Can Bhagwat usher Glasnost in the RSS?
Many commentators have taken RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s recent pro-Muslim and proCongress comments with a pinch of salt and rightly so, some, however, call it a watershed event. Coming days will tell whether the Sangh is attempting an image makeover in sync with the changing times or Bhagwat is playing mind games to breakdown taboos about the RSS and amplify its acceptability among the Muslims and liberal, secular Indians. Or, is it that a civilisational clash is brewing in the Sangh; a clash of ideas between the hardliners and pro-change leaders, a la Vajpayee-Advani syndrome in the RSS?
Bhagwat’s speech at the three-day RSS lecture series event would have gone unnoticed but for his comments “Hindu Rashtra does not mean it has no place for Muslims; the day it is said that Muslims are unwanted here, the concept of Hindutva will cease to exist”. Even more intriguing, he chose not to mention MS Golwalkar, the second and longest-serving Sarsanghachalak and a Muslim-Congress baiter, in his speech.
In a veiled snub to PM Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, he counselled against using jargons like Congress-mukt (free) India. Puncturing Golwalkar’s accusation that the Congress was founded by the British to undercut growing nationalism in India, Bhagwat lauded the Grand Old Party for initiating the freedom struggle.”Congress played a big role in the freedom struggle and gave India many great personalities. Some of those people are still our guiding force.” He also underlined his respect for the Indian Constitution. Nevertheless, his dogged espousal of Ram temple cause stuck out like a sore thumb in an otherwise smart PR exercise. His cerebral, but enigmatic progression in the RSS echo system has left many bedazzled. In the past month, he meant different things (Machiavelli to Gorbachev) to different people.
Even as the media and the political class were trying to dissect “Bhagwat-ism”, a euphoric Ram Madhav, BJP national general secretary and Sangh’s point man in the government, went two steps ahead terming Bhagwat’s reformist zeal as “Glasnost” (openness) moment for the RSS. In a signed article in the Indian Express on September 25, Madhav drew a parallel between former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika (restructuring) and Bhagwat’s “refreshingly new and open stand”. Madhav, apparently, is trying to reassure doubting Thomases of Bhagwat’s sincerity in effecting reforms.
Over the years, Madhav played crucial behind-thescene roles to mainstream RSS in India and abroad with some success. He was appointed key interlocutor between the BJP, government and the RSS and he significantly contributed to BJP’s victory in the red bastion of Tripura and helped the party make inroads into Nagaland and Meghalaya; he helped stitch up the aborted PDP-BJP coalition in J&K.
Interestingly, within two days of Madhav’s Glasnost moment, Sangh ideologue and Rajya Sabha member Rakesh Sinha chose another national daily to contradict him. In an interview to the Times of India, Sinha said the words “glasnost” and “perestroika” are “inappropriate terms” for RSS. In a quirky reversal of logic, he said “Bhagwat has compelled critics to apply glasnost and perestroika to their own thought process.” And he went on: “Tragically, some people still try to understand Indian institutions and indigenous mode of transformations from a European prism”. It is not clear if he was referring to Madhav.
As if intuitively anticipating contrarian positions like that of Sinha, Madhav had in his editorial stated that “Some insiders may insist that there is nothing new in what Bhagwat had said... But there always were two parallel streaks in the organisation. An enigma always surrounded its thinking. Bhagwat decided to shatter that enigma... This is not an easy transition” and that “driving home the new thinking within the rank and file of the organisation, requires no less than a Perestroika – restructuring. Bhagwat’s challenge lies in that.”
Sangh watchers like Walter K Andersen, co-author of “The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism”, also talked about the two parallel streaks in the RSS and some sort of tension is brewing in the organisation. In an interview to the Economic Times three years ago, he said some people still subscribed to the older view represented by Golwalkar that the Sangh should remain a “character building” institution and that “politics stained your character and weakened your moral being”. Whereas today, the RSS and its leadership is much more activist oriented with a more practical approach to issues. “Involvement and politicisation is a major trend within the organisation and it creates a certain kind of tensions in the structure,” he said.
Soon after he took charge as RSS chief in 2009 and exasperated with the continued stasis in the BJP, Bhagwat suggested that the BJP undergo chemotherapy. The party accepted Dr Bhagwat’s advice and with generous help from Nagpur, it was able to dislodge the UPA II government in 2014. Addressing a “Pratinidhi Sabha” meeting in 2014 in Bengaluru, Bhagwat said the RSS is not supposed to chant “NaMo-NaMo”...we are not in politics, it is not our job...we must work with an eye on our target.” He then added: “The question is not who should form the government next. The bigger question is who should not form the next government.” His loaded statement was construed as aimed at Modi’s cheerleaders also.
Bhagwat has emerged more pragmatic than his predecessors. Downplaying the “swadeshi” component, the RSS has become business friendly. Late PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee had to face stiff opposition to disinvestment and FDI from Nagpur. Then chief KS Sudarshan had unleashed pariwar affiliates such as the SJM, BMS and BKS on Vajpayee squeezing his government’s reform agenda. If the Sangh had been totally at odds with the western model of economic growth swayed by the World Bank and the IMF, it’s no longer so. Even as it embraces the reform agenda, the RSS should shed its cultural conservatism and halt the sectarian campaign lest Glasnost and Perestroika will have no meaning.