People's Democracy

Sitaram Yechury

WITH the appointment of RSS pracharaks Narendra Modi and Bhagat Singh Koshyari as the chief ministers of Gujarat and Uttaranchal respectively, the RSS has reasserted the fact that the BJP is nothing else but its political wing. Almost simultaneously, the BJP president appointed RSS pracharaks to key organisational positions, violating the norms held so far by the BJP that only members of its national executive would be made office-bearers. All the four new office-bearers were not the members of this executive.

These moves coincide with the fanfare of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of Bharatiya Jan Sangh and its later incarnate, the BJP. In the post-Emergency period in the seventies, the RSS had maintained that it had dissolved its political wing, Jana Sangh, and joined the Janata Party. That it was a move to hoodwink the people and gain political respectability was then exposed on the "dual membership" issue. It is because of RSS men’s insistence on maintaining their dual membership (of both the Janata Party and RSS) that the first non-Congress government, that came to office as a result of the struggle against Emergency, collapsed. Thus it was the RSS that paved the way for the return of the Congress. Today, by its own admission, the BJP traces its political history back to the formation of the Jana Sangh in 1951.

The circumstances leading to the formation of the Jana Sangh need to be recapitulated to understand the perfidy that the RSS continues to indulge in. Following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the RSS was banned for its complicity in the murder. Then through a series of deceitful compromises with the Nehru government, the RSS worked for the withdrawal of the ban, in return offering the assurance that it would not participate in the country's politics. Thus was coined the term "cultural organisation" to define the RSS. However, it was seeking fresh avenues to continue its political role.

Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, who was earlier a member of the Nehru cabinet, had resigned by then, and was planning to set up a new political party. It was at this juncture, in 1951, that the RSS sent its leading pracharaks to assist Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. Those who were sent to him were the late Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Atal Behari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani and Sundar Singh Bhandari. Through these efforts was formed the Jan Sangh in 1951.

For full five decades, thus, the RSS maintained a pernicious duplicity in claiming itself to be a "selfless cultural organisation." But by its own actions today, it has reconfirmed that it is the boss and is actually ruling the country through this government headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee. This reassertion of the RSS in the functioning of the BJP, both as an organisation and as a leader of this NDA government, is accompanied by a reassertion of its ideological positions and philosophical foundations.

In his customary Vijayadashmi Day speech, RSS supremo Sudarshan has laboriously pontificated on the pernicious RSS vision of a "Hindu Rashtra." This is a vision that negates all the fundamental foundations of the secular democratic republic that the Indian people built after independence. This is a vision that is not merely communal and anti-secular but one that does not permit even ordinary citizens’ rights to the religious minorities. This is a vision that adulates Adolf Hitler, his fascistic objectives and methodology and, thus, undermines the very essence of democracy by advocating authoritarianism. This is a vision that negates the entire syncretic civilisational ethos and the advance of India and its people.

Mr Sudarshan's harangue, unfolding such a vision this year, is accompanied by an unsubstantiated, vituperative diatribe against the communists to justify the current communalisation of Indian history and education. Not only is India's history being distorted, elementary norms of honesty are being thrown to the winds in order to justify this nefarious design.

Distorting India's history and rewriting it is crucial for the RSS to establish that the Aryans were the original inhabitants of India. For, if the Aryans came to India from elsewhere, as adduced by voluminous historical evidence, then the legitimacy for the RSS to seek the monopoly claim to India as their original land ceases. Their venomous campaign of religious minorities being foreigners, then, just collapses. It will then be seen that others, including Muslims and Christians, came to India and adopted it as their homeland, just like the Aryans did. It is precisely with the same objective that the RSS describes the tribal population of our country as vanavasis, as opposed to the accepted term adivasis. The later means original inhabitants while the former means forest-dwellers. The RSS cannot accept the tribals as original inhabitants, as this again would mean that the Aryans came into this country later, from outside!

The entire effort of the RSS in the sphere of education today is, apart from generating hate and distrust against religious minorities, to reconstruct Indian history to ‘prove’ that India is the original home of the Aryans. It matters little to them that Hitler and his "race pride" laid the foundations of fascism and its consequent crimes against humanity. Given their way, the RSS would proudly adopt Hitler as an Aryan! This is the objective of the current exercise of communalisation of Indian history and education system.

Simultaneously, utilising the international developments and the US war against Afghanistan, the RSS has whipped up its communal offensive targeting the religious minorities. It seeks to raise the pitch, once again, on the issue of temple construction at the disputed site. It has clearly indicated that it will not wait for a judicial verdict on the pending cases concerning the title deed of the land in Ayodhya. It openly advocated violation of the law of the land. It organised the deliberate storming of the disputed area in the name of performing pooja. The RSS youth vandalised the Taj Mahal recently. The BJP-led governments at the centre and in Uttar Pradesh remained silent spectators, in fact acted as abettors.

Not to be left behind, the Shiv Sena supremo, Bal Thackeray, called upon the Hindus to adopt a more militant posture and echoed the RSS directive calling upon the Hindus to arm themselves. The RSS had instructed its members on Vijayadashmi Day to "get personal arms and keep them ready at home to deal with any situation."

Such stridency has had its immediate impact. Over 12 people have died in communal clashes in Malagaon in Maharashtra. Tension is palpably increasing in many other parts of the country. The Bajrang Dal has, for some time now, been giving arms training to its members. This is being done in public places and photographs have appeared in the media.

While patronising and encouraging such dangerous communal activity by the RSS and its affiliates, this Vajpayee government has displayed its characteristic brazen double standards and duplicity. In the name of fighting terrorism, it has invoked a draconian ordinance and immediately targeted the minority communities and some of their organisations. No doubt the scourge of terrorism has to be fought and eliminated. But this can be done only if there is commitment and determination to be equally merciless with all sorts of terrorist outfits that are operating in India.

Evidently, any action against terrorism cannot succeed if the government targets only one particular religious minority. For instance, following the attacks on Christians and the gruesome murder of Graham Staines and his two young sons, Vajpayee called for a national debate on religious conversion. He did not even pretend to assure the minorities that his government will protect them. On the contrary, the same government displays belligerence in decrying the activities of Islamic fundamentalist organisations. Islamic fundamentalism and Hindu communalism, or for that matter fundamentalisms of all religious varieties, feed on each other. It is the innocent people and the country that pay the price.

If India has to remain a secular democratic republic, if the Indian people have to play their due role in the world's civilisational advance, then this pernicious ideological project of a fascistic "Hindu Rashtra" must be defeated. Unless this is done, India, as we know of it today, will not be allowed to exist.

This is the danger the continuation of this Vajpayee government poses. It has given up all pretence, dropped all its "masks" and is brazenly implementing the RSS agenda. The role of the non-BJP NDA allies, to say the least, is pathetic. In their lust for power and anxiety to share the profits of office, they have abandoned not only values and morality but even their elementary patriotic duty to protect the secular democratic Indian republic from being destroyed. The current reassertion of the RSS and its overdrive to implement its agenda can be met and thwarted only by the reassertion of the collective will of our people to safeguard India's secular, democratic, republican foundations.