Degrees of legitimacy

Book review of RSS 360°: Demystifying Rashtriya Swamaysevak Sangh

RSS 360°: Demystifying Rashtriya Swamaysevak Sangh

Ratan Sharda

Bloomsbury

299 pages; Rs 499

When former president Pranab Mukherjee accepted the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) invitation to address their cadres in Nagpur on Thursday evening, he told them there was no question of his visiting or offering a floral tribute at the memorial of RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar located there. 

RSS 360°, by Ratan Sharda, mostly known for his frequent participation in raucous television debates, offers a hint why the RSS still insisted that the former president address their cadres.

It would also tell you that the RSS leadership is unlikely to have any bones to pick with the contents of Mr Mukherjee’s speech — even if he were to be harsh on them. 

The RSS, despite its recent successes at helping its political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), control the reins of the government at the Centre and most states, continues its search for legitimacy from the country’s intelligentsia.

Mr Sharda’s book and the invitation to Mr Mukherjee, a veteran Congress leader and a Bengali bhadralok, to address a key RSS event are part of this larger objective to reinvent the RSS as a force devoted towards social good, rather than an organisation of stick-wielding, potbellied men who indulge in rudimentary drills in the mornings and in poisoning the minds and hearts of Hindus against Muslims and Christians during elections.

Mr Sharda, helped by a long, laudatory foreword by Madhu Kishwar, has accomplished his objective although in what is a hurried job. At one place, while praising The Indian Express’ role during Emergency, Mr Sharda identifies G D Goenka as its founder-editor.

The initial part of the book comprises Mr Sharda’s experiences from the Emergency of 1975-76, which should help resolve some of his legitimacy issues within the Sangh Parivar, and burnish his credentials as a Johnny-come-lately RSS spokesperson.

Then there are copious details of the social work by Sangh Parivar and its affiliated outfits, and on the internal functioning of the RSS. The book has been marketed as an insider’s view. 

But to those well versed with Sangh Parivar literature, the book is mostly a translation in accessible English of RSS propaganda material brought out by its publishing arm, Suruchi Prakashan, in Hindi.

The real agenda of the book is obviously to somehow legitimise, in the face of significant evidence that proves otherwise, the RSS’ role during the independence movement. It also attempts to distance RSS from persistent allegations that it was involved in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and its cadres distributed sweets at the news. 

In some detail, and since this in the eyes of the RSS washed its sin of not participating in the freedom movement, Mr Sharda details the state persecution of its cadres during Emergency years. 

In fact, a persecution complex pervades RSS 360°.

Mr Sharda writes at length how nearly everyone has wronged the Hindus, and the RSS — Muslim invaders in medieval India who demolished temples, Christian missionaries converting Hindus, the “alien ideology” of communism and communist academics who have “rewritten history”, the Congress party that imprisoned the RSS cadres during Emergency, and the socialists who “used the RSS”.

Mr Sharda also claims that the RSS has been the standard-bearer of Hindu traditions. Typically, the RSS in recent years has tried to appropriate the work done by others to preserve and popularise yoga and other indigenous knowledge systems.

The truth is that the RSS, besotted with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, has modelled itself on early 20th century militias when Gandhians and others worked on looking at history from non-Marxist and non-British perspectives, and successive Congress governments in independent India took steps to preserve and popularise Indian crafts, culture and knowledge systems.  

Obviously, Mr Sharda’s book has no references to the controversial aspects of second RSS chief M S Golwalkar’s views on caste and religion or how the RSS not only opposed the Hindu Code Bill but still believes the proper place for Hindu women is inside the four walls of their homes.

Its consistent chest-beating about real and imagined atrocities perpetrated on Hindus doesn’t allow the RSS to appreciate the social reform movements within Hinduism, the early 19th century renaissance, the unique characteristics of Indian Islam and the contributions of men like Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, B R Ambedkar and others that helped India avoid the fate of so many of former colonies.

The RSS, and supporters like Mr Sharda, have something in common with Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Pakistan’s Islamists. In 1940, Jinnah said Islam was in danger, or “Islam khatre mein hai”. Islamists, 70 years later and after achieving a theocratic Pakistani state, continue to shout that slogan.

For the RSS, after four years of the Narendra Modi government, Hindus continue to be perennially in danger. Unfortunately, many Hindus do not see what turning away from modernity and towards a woolly-headed idea of a glorious past did to our neighbour. Mr Sharda should be congratulated for doing his bit towards constructing a Hindu Pakistan. Hopefully, Mr Mukherjee will speak to the RSS cadres of the inclusive nationalism of Tagore, and the dangers of pursuing the path shown by Golwalkar and Jinnah.