Thoughts on the RSS

The RSS has pride of place in the political, social and cultural fabric of modern India. Understanding the cultural context of the Sangh and the Sangh Parivaar is therefore critical in comprehending the soul of the new nation we wish to live in. In this article, we will discuss this much maligned organization and its role in shaping the mindset of modern India.

1) As we said before, it is important to understand the "cultural context" of the Sangh. The Sangh arose out of a desire for Hindu revival, a desire to return to values indigenous to the Hind, a desire to reclaim our history and a desire to define our nation. While our liberal democracy must needs be built upon pluralism and multiculturalism, liberal democracy is nothing if people do not take pride in the nation.

Therefore, the first essential function of the RSS was to define India, the Hind, as one, as "Akhand Bharat". The purpose of this was to assert the cultural integrity of India and celebrate the seamless union of cultures that make up the subcontinent. This train of thought was particularly important at a time when India was being partitioned, its ancient boundaries trifled with by mindless Anglophiles who were ready to accept a compromised version of Indian history. While democracy had to be imported into India from the West, in doing so, Indian leaders of that age managed to import the colonial mentality of the times. Therefore, they saw India as a political entity rather than a cultural one. As a political entity, India could be carved up and divided without compunction. In that sense, the RSS restored to the nation what the Congress removed from it. While the Indian National Congress served as the vehicle of political assertion before 1947, it failed to assert the cultural indentity of India.

The second essential function of the RSS was to define the term "Hindu". Once again, a cultural unity was asserted and the RSS proclaimed that anyone born within the borders of Akhand Bharat was a "Hindu". This definition was also meant to weaken the grip of the caste mindset that has a stranglehold on India to this very day. A striking feature of the RSS was its assertion that Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, etc. were also "Hindus". As for the Muslims, the RSS called on them to disassociate from their connections to Arabia and Persia. Given the graveyard of human values that Arabia and Persia have subsequently become, it is difficult not to praise the foresight of the RSS in asking Muslims to disconnect from them culturally.

The third essential function of the RSS was to urge the Indian people to take pride in their history. This was not to condone cultural shames such as Sati, child marriage, female infanticide, untouchability, etc. but to build a sense of nationhood as well as the confidence that the collective conscience of our culture could deliberate upon these issues and firmly shut them out into the past. Such a process, initiated by Indians, would be cathartic to the nation and would heal the wounds of history. The Indian people were denied this opportunity to grieve and atone for their mistakes, thus ushering in a generation of people who did not understand whether to be proud of their nation or to apologize for it. A case in point would be the United States, which despite its shameful history of Native American genocide, slavery, Japanese internment and racism, rose to become the greatest nation in the world. This is due to the fact that the American people supplied their own intellectual leaders, who founded their democracy and then weaned their nation away from its weaknesses and led the United States to the pinnacle of power.

2) The political context of the Sangh is also very interesting. The Sangh supplies the ideological foundation for the BJP and heads the Sangh Parivaar, of which the BJP is a member. The tactical refrain of the RSS from participating directly in elections is an illustration of the Hindu concept of "body" and "soul". This is explicit in the manner in which the Sangh restricts its membership to Hindus, Sikhs Buddhists and Jains, but the BJP has no such bar, explicit or implicit. The idea is that while the political body of India is multicultural, it's cultural soul is anchored to human values of ancient India, loosely referred to as "Hinduism".

Hinduism, at its very core, is about tolerance for all kinds of thought. Hinduism is what you have when you try to rationalize the observable universe in a pre-scientific era. For instance, if one does want to believe in the supernatural, it makes more sense to believe in multiple gods rather than one, for that would at least account for the contradictory ways in which "God" seems to act. The "single minded", dogmatic God that rules over all three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam illustrates the point. In fact, all the strife between these three religions can be attributed to a mindless quarrel over the interpretation of the rules given by the God of Abraham, the so called "Yahwe". It is the unwavering belief in a single God that leads people to fight over what they think this God wanted to say. This also explains why the Hindu "scriptures" are written in the form a discussion between philosophers, rather than as a story or a sermon. The Hindu scriptures ask questions, debate possible natural and supernatural explanations and leave it at that. This is an aspect of Hinduism that has hardly ever received praise or recognition. We repeat: "Hinduism is what you have when you try to rationalize the observable universe in a pre-scientific era". Unless you have science, you can't be sure of anything. That is why Hinduism is so lax, so loose.

3) No discussion/evaluation of the Sangh is complete without talking about the RSS position on Gandhi. Whether Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were continuing RSS members at the time of assassinating the Mahatma is immaterial, since it is well known that the assassins traced much of their personal beliefs to the RSS and its sister organizations. Here it is important to understand that the RSS formed a kind of cultural umbrella before 1947, much as the Congress formed a political umbrella during the same period. Nehru, Gandhi, Subhas, Sardar and even Jinnah belonged to the same Congress Party. Similarly, the RSS contained within itself a whole cultural spectrum, ranging from those who believed in a Hindu state in literal terms to those who understood Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay's integral humanism. The maturity of the Indian people has sorted out these elements in course of time: while Jinnah and his state have been pushed into the dustbins of history, Godse and his fellow travelers have been cast away as well. In his book, "My Country, My Life", Advaniji praised the people of India who were not taken at all by Government lies during the Emergency. This is in contrast to the people of many other Third World nations, who bought into what despots told them and were tricked into losing their democracies. It is this spirit that made India unique in the Third World, as a nation that reconciled 18 major languages and 3 major religions, managed its own functioning democracy including rule of law, built up an massive military, created an economic powerhouse and found time for a moon mission.