A brief study

When I interviewed Yashwant Sinha a few months ago for my research, he squarely blamed the RSS for his exit from the Vajpayee government as its one-time finance minister.

I was sceptical at the time of the RSS's grip over the BJP's leadership. This perception, however, evaporated in the face of the storm that rocked the BJP following LK Advani's verdict on MA Jinnah's secular orientation.

The RSS is neither a poor cousin of the BJP nor its widowed sister-in-law asking for compassionate treatment. On the relationship between the two, the reverse is increasingly becoming hard fact. Whether the political pundits appreciate it or not, the RSS has arrived as a political player in Indian politics with a bang""despite several official "bans" to restrict its growth.

Two of these bans could have spelt disaster for the organisation: the first in 1948-50, after Gandhi's assassination by Nathuram Godse, and the other during the Emergency.

But they did not. What is subtly embedded in the tangled story of its survival and growth is a very elaborate set of facts. These can, with brief understanding, enable an exploration of the substantive connotations to modern India and its unfolding predicament.

For this purpose, Christophe Jaffrelot's edited book The Sangh Parivar: A Reader is definitely a meaningful starting point.

The most significant departure in the RSS's public posture from the norm in recent years has been its decision to deal with the hard tools of state power, which entails control of the BJP.

After pretending for years that it is a "cultural organisation", it has now chosen to be upfront about its political identity. This shift in its strategy has profound implications for the politics of the Hindu Right.

Yet, there are not many comprehensive academic research studies done on the RSS. The most talked-about book even today on this subject is jointly authored by W Anderson and SD Damle, titled The Brotherhood in Saffron. A chapter of this book finds place in this selection too.

Jaffrelot has authored several books on the Hindu Right, and has built up a formidable reputation as a major European mind engaged in South Asian politics.

Conventionally, an edited book is one in which several contributors are invited to tackle different parts of its central puzzle. This book is a deviation because this is a collection of articles that were published some decades ago. That is why the book is called "A Reader".

One striking peculiarity of the book is that it has given extra space to a few of the contributors. Of all contributions, historian Tanika Sarkar has three, Jaffrelot himself has five (besides the introduction), Hansen has three, and the other nine authors have just one each.

Why do these three writers dominate the space? Two possible answers suggest themselves: one would accuse the author of extending favouritism to these authors, and the other could be paucity of high-quality research on the RSS.

If the first is true, the editor should cure himself of what could seem like a French bias. If the second is correct, the agenda setters for research on Indian politics have some serious questions to ask themselves. Either way, there exists a clear problem.

How did the RSS manage to outwit India's supposedly secular state? It made inroads into various strata of Indian society by setting up specific organisations to appeal to disparate social clusters while pretending to be a cultural entity.

For instance, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti addresses women and offers its own brand of political activism. One particular modus operandi becomes apparent in the contributions made individually by Tanika Sarkar, Paula Bachetta and Hansen, and that is the role of "gender struggle": how the Samiti offers a "liberation" that serves to re-institute the old patriarchy. Its support of "the chaste woman" covertly substitutes for and ultimately displaces a demand for equal rights.

The book has very well-researched chapters on the RSS's foreign network, particularly the way it targets non-resident Indians, its contribution to the Swadeshi movement, its role in its labour unit, Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh, and its relationship with parties like the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

Given the systematic way in which multiple constituencies of the RSS have been covered for analysis, this book can be celebrated as a major contribution to the world of scholarship on India's religious Right. THE SANGH PARIVAR
A READER

Edited by Christophe Jaffrelot
Oxford University Press
Price: Rs 675; Pages: 445