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Hindustan Times,23/02/2001
Salman Rushdie described the idea of India as one of the greatest ideas of the 20th century. He is right because he realises the greatness of the idea, but wrong because he ignores its lineage. India as a nation-State is a modern concept, but the idea of a multi-vocal, multi-religious polity is of older vintage, rooted in the search for an idiom appropriate to Indian pluralism.
The national movement's consensus on democracy captured the essence of Indian cultural experience, and till this day constitutes mainstream political space. The fact that the BJP needed to discard its so-called cultural nationalist agenda to overcome its isolation underscores the consensual core of Indian politics. The idea informing this consensus is a pagan idea, that celebrates plurality instead of condescending to it. This is the key to understanding the RSS' pathological aversion to the idea of India.
A quote from Jawaharlal Nehru describes what one means. In an interview published in August 1961, Nehru described himself as a pagan: "Only in the sense that paganism is opposed to rigidity… I don't mind a person having his own beliefs, but I don't like the other fellow trying to impose his beliefs on me... The idea that others must conform to our ways, that we are the only true believers - this is contrary to my conception. It is this concept of having the whole truth, which is fundamentally opposed to the pagan concept. The whole truth is too big for any one people to grasp completely."
Violently opposed to the pagan moorings of this nationalism is the monolithic cultural nationalism of the RSS type. Historically, while one section of the colonial intelligentsia tried to find a modern idiom to articulate Indian plurality, the other tried to get rid of it. The former inclined towards democracy and liberal values, while the latter felt easier with fascist conceptions of politics and culture.
Nehru defined communalism of all hues as the Indian variant of fascism. One must underline the fact that Indian fascism has a competitive form, in which Muslim communalism plays a crucial role in sustaining its Hindutva variant.
Whereas a democratic polity is a wise outcome of the plural tradition, the so-called cultural nationalism of the RSS violates it. Democracy may be a 'foreign' concept, but it sits comfortably with the cultural attitudes of ordinary Indians. Even the most traditionalist of them adjusted comfortably to democracy. However, after 75 years of building the elusive 'Hindu nation', the RSS still needs to suspend its basic issues.
Most Indians reject the mentality of the RSS because its outlook is antithetical to the 'paganism' that informs the dominant idea of India. The RSS hates this idea and seeks to replace it with its own laboured conception of Hindu rashtra.
The RSS' disapproval of plurality is not confined to politics. Nor is its self-designated task of "righting the wrongs of history" directed only at minorities. Among its ancestors were a section of colonial intellectuals who were ashamed of Indian paganism and who pathetically tried to copy the Englishmen. Obsessed with inferiority, it disguised its fascination for 'victorious' western culture in the garb of 'uniqueness'; and its disdain for India's personality in the garb of love for 'Bharat Mata'.
The RSS has always contested the idea of India in the name of Indianness itself. Its attitude towards Hindu plurality is as intolerant as its abhorrence of anything that stands in its way. It practises politics within a framework of revenge, for which task it assumes the image of a priest supervising blood-sacrifices.
Note Golwalkar's 1948 statement: "Unfortunately, the great latitude allowed to all individuals and groups resulted in the creation of many faiths and sects. The vastness of our motherland fostered many dialects which in time became so many sister languages, and gradually the grand unity in all the diversities of life began to crumble away."
In Golwalkar's imperious fantasies, 'unity in diversity' means benevolent patronage. Notice his discomfort with dialects becoming languages. In the RSS' pseudo-linguistics, all Indian languages are daughters of Sanskrit - and if not they ought to be. Such statements reveal its intellectual strategy.
Instead of articulating its own crude theories, it borrows respectable phrases like 'unity in diversity' and 'tolerance'. Its practice is somewhat different. The RSS calls itself a cultural organisation. However, its culture refers neither to individual creativity nor to social reality energised by common experiences and creative interventions. 'Culture' in the Sangh lexicon means concealing conflicts and oppression with hatred and violence.
Deception underpins their culture. Deceit may represent evil in an individual but is necessary for the life of the nation. Thus, Govindacharya can compare the hoodlums destroying Deepa Mehta's film sets with French revolutionaries, Uma Bharti can claim that she was in Ayodhya to save the mosque; the Sarsanghchalak can speak the untruth of the millennium: Babri masjid was demolished not by kar sevaks but by a secret bomb!
'Selfless deceit' is central to the RSS conception of public life and raises fundamental questions about politics and truth. It explains their flair for conspiracy and hatred of democracy, both as organisational principle and political philosophy. Deception is neither incidental nor contextual, but integral to its worldview.
This worldview motivates the RSS to maintain a balance between formal and informal communication; official and authentic intentions and policies. Hence many commentators accept its 'official' pronouncements at face-value. If they compared these with what transpires in informal communication they would be rudely shaken.
The RSS began describing itself as a cultural organisation and adopted a written constitution in deference to government pressure after Gandhiji's assassination. But it never discarded its political designs. It is cultural when it wants to control its political outfits from behind the scene, and it is not cultural when it has to fulfil the legal obligations of a cultural body.
A.G. Noorani has given an instance of its manoeuvres in his book, The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour (Left Word). In 1978, when the charity commissioner asked it to register under the Bombay Public Trust Act, 1950 (since it claimed to be a cultural organisation), Rajendra Singh and Bhaurao Deoras made the legal plea that although the RSS did not participate in day-to-day politics, it did have a political philosophy within its cultural work, and it was possible for the Sangh to participate in politics.
However, the RSS does not need to participate in mundane politics, since apart from its offspring the BJP, it has adopted enthusiastic apologists such as George Fernandes and Maneka Gandhi.
Noorani's essay contrasts European resentment at neo-Nazis sharing power in Austria with the absence of similar concern when the RSS rose to the centre of power in India. He might benefit by analysing the role of secular parties in according respectability to the RSS. For decades, they refused to confront the essence of communal politics. The struggle for secularism, instead of preventing the fascist takeover, became a balancing act between Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians.
Ideologues of anti-Congressism tried to 'reform' fascists by cooperating with them. Communists used 'united front' tactics not against the fascists but in collaboration with them. How then, may we expect public resentment at the RSS ascension to power - particularly when it has 'responded' to reformers like George Fernandes, Mamata Banerjee and Chandrababu Naidu and permitted the BJP to shelve its core issues?
The reformers' illusions will soon burst and for a simple reason. The RSS is not just another organisation seeking space in a democratic polity and plural culture. Its agenda is antagonistic to the very idea of India which gave birth to that polity. It is 'cultural' insofar as it seeks to replace the cultural mode itself. Its 'nation' is a monolith and it is bound to hate India as we know it.
Its campaign of hatred and deceit has converted the RSS into the very 'internal enemy' that it has been conjuring up over the decades. Whether India will survive this onslaught from within is up to us.
(The author is Associate Professor, Centre of Indian Languages, Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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