THE REAL FACE OF R.S.S. & B.J.P.

RSS was founded in 1925 by Dr. Hedgewar, once a Congressman. The RSS, as it was soon to be popularly known, was said to have its constitution, but one of the main charges against the RSS has been that the constitution has never been published. As it is known now it has many undemocratic features, and the most undemocratic one is that the leader is supreme and that he nominates his successor. After the murder of Gandhi end Godse’s alleged connection with the RSS, the organisation was banned. When the ban was lifted, the RSS was supposed to have a new constitution which was claimed dubiously to have been the old one. It was associated with communalism in the situation following Partition and with the increasing role it played openly and behind the scenes. This impression has been strengthened by its objective of Hindu Rashtra. The effort now to give it the name of Bharatiya culture has not removed apprehensions among Muslims and other minorities. Even with the constitutional term. “India that is Bharat”. Bharatiya culture, is suspect to be Hindu culture, and Hindu has now a communal connotation, though the word came from Sindhu, a name given to the land of the Indus by the Greeks and other foreigners. There are other charges against the RSS. It considers the saffron coloured flag of the Peshwas as the national flag. that its leaders mainly come from Pune & Nagpur, that it believes in Varnashrama Dharma while deluding dalits & adivasis, that it was apologetic about the Emergency, that the RSS can be considered fascist because of its constitution, its Feuhrer principle, and its record. Several of the communal riots continue to be attributed to it by its opponents. J.S. (now BJP) was started by Dr. Shyam Prasad Mukherjee, earlier of the Hindu Mahasabha, as a secular party opposed to the Congress. But it became identified with the RSS soon after this death and for a long time the association was close and undisputed. The JS needs the organisation of the RSS especially for elections, and whatever the explanations, they remain closely interlinked. If there are differences, they may be over the domination by leaders from Maharashtra and over the constitution of the RSS. BJP phenomenon was essentially a product of the Partition. Whatever the responsibility of fanaticism for the murder of Gandhi and for the communal killings, it exists as a force against secularism, occassionally assuming the attitude of fighting against over-secularism, THE TWO NATION THEORY: if the RSS is still opposed to a state of the conception of Gandhi and Nehru and does not accept that, in spite of Partition, India’s culture is composite, it can be considered a dan- ger to the unity of Indian society, based on many diversities. It cannot yet be easily decided whether Hindu communalism or Muslim communalism was more responsible for the distrust between the two major communities & the subsequent developments leading to the Partition and the orgies of communal violence. But it has to be admitted that majority communalism is the greater danger and that it is for the majority community to take the initiative to create confidence in the minority communities. Whatever appeal the RSS- Jana Sangh had to the Hindu mind after Partition, particularly in combating the Two Nation Theory, cannot be said to have been wholly lost. The Constitution contains many guarantees for the minority communities which have multiplied in various fields and are breeding a sense of grievance among Hindus who, divided into various communities like dalits and backward communities, are nursing new grievances in certain sectors that India has a small place for them. If this feeling be- comes real, it will help the RSS-BJP which can claim that if political parties try to cater to the minority sentiment to capture the minority vote, it is for it to uphold the cause of the Hindus and capture the the Hindu vote, The RSS-BJP’s fatal weakness is that it has no economic ap- peal. It has not bothered much about economic issues. Economic issues can become absorbing only in a secular atmosphere, Caste is still smothering class, and class is not emerging from caste. The broad struggle that has taken place leading to isolation of the RSS-BJP has for the moment smothered social and economic issues and the election will be fought more on political issues like democracy than on economic issues, though inflation is nearly destroying the economy and the present drought may lead to famine conditions. RSS INFILTRATION IN GOVT: Secret RSS documents narrate the extent of the RSS infiltration into various Govt. and semi-Govt. organisation education. social welfare and relief funds funneled to the RSS-led associations, pro-RSS textbooks pumped into the educational system and the face-lift given to the RSS image through official patronage and propaganda in the official media. The facts are proved by charts and tables. Chitpavan Brahmins are very tough. Deoras assisted by the Maharashtra group of the RSS and many from the powerful northern belt, has firmly advised them not to be afraid of either threats or political isolation. The RSS itself was born out of an atmosphere of threats and tensions: “we have faced worse they were told. “But the Guruji (Golwalker) had warned us 40 years back that we must be prepared for the worst”. He bluntly told them that the moment the RSS changed its character, style of functioning and ideals, it would lose its very existence. All that the Jana Sangh leaders could wrest from Nagpur was the assurance that the RSS leadership would con- sider certain minor changes without affecting its character in any way. (Courtesy: Link, Sept. 23-1979).