RSS split with BJP?

by A.G. NOORANI*

*The author is an eminent Indian scholar and an expert on constitutional issues.

Abstract

In 2013 it was the RSS which selected Modi as its Prime Ministerial favourite. He lived up to its faith in him. Add to the RSS’ endeavours the powerful factor of official support…

The split in the Sangh Parivar, the Hindutva family comprising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been often talked about but the divorce never materialized. The reason is simple: the BJP cannot divorce the RSS. It is neither a marriage nor a public concubinage. The BJP, like the Jan Sangh, is a creation of the RSS, its Political Wing. It is tightly controlled by the RSS which sends its officers to the BJP to keep it in check, provides money and, crucially, its cadres, especially during elections.

The RSS removed two Presidents from the Jan Sangh and one from the BJP. L.K. Advani was removed for the comments he wrote on the Visitors’ Book at the mausoleum of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah on 4 June 2005. It read: “There are many people who leave an inerasable stamp on history. But there are very few who actually create history. Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one such rare individual. In his early years, Sarojini Naidu, a leading luminary of India’s freedom struggle, described Jinnah as an ‘Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’. His address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11 August 1947 is a classic; a forceful espousal of a secular state in which every citizen would be free to practice his own religion but the State shall make no distinction between one citizen and another on the grounds of faith. My respectful homage to this great man.” (L.K. Advani; My Country, My Life; p. 813). This, it can be revealed, was written on the advice of a Muslim aide of his to burnish his master’s image in Pakistan and among moderates in India; especially the Muslims. This, too clever by half, plan backfired. The RSS began demanding his scalp shortly after his return to India. He was isolated. Not one colleague defended him. He went in sack cloth and ashes to the RSS’ office at Jhandewalan in New Delhi. The RSS’ spokesman Ram Madhav revealed the disquiet on 17 July 2005. Ram Madhav moved to the BJP as its General Secretary. (In this capacity he negotiated the Kashmir accord with the PDP’s Haseeb A. Drabu on which rested the PDP-BJP coalition Government set up in 2014. It was for the first time that the RSS’ political wing (powerful in Jammu) gained a foothold in Kashmir. History will never forgive the PDP leaders for this act of treason to their own people – Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, daughter Mehbooba, aide Naeem Akhtar, Muzaffar Hussein Beigh and Haseb Drabu. The BJP’s crime of 5 August 2019 – murder of Kashmir’s Statehood and autonomy – would not have been possible without the complicity of these adventures.).

Advani was forced to resign. He said, on 18 September 2005, at the concluding session of the BJP’s National Executive meeting at Chennai, “From time to time, and depending on the issue at hand, the BJP leadership has had no hesitation in consulting the RSS functionaries. After such consultations, the party takes its own independent decisions. Some of these decisions may differ – and have indeed differed – from the stated position of the RSS and certain constituents of the Sangh Parivar.

“But lately an impression has gained ground that no political or organizational decision can be taken without the consent of the RSS functionaries. This perception, we hold, will do no good either to the party or to the RSS. The RSS too must be concerned that such a perception will dwarf its greater mission of man-making and nation-building. Both the RSS and the BJP must consciously exert to dispel this impression.” He announced that he would demit the office of the BJP’s President.

Advani thrice narrowly missed becoming India’s Prime Minister in 1996, 2004 and 2014 for which he never forgave Atal Behari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi, respectively. Modi sent him into hibernation where he now dwells.

If this is what the RSS can do to one of the founding members of the Jan Sangh and BJP, President of each, one can well size up the equation between the RSS and the BJP. As Narendra Modi has discovered rather belatedly, the RSS does not like any member of the BJP to grow bigger than his boots and acquire a political persona of independence. That explains the ripples created recently by its mild expressions of disquiet.

The RSS was not amused to see Narendra Modi build up a personality cult from the very outset. It now had its own man in power who could do it many favours and was also deeply committed to its ideology of hate. But the RSS soon became receptive of its cadres’ warning that the BJP was losing ground. It put forth its second-in-Command, Suresh Joshi (“Bhaiyyaji”) to sound the alarm on 10 February 2020 by distancing the Hindu Community at large from the BJP. The BJP, he asserted, was not “synonymous” with the Hindu community; implying clearly that it was the RSS which alone could speak on the Hindus’ behalf. What he left unsaid was that the RSS can well choose or even create a different political instrument. This was said earlier too in 1981, when the RSS’ Nana Deshmukh advocated support for the Congress. It is not an impossibility. Joshi pointedly cited the example of Durga Pooja pandals being headed by members of the then ruling party in West Bengal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

This warning to the BJP was coupled with a clear overture to others – we are ready and willing to have a deal with you as well. On 26 February 2002 the RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat urged the members to widen the sphere of their activities among the people regardless of religion, caste, language or region.

The RSS’ organ, an English weekly, Organiser, came out with a scathing account by its editor Prafulla Ketkar on the BJP soon after its electoral debacle in Delhi. He wrote that Narendra Modi or his Man Friday Amit Shah “cannot always help out” in elections to the State Assemblies. (Read: Only the RSS can). All ambiguity was shed with this explicit censure: “The RSS and the BJP have always believed that the organization is more important than the leader. But in the current BJP most people (i.e. Modi and Shah) feel that only Modi and Shah can win them elections. This is a very bad trend.”

The RSS will keep a close eye on this trend. The BJP and Modi himself will silently chafe at the RSS’ tightening of the screws. The true character of the RSS emerges from an affidavit filed in Court on 6 March 1948 by two of its most senior officials. One was its General Secretary Rajendra Singh who was its supremo during the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992. The other was the brother of the then supremo M.D. Deoras.

What both stated in a solemn document before the District Judge, Nagpur is a good revelation of the RSS’ true character: They frankly said that the “third important feature of the Constitution is its flexibility as provided in Art. 25(b) and (c) under which the RSS can modify or amend the Constitution by following the procedure provided. In this behalf it would be borne in mind that this right or power of amendment or modification specifically reserved by the R.S.S. Organisation is not restricted to a few clauses. As such the organization can add to, amend, alter, abridge, and delete any of (the)clauses. In fact this right has been exercised from time to time extends to even changing aims and objects, policy. The Fourth feature is aims [and] objects are distinguished from policy by providing two independent clauses in the Constitution. It is common knowledge that policy is not a permanent feature and changes or is changed from time to time. It is evident that this clause was included in the constitution so as to protect the organization from the misconceived allegations and charges. That is why faith in evolution and peaceful and legitimate means is expressed. So also tolerance towards all [faiths]. So far as politics is concerned it is made clear that it does not indulge in politics i.e. day to day politics though Sangh has a political philosophy within its wide sweep of cultural work. It is possible for Sangh to change this policy and even participate in politics.”

Why, then, did it not enter politics and choose instead to set up a political party? The genesis lies in the ban imposed on it in 1948 following Gandhi’s assassination. It was lifted in 1948 after its new Constitution was approved by the Government of India coupled with assurances. To evade the ban the RSS floated a new organization comprising of students, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP), who function as its storm troopers.

But, it needed a political front in the guise of a political party. By that time the former Hindu Mahasabha leader Shyama Prasad Mookerji had resigned from the Nehru Cabinet in protest at the Nehru-Liaquat Ali Khan Pact on minorities in April 1950. He began looking around for avenues for self-promotion V.D. Savarkar had no use for him. Mookerji struck a deal with the RSS chief released from jail. The RSS would provide the muscle, the cadres and officials; Mookerjee would provide political respectability. Both the RSS and he agreed on the ideology.

We have an authoritative statement of the accord from Balraj Madhok who participated in the talks. “They [RSS men] had, therefore, begun to feel the urgent need of a political organisation which could reflect the ideology and ideas of the RSS in the political sphere and should, therefore, be able to command the willing allegiance of the RSS workers and supporters. This need, it was felt, would become more pressing after the introduction of adult franchise in the country….

“Dr. Mookerji was aware of this trend of thought in the RSS circles. He knew that the attitude of the RSS which drew its main strength and sustenance from the lower middle and working classes, towards social and economic problems of the country could not be anything but reactionary. The RSS approach to the problems of culture, nationalism, and partition had his fullest approval. He, therefore, instinctively felt that any political organization sponsored by, or enjoying the confidence of the RSS could surely and speedily become such a force in the political life of the country as may command his fullest allegiance and also succeed in mobilizing and consolidating the non-Congress and non-Communist nationalist public opinion into an effective opposition. But the RSS leadership was not yet clear in its mind about the shape and character of the political party to which it could lend its support and the role it would have to play in bringing it into existence.”

There was no disagreement on ideology. “The Muslim problem, he was convinced, could be solved in free India, once for all, if their outlook on cultural, social and political problems of the country was Hinduised or nationalized while leaving them free, in keeping with the Hindu tradition of absolute tolerance, to carry on their religion and way of worship as they pleased.” On the name, Mookerjee adopted a subterfuge. He disapproved of ‘Hindu Rashtriya’ for tactical reasons.

Madhok revealed that: “In the discussion of the day the approach of the proposed political party to the term ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and its political, social and cultural implications figured prominently. Some of the persons present argued that though they were in full agreement with the concept of ‘Hindu Rashtra’, yet they would not like it to be incorporated or used in the objectives of the proposed party because that might create misunderstanding in the minds of some people. That provoked Dr. Mookerji who gave a convincing exposition of the concept of ‘Hindu Rashtra’ as he understood it. He explained that the British had deliberately given a narrow sectarian connotation to the word Hindu for their imperialistic ends and the Congress leaders had played their game in denouncing everything Hindu as communal.

“It should be the duty of the new organization, he pleaded, to dispel these misconceptions and make the world familiar with the broad national import of the word Hindu, the geographical and historical name of the people of Hindustan. ‘Hindu Rashtra’, he argued, was a noble concept. It brought out the basic oneness and the common tradition of all the different sects and creeds of India. It did not denote any particular religion but a commonwealth of all the religions and sects of the country because, whatever be the way of worship of any particular individual, he could not, if he was to be a national of India, cut himself as under from the common cultural and historical traditions of the country. As such it is not, and never was, a communal or narrow concept. Those, he argued, who were scared away by the very word Hindu could not be depended upon for safeguarding the cultural and territorial heritage of the country.”

Mookerji, as an astute tactician, resorted to a subterfuge: “But he was opposed to the word being imposed on those who were not, for the time being, prepared to accept it. He, therefore, suggested that the words Bharatiya and Indian (be used), which are synonyms of the word Hindu but are more acceptable to those under the influence of West.”

The BJP was set up in October 1951. Two of its Presidents, M.C. Sharma and founder Balraj Madhok were thrown out of office at the RSS’ insistence. During the emergency the RSS sought to forge a front with Indira Gandhi. Golwalkar wrote grovellingly to her. She was unmoved.

During the emergency four opposition parties discussed plans to form a united party. They met in New Delhi on 8 July 1976. The top leader Charan Singh raised the RSS issue. The minutes read: “4(a) Ch. Charan Singh raised the question of the RSS. He stated his firm belief that no RSS volunteer can join the New Party and no member of the New Party can join the RSS. It was a question of dual membership which could not be allowed and there should be no scope in the New Party for surreptitious work. (b) Shri Tyagi said that the New Party can lay down whatever conditions it sees fit. Currently the RSS was banned and it stood dissolved.”

When the emergency was lifted in March 1977 the RSS reneged. It decided to retain its character, policies and its hold on the Jan Sangh. The four parties: the Congress dissidents, Socialists, Charan Singh’s Lok Dal and the Jan Sangh dissolved themselves to form a united Janata Party which governed at the Centre from 1977-1979. But the Party broke up inter alia on the issue of the dual membership of its Jan Sangh members with the RSS. They formed a new party in 1980 and played a fraud on the people.

The honest course was to revive the Jan Sangh. But it had acquired a bad reputation for its open Hinduite ideology and complicity in anti-Muslim riots. They decided to borrow the plumes of the Janata Party and named their outfit the Bharatiya Janata Party with “Gandhian socialism” as its credo.

The RSS was not pleased. The BJP’s leaders were Vajpayee and Advani. It punished the BJP by refusing to support it in the 1984 elections when large sections supported Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress. The BJP won a mere 2 seats in the Lok Sabha.

Defeated and demoralized it began to shed the plumage of Gandhism and to become its old Jan Sangh self with the RSS’ approval. Rajiv Gandhi’s opening of the locks to the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in the Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh on 1 February 1986 gave the BJP a shot in the arm. The Babri Masjid issue was revived. The BJP prospered.

Immediately on the passing of the Palampur resolution on Ayodhya on 11 June 1989, Advani said, ‘I am sure it will translate into votes.’ On 3 December 1989, after the general elections, he expressed satisfaction that the issue had contributed to the BJP’s success. On 24 February 1991, as India teetered towards another election, he was confident that the issue would ‘influence the electoral verdict in favour of the BJP’. On 18 June 1991 he made the pathetic confession: “Had I not played the Ram factor effectively, I would have definitely lost from the New Delhi constituency.” Shortly after the demolition of the Babri Mosque on 6 December 1992, and another wave of carnage that came in its train, Advani wrote that if the Muslims were to identify themselves with the concept of Hindutva there would not be any reason for riots to take place (Times of India; 30 January 1993). In July 1992, he argued in the Lok Sabha Speaker’s chamber: “You must recognize the fact that from two seats in Parliament in 1985 we have come to 117 seats in 1991. This has happened primarily because we took up this issue [Ayodhya].” Behind the BJP’s religio-cultural rhetoric, however, there has always been cold political calculation. BJP leader Sushma Swaraj ripped apart this pretence in Bhopal on 14 April 2000, when she admitted that the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was “purely political in nature and had nothing to do with religion”. (The Telegraph; 16 April 2000).

We need not trace the fate of the Babri Masjid from its demolition on 6 December 1992 to 9 November 2019 when the Supreme Court of India decided the cases in favour of the Hindus. What we are concerned about here is that despite the BJP leaders’ surrender to the RSS in the mid-eighties the RSS was not appeased. It continued to rivet its control over its political progeny. The number of swayamsevaks (cadres) swelled; so did the number of its shakhas (local branches).

There has been no dilution in any of the formulations since Savarkar’s Hindutva in 1925. In the overall framework, there are no minorities, Hindu culture is India’s culture, the minorities can pray as they like provided they regard themselves as Hindus, adopt Hindu religion (‘culture’) and Hindu names. Since the minorities do not entertain these demands, ghar wapsi, conversion miscalled ‘reconversion’, is the only way out. Finally, State power will be used gradually in aid of the programme. Its programme leaves the RSS no room for compromise or retreat. On the contrary its ambitions have grown. Deoras said at Kalyani on 25 January 1992 that the day was not far off when Hinduism would spread to other parts of the world. All over the world people would be content if they accepted Hindu philosophy and the Hindu way of life.

These themes were voiced since 1925 and continue to be voiced even now in 2020. Deoras also insisted that Hinduism is the only viable alternative in the wake of phenomenal changes all over the world. Deoras unfurled the saffron flag. The general secretary H.V. Seshadri had filled the details on ‘Hindu resurgence’ for the Bengali audience. Hinduism is not a particular religion or mode of worship. “Instead, it is whole gamut of eternal human values and the concept of Hindu rashtra is entirely cultural and it comprises all those who adore their country as their motherland.”

Hitler and Mussolini did not cover fascism under a ‘spiritual’ or ‘cultural’ garb. The RSS and the BJP had hit a rock by 1985-86. The slogan of ‘Gandhian socialism’ had to be dropped. The cadres yearned for the Jana Sangh. Capture and demolition of the Babri Masjid infused life. The RSS’s spear arm, the VHP, was founded in 1964. It was set to work in the mid-eighties. That was to be symbolic Hindu dominance.

The BJP ruled at the Centre from 1998 to 2004 with A.B. Vajpayee as Prime Minister. The anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 gave it added clout in the eyes of the RSS. Narendra Modi emerged as the most popular leader and became Prime Minister in 2014 to Advani’s chagrin.

During this entire phase the RSS was not inactive. It watched the power play in the ranks of the BJP but continued strengthening its hold over the BJP and making its ideology of Hindutva more virulent. The BJP complied. The RSS’ message to its cadres was “100 per cent voting in the interests of Hindus”. The BJP prospered; the RSS grew more powerful.

In 2013 it was the RSS which selected Modi as its Prime Ministerial favourite. He lived up to its faith in him. Add to the RSS’ endeavours the powerful factor of official support. It is a successful marriage of convenience that neither the RSS nor its progeny the BJP wants to sever.

Now, in 2020, no one in his right mind entertains the notions of old which some Indian and Western writers fondly entertained; namely that the BJP would cut loose form the RSS and emerge as India’s moderate conservative party offering lip sympathy to Hindutva. Over thirty years ago, in 1987 two scholars accurately described their relationship: “The BJP for its part will try to develop into a national political force, but it is questionable whether it can do with a cadre drawn largely from the RSS. Within the party’s organizational structure, the cadre has been reluctant to share power with politically prominent figures from non-RSS backgrounds who could mobilize mass support for the party. The RSS training, emphasizing the sacrifice of self for the larger good, and the apolitical orientation of the RSS ideology, make it unlikely that politically charismatic figures will emerge from within its own ranks. On the other hand, it is questionable if the BJP could survive politically without the RSS cadre, and the cadre will not stay unless the leadership of the party stays firmly in the hands of the ‘brotherhood’.” (Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar Damle; The Brotherhood in Saffron).