Damle have this to say:
"She sought RSS assistance to fulfil one of the revivalist goals -- training women to the martial arts. During a visit to Hegdewar, she reportedly told him, 'Just as women are an integral part of the household, so too they are a part of the nation. If the ideology of your organisation is taught to women, it would also help the Sangh'. However, Hegdewar considered it imprudent for the RSS to accept women."
But he agreed to help her establish a women's group and a parallel organisation was established. But he ensured that there would be no formal connection between the two.
Why did the RSS keep women out of the frame? Why has it continued to do so? One answer was provided by J A Curran in 1951. He wrote in a study called Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics that "leaders of the Sangh had taken a vow of brahmacharya that obliged them to avoid all temptations such as that of association with women."
But Anderson and Damle say that this is not correct because there is no vow of brahmacharya that is administered to RSS members. They do say, however, "at the time the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti was formed, it would have been unacceptable for an organisation like the RSS to accept women participants. In fact, many RSS members indicated to us that it would still be socially unacceptable for the two to unite." That was in 1987.
However, the BJP, as a political party, has been obliged to take a rather more practical view. If it wants female votes, it has to put up women candidates, at least here and there. Still, as might be expected, its record is only slightly better than that of the RSS.
But getting back to the RSS, which has set itself up as the guardian of Hindu morality and mores -- circa 3,500 BC -- I would like to ask Mr Sudarshan whether he would like to unite the women's unit -- if it still exists, that is -- with the RSS. If not, he might like to give a fuller explanation than Anderson and Damle have done why he thinks women should be kept out o the RSS.
The need to include women in the RSS is obvious. For one thing, if the RSS is genuinely committed to social reform amongst the Hindus, it can't exclude half of them from its ambit. If some of the most backward aspects of Hindu society can be attributed to the way it views women, the RSS cannot change things by excluding them.
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Second, if the main objects of social reform amongst the Hindus are men, it cannot expect much because the men are not going to reform themselves. The RSS needs women in much the same way as communism needed them -- to prod complacent and self-satisfied males into looking into their own macho souls. Not easy, but worth trying.
Third, if the RSS also has a political agenda, it cannot afford to neglect half the voting population simply because they are women. Politically, that would be very counter-productive indeed. This, in turn, means that the RSS, instead of complaining about the BJP losing its uniqueness, must encourage it to become like the others.
Fourth, the female dimension may finally lead to the RSS to shed its communal agenda for the simple reason that the eventual sufferers of communal violence are women because it is the men who kill and maim themselves. For this reason, Hindu and Muslim women are likely to have much more empathy with each other than Hindu and Muslim men.
I doubt, however, that the RSS will take this suggestion seriously. After all, it wants to be unique.