OF INFORMATION AND CONTEXT
A look at how the RSS has manoeuvred itself into contemporary India
This is an updated version of a “study” of the RSS published in 1987. The content has been updated to take the last 30 years into account, including the rise of Narendra Modi as prime minister as well as recent events up to 2018.
If you are completely ignorant about what the Nagpur-based Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh stands for and does, then perhaps this inside view is for you. It skims through the history of the RSS, its ideology, the people who made it and who changed it. However, if you seek a detailed view into how and why it thinks and functions the way it does, you will not find it here. The RSS, regardless of the current popularity of Modi and the political success of the Bharatiya Janata Party, stands in a peculiar place in the Indian political situation. It did not take part in the last century’s most seminal event, the struggle for freedom from British colonial rule. It focused its attention on the “protection” of Hindus against “outsiders” like Muslims and Christians. Its founders admired Adolf Hitler largely because of his treatment of Jews and that is why Mein Kampf remains a bestseller in India today. The “Hindutva” idea of VD Savarkar, of militant Hinduism, filtered into the RSS ideology. It positioned itself as a “cultural” organisation and perhaps truly believed that, because its entry into politics came a few years after Indian Independence and also through associate organisations.
The reader will find none of this in this book. Instead, there is a fascinating lack of attempt to place the RSS in the context of a democratic India with a Constitution. This updated version will provide fairly interesting insights into how the RSS has manoeuvred itself into contemporary India regardless of its arcane ideas. But it will brush over the consequences of the RSS’s ideas, even if it mentions the factors which have triggered violence This makes the RSS. There is information on how and why it has changed with the times. But there is no analysis of the effects of that change or of what the RSS means to the India which does not believe in its regressive ideas. A lot of attention is paid to the success of the government of Narendra Modi and the RSS role in that. But there is no more insight than what any regular reader of newspapers would know. There is no critique of any sort. But even without that, the reader cannot gauge exactly how the Modi government and the RSS feel about actions of the VHP and Bajrang Dal and other militant affiliates. Therefore, in the discussion of “ghar wapsi” of Muslims and Christians into Hinduism or of “love jihad”, the breaking up of inter-religious romances, there is no mention of the illegality of these actions or the assault on people’s civil liberties or of intrusion into personal space. It is as if, for the writers, the RSS exists in its special universe untouched by Indian law or society.
Therefore, if the attitude to Muslims are restricted to the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, the murderous acts of “cow protectors” are restricted to a few throwaway sentences about aggressive acts by “outliers” on the Right. The inference that the RSS cannot control its associates is not analysed. The RSS idea that all Indians are Hindus and what this means for the Constitutional rights of other religions is never on the radar. Similarly, when the Gujarat riots of 2002 are mentioned it is temple at Ayodhya is discussed, we get a potted history of the destruction of the Babri Masjid and not one word about the riots that took place as a result. At this point, it is clear that A View to the Inside is a whitewash.
The most interesting chapter is on the debate within the Sangh Parivar on “Economic Self-Sufficiency”. The conflict between the BJP’s ideas of global capitalism and the more socialist and India-centric notions of the RSS and its affiliates is laid out for the reader. Once again, there is no deep discussion. The biggest criticism of this book would be that the functioning of branches of the RSS are not touched on at all. The VHP, SJM, BMS, Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini, ABVP are barely mentioned. It would have been interesting to see how these arms function. Even the formation of the BJP and its close association with the RSS is out of the writers’ purview. With the use of newspaper articles, the writers have brought the book up-to-date as it were. The chapter on China, therefore, stands as a mix of confused nationalism and politics, a distraction even from an important discussion on how the RSS can impact India’s foreign policy, as a remote control for any BJP-led government. For insight into the RSS, this book is a disappointment. Perhaps its biggest value is in the tables in the appendix, which explain the hierarchical structure of this secretive organisation.