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Three central aspects of the Sangh's work are typically Gandhian, and are also the
key to its success. One is its grass-roots work, its impressive record in actual social service, which is far
larger and more deserving of a Nobel prize than Mother Teresa's heavily foreign-financed operations.
Like for Mahatma Gandhi, politics for the Sangh is but one aspect of a much larger social programme
carried out by the citizens' own initiative and effort. This creates a much closer rapport with the masses, a
movement with much stronger roots than purely political movements like the Hindu Mahasabha.
The second Gandhi-like aspect of the Sangh's success is its religious dimension.
Though the BJP insists on its secular character, many of the Sangh-affiliated organizations and individuals are
not that shy about their Hindu moorings, and this is precisely one of the reasons why they strike a chord of
confidence among the people. Tilak, Aurobindo and Gandhi made the independence movement into a
mass movement by giving it a religious dimension; it is for the same reason that the Sangh has become a
mass movement firmly rooted in the general population, a pool of Hindu commitment on which the BJP can
draw at voting time.
The third Gandhian trait in the Sangh's style of functioning is the moral dimension
which it gives to its politics. The BJP advertises itself as a disciplined party free of corruption. When
during the 1996 Lok Sabha election campaign, Narasimha Rao's men tried to implicate L.K. Advani in a
financial scandal, the public reacted with a sincere disbelief: he may be a communalist, but we never saw any
sign of corruption in him. My own experience confirms that in general, the workers of the Sangh-affiliated
organizations are sincerely dedicated to the well-being of their country and society without expecting
personal benefits in return.[2] Of late, this reputation has been corroded by scandals involving the BJP
(though it remains the cleanest party by far), and even RSS grassroots recruitment is feeling the effect of the
general spread of consumerism in Hindu society. Traditionally, Hindus have held self-abnegation as
practiced by Sangh workers in high esteem, but many members of the new generation (yuppie or goonda)
merely find it funny; the RSS-Gandhian ethos has now become an upstream effort defying the spirit of the
times.
The kinship between the Sangh and Gandhi is real enough in these positive aspects,
but it is just as palpable in some negative respects. To start with a small but nasty point, Gandhi thought
his own position (call it the Gandhian sampradaya/sect) represented the whole of Hinduism, both at the
political and the religio-philosophical level, and strongly resented alternative centres of Hindu mobilization.
Though calling himself a Hindu, he claimed the leadership of the whole nation and not just of the Hindus,
though the British secularists and the Muslims never conceded this more-than-Hindu identity to him (certainly
a parallel with the Bharatiya rather than Hindu Janata Party). When the Muslim League became a
formidable challenger to Gandhi's claim, it would have been in the nation's and his own interest to let the
Hindu Mahasabha counterbalance the League's influence; moderates normally use the presence of radicals
as a useful bargaining-chip. But Gandhi and his Congress wanted the whole Hindu cake to themselves.
The same intolerance of or at least annoyance with rivals for the Hindu constituency is
in evidence in the Sangh. In surveys of Sangh history, there is remarkably little reference to the Hindu
Mahasabha and other Hindu organizations. Especially glaring is the RSS reluctance to acknowledge the
role of Babarao Savarkar (elder brother of V. D. Savarkar and an outstanding revolutionary in his own
right). It was Babarao who had drafted the original RSS pledge and included the term Hindu Rashtra
in it. He had suggested the saffron RSS flag. He had merged his own Tarun Hindu Sabha as well as Sant
Panchelgaonkar Maharajs Mukteshwar Dal into the fledgling RSS. He was responsible for bringing into
the RSS such luminaries as Bhalji Pendharkar, the noted film director and later the Dadasaheb Phalke
award winner Kashinath Pant Limaye who became he provincial head of the Maharashtra RSS, Babu
Padmaraj Jain and other. Baburao toured extensively for the RSS in spite of his failing health. Both
Hedgewar and Golwalkar had great respect for Babarai. Yet The RSS Story by K. R. Malkani does not
even mention Babaraos name. In fact some narrow minded RSS leaders from Pune had tempered with
the chapter in Babaraos contribution (written by P. N. Gokhale) that deals with Babaraos contribution
to the growth of the RSS. Similarly, no acknowledgement is made of the help which the RSS received from
the Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha everywhere.
During the 1989 elections, when the BJP had an electoral alliance with the Janata Dal, Balraj Madhok
stood as a candidate for the reconstituted Bharatiya Jan Sangh against the Janata Dal candidate in
Lucknow. Most Hindutva people were eager to work for Madhok, "one of us", against the JD secularist
officially supported by the BJP. When Madhok looked sure to win the election, Vajpayee hurried to
Lucknow to discipline the BJP workers; he could not tolerate that a non-BJP man would enter the Lok
Sabha in spite of his proven merit for the Hindu cause.
In a way, the Sangh attitude mirrors that of mendacious secularists who always label
anyone speaking up for the Hindus as an "RSS man": they identify the Hindu cause with the Sangh.
Generally they do not see beyond the confines of the Sangh and are practically unaware that there are
conscious Hindus outside the Sangh.
A typical Gandhian flaw in BJP functioning, the result of mixing self-denial (a personal
discipline) with politics (a public affair), is the absence of any healthy sense of quid pro quo. Gandhi
always sacrificed Indian or Hindu interests without asking anything in return, hoping that this would soften the
heart of the beneficiary and put him in the right mood to give something back at his own initiative. Thus,
after the outbreak of World War 1, "Indian political leaders, 'moderate' as well as 'extremist', were
unanimous that the people of India should support the British cause against the Germans, but only for a
price: the promise of home rule after the war. Gandhi was almost alone in rejecting the idea of a political
bargain with the British; he cherished the hope that in return for unconditional support, a grateful and
victorious Britain would give India her due when the war was over."[3] As it turned out, the British
took Gandhi's services (recruiting Indian volunteers to die a useless and horrible death in the war against
Germans who had done the Indians no harm) but, except for an embarrassing medal of loyal service to the
British Empire, they gave him nothing in return. In the real world, politicians bargain for a tangible quid
[1]
We omit discussion of the lack of an agreed meaning for the term "Gandhian
socialism". An insider told me that during one of the constituent meetings of the budding BJP, a vote
was taken on whether the ideology should be "integral humanism" or "Gandhian socialism"; the latter won
with a small majority, but to please everyone, it was then decided that the "Gandhian socialism" is actually
the same thing as "integral humanism". The incident reveals the lack of ideological srieux in the
BJP. Similar illustrations of this weakness include Govindacharya's 1996 enthusiasm for "social
engineering", a term dear to totalitarian regimes by which he meant simply the induction of more Backward
Caste candidates in the elections.
[2] It is a different matter that this personal modesty is often combined with a lack of
collective Sangh modesty. Many Sangh workers are extremely touchy about criticism of the Sangh,
even when they don't mind criticism of Hinduism or India.
[3] B.R. Nanda: Gandhi and his Critics (OUP, Delhi 1993), p.116.
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