'Old' RSS through a 'new' lens

Book review of Republic of Hindutva: How the Sangh is Reshaping Indian Democracy

In 1987, when former US State Department official Walter Andersen co-authored a seminal book with Shridhar Damle titled The Brotherhood in Saffron, few practitioners of Indian politics and its analyses gave much thought to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates. The book stood apart from hagiographic biographies and all-endorsing essays written by either “insiders” or people within the Hindu nationalistic ecosystem. During those year, non-supporters viewed the RSS with suspicion for its leaders’ alleged role in Mahatma Gandhi's assassination or whenever inquisitions were conducted after communal riots, a regular feature of Indian politics.

Over the years, the RSS and its affiliates, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, gained in socio-political acceptability and have since 2014 acquired a near stranglehold over the Indian polity. In this period, the number of books on various dimensions of the RSS-BJP-Modi dynamic expanded manifold. Messrs Andersen and Damle returned with a significantly larger tome in 2018, followed by several others, including by this writer. This demonstrates space, as well as necessity, for more varied analyses of the Sangh Parivar. This book promised to add to the available literature, although the title was intriguing given that Prime Minister Narendra Modi swears by the “old” Republic and its principal structures (Parliament, for instance).

The author is a noted scholar of the social processes of politics and individuals who shaped them. His biography of Kanshiram, founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party, was well-received, reviewed in this paper by me. Over the past seven years he has written several articles analysing and explaining the BJP's engagement with communities that were not previously part of the party's social base. No author writing on the Sangh Parivar can not take sides. Badri Narayan attempts to retain academic neutrality despite employing superlative language about the newness in the saffron fraternity’s politics.

For instance, in the chapter on how the RSS has forged “new mobilisational consciousness” (sic), the author argues against the assumption that the Sangh Parivar's politics often triggered riots. He seeks to demonstrate with field work and "interviews and interactions with the RSS cadres and pracharaks" that "the new RSS, in a break from its old radical image, does not want to create communal tensions in society." When a social scientist bases conclusions on the testimony of the “accused”, so to speak, the assessment becomes flawed.

Republic of Hindutva: How the Sangh is Reshaping Indian Democracy

Author: Badri Narayan

Publisher: Penguin

Price: Rs 499; Pages: 240

The author is most comfortable detailing how the RSS and its affiliates have successfully drawn new social groups such as “Dalits, tribal and minorities” (sic) to its ranks. His fundamental assumption is that this initiative is of recent vintage and has met with success only post-2014. He glosses over the efforts made over decades — for instance, he does not note the initiatives in this direction since the mid-1970s. Balasaheb Deoras, who became the sarsanghchalak in 1973, first articulated the need for “Hindu consolidation”. He had disagreed with his predecessor M S Golwalkar's defence of the caste order, and after assuming leadership argued that the RSS needed to believe that not “all that is old is gold”. The decision to get a Dalit activist to perform shilanyas (foundation stone-laying ceremony) at Ayodhya in 1989 was a pointer to this strategy.

The author listed communities whose gods are now celebrated, their anniversaries commemorated by the RSS-BJP. But he has not probed why savarn or upper caste communities among the BJP's supporters have not embraced these “peripheral”' deities. It would have been worthwhile to examine the contradiction between the BJP's aggressive push of the Ram-based Hindutva narrative and embracing marginal Hindu communities. As demonstrated in West Bengal during the recent elections, when the BJP made a concerted bid to woo communities like Rajbanshis and Matuas, this strategy does not always pay dividends.

Whether he is examining RSS's engagement with marginalised castes, the internal dynamic within the Parivar or the organisation's role in politics and elections, the author harps on the "new RSS". But it is unclear where the newness lies because much of what is cited as examples of inventiveness is old hat. The author faces the handicap of being taken in by cosmetic assertions or initiatives. He claims the RSS has "assimilated within it the new logic and arguments produced by democracy and modernity alongside traditional Hindu and religious language."

Scholars writing on the RSS and affiliates must be aware that these organisations speak in multiple voices. Covid-19 has been all about wasted opportunity as far as raising the “scientific temper” of society. Even over vaccines and preventive medicines, the support to quack-businesses shows that, at heart, the RSS remains as obscurantist as ever. If there is anything new, it is the sheer hunger for political power within RSS that has diminished its position within the Parivar. This, however, remains unexamined.

(The reviewer is an NCR-based author and journalist. His books include The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right and Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times. He tweets at @NilanjanUdwin)