The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has completed a hundred years. Is this an achievement? The answer depends on what happened to the objective for which it was created. Why did Dr KB Hedgewar establish the RSS? What did he say and do before and after founding it? On these questions, there is a general silence in RSS centenary celebrations.
In all centenary discourse, one finds only self-glorification by RSS leaders. A remembrance of the goal for which the RSS was founded is not present at all. This means that there is no comparative assessment with the situation today. There is no mention of any struggle, any victory, or any sacrifice by RSS leaders for any particular objective. Any review will be meaningful only if it includes this.
For example, to assess the achievement of a sports stadium, one must state how many matches and of what class were played there—not how many wedding ceremonies were held in it. Similarly, the true yardstick of an organisation’s success lies only in reference to its original purpose—not just its age or size.
Now, in both its name and ideology, ‘rashtra’, the nation, comes first. If the nation was ‘Bharat Mata’, as the RSS processions display ritually, then which RSS leader went to jail opposing her Partition? It turns out that far from going to jail or protesting, the RSS did not even issue a statement after the decision was made to partition the nation. Then what did the ‘nation’ mean for it?
Dr. Hedgewar himself led the RSS for the first fifteen years. His concept of ‘nation’ recognised only Hindus as part of India. He considered Muslims and Christians to be outsiders. He regarded Muslims as ‘enemies of the country.’ Even calling Muslims ‘traitors’ was unacceptable to him—because betrayal of a country can be committed only by someone who belongs to the country. He considered communities other than Hindus in India to be ‘outsiders’, ‘non-national’, and ‘selfish’—people who merely enjoyed the country’s resources. For this reason, Dr Hedgewar also objected to the term ‘Hindu–Muslim unity’, considering it ‘meaningless talk’.
He strictly kept the RSS away from party politics. This was his permanent stance. He refused to cooperate even with the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha. He allowed volunteers to participate in their programmes only in an ‘individual capacity’.
The RSS abandoned both the foundational principles of Dr. Hedgewar decades ago. Anyone can see that now its leaders have created a different definition of Hindu. And for decades they have surrendered everything on the altar of party politics.
In fact, RSS even formed a ‘Muslim Manch’, and helped design various schemes for Muslim triptikaran (appeasement), a term coined by its own leaders. All for the sake of that same party politics that Dr Hedgewar abhorred.
It is like permanently converting a sports stadium into a wedding hall. How does it matter then if the stadium turns a hundred years old.
Also read: Why India is better off with the RSS than without it
Erasing its founder
This is part of the reason why none of Dr. Hedgewar’s writings are available in the RSS bookstores across the country. All these were once published by the RSS. Now everything has vanished. Why?
The RSS should have proudly published the complete writings of its founder in a fine new edition on its centenary. Instead, all his writings and speeches are erased! What does this curious scenario indicate? Either Dr. Hedgewar’s views were all wrong—or today’s RSS leaders are wrong.
In both cases, the RSS stands exposed as a headless torso. Either it never had any good principles (if Dr. Hedgewar was wrong), or it no longer has any (if current RSS leaders are wrong).
As a result, Hindu society is not only helpless and leaderless, but also confused. It has been misled by both the RSS and its opponents. In reality, the RSS is like a private cooperative where only its members receive certain emotional and material benefits. It was never an organisation of Hindus, for Hindus.
When questioned about Hindu interests, RSS leaders even say in annoyance: “Is Sangh the sole defender of Hindus?” It’s as if they themselves are not Hindus, and are separate from Hindu society! This sad truth is felt by all those Hindus who suffer atrocities from time to time—even in states where the BJP holds power. For the last fifty years, countless incidents and political decisions were effectively against Hindus. But far from opposing or fighting them, RSS leaders have avoided even issuing a statement.
The state of Hindus in Jammu and Bangladesh are recent examples. When the Congress was in power, RSS leaders made grand demands for Hindus of Bangladesh and Jammu. Now, they stay silent. If they speak at all, it is reluctantly, and in a manner suggesting that everyone else may be responsible for a sad situation—but not RSS leaders! If after acquiring so much power and resources they have proved so bogus, it is not accidental.
After all, the Muslim aggression that provoked Dr. Hedgewar to establish the RSS is far worse than before. Two Islamic territories were carved out of India. In the remaining part too, Hindus have been practically made second-class citizens. Today in India, Hindu education and temples are not in Hindu hands but under state control, while Muslim and Christian education, mosques, and churches are under their own social control. This blatantly unfair situation has been established with the complicity of all political parties, including the RSS and BJP. The parliamentary record would testify to it.
In this way, the RSS–BJP have contributed to the political decisions that have made Hindus inferior citizens. Maybe RSS leaders are not even aware that they themselves have become second-class citizens! They remain absorbed in limited, narrow self-interest of their ‘organisation’.
When a Hindu becomes an RSS volunteer, not only is one Hindu wasted, but one more leader indifferent to Hindu interests is added.
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One track mind
Ordinary RSS leaders care only about ‘Sangh interest’. They regard their organisation alone as their faith, their duty, their passion. They remain oblivious to Hindu interests. As a result, their leaders keep making absurd statements and doing absurd things.
After becoming a vast, ruling, wealthy, resource-rich organisation, instead of fighting Islamic aggression, their leaders keep offering it hosannas, helping build more Islamic seminaries, institutions and structures, giving them grants and even ‘pensions’. They remain busy pleasing domestic and foreign Muslim leaders, and frequently scolding Hindus.
They have quietly abandoned almost all the foundational principles of Dr Hedgewar. They say and do things exactly opposite to what he said. That is why they have made the history and documents of the first twenty-five years of the RSS disappear.
For the sake of enjoying state power, its leaders have bargained away Hindu interests. This has been authentically shown by Balraj Madhok, a senior leader of the RSS and Jana Sangh, in his three-part series Zindagi ka Safar.
Thus, it can be said that the RSS family has grown in size, but its body is hollow and diseased. The intellect of its leaders is even more weakened. They are merely paper tigers, wasting most of their time in self-praise, while real social and political situations continue to deteriorate.
Even without occupying the seat of power, the ideas and actions of Islamists, missionaries, Leftists, and even leaders of other political parties outweighs that of RSS-BJP leaders. This is regularly visible.
The political organ of the RSS-—BJP—spends most of its time condemning other Hindu parties and leaders. When in power, this tendency increases tenfold—as if they were given power for this very purpose! Even now, at this moment, when Hindus are being eliminated daily in Bangladesh, the top RSS-trained BJP leaders are spending their energy and national resources abusing the Nehru family, a most comfortable target.
Compare the silence of the RSS and BJP on the condition of Hindus in Bangladesh or here in West Bengal with Dr. Hedgewar’s concerns and statements. It would then become clear that the RSS has remained absorbed only in its own narrow profit–loss calculations.
Hindus of India today are leaderless, helpless, second-class citizens. RSS played a large part in the creation and continuation of this situation. In this sense, the RSS and Hindu society mirror each other.
Shankar Sharan is a columnist and professor of political science. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
India is owned and being ruled by Hindus – they are the most strong community in the country economically and politically.