Former president Pranab Mukherjee has agreed to address an event at the RSS headquarters in Nagpur as a chief guest on 7 June. As BJP leaders welcome his acceptance, some Congress leaders are urging him to reconsider his decision.
ThePrint asks- Pranab Mukherjee to attend RSS meet: Ideological flexibility or Congress paranoia?
Opposition to Pranab’s visit is another attempt to project RSS as a pariah
CEO, Indraprastha Vishwa Samvad Kendra, and author of Know About RSS. Views expressed are personal.
The opposition to former president Pranab Mukherjee’s likely address to the RSS’ swayamsevaks (volunteers) in Nagpur stems from certain pre-conceived notions about the Sangh.
The RSS is not a political organisation. It is more of a platform where people belonging to different sections of society can come together.
Two examples should suffice. In 1934, Mahatma Gandhi visited an RSS training camp at Wardha. Thirteen years later, he referred to this visit while addressing the RSS volunteers in Delhi: “I visited the RSS camp years ago, when the founder Shri Hedgewar (K.B. Hedgewar) was alive. I was very much impressed by your discipline, the complete absence of untouchability and the rigorous simplicity. Since then, the Sangh has grown. I am convinced that any organisation, which is inspired by the high ideals of service and self-sacrifice is bound to grow in strength.” (‘The Hindu’: 17 September 1947)
Babasaheb Ambedkar also visited Sangh Shiksha Varga (RSS training camp) in Pune in 1939. He had asked Hedgewar whether there were any untouchables in the camp. Hedgewar replied that the RSS looks at its swayamsevaks as Hindus, and not touchables or untouchables.
The RSS was conceived as an organisation that brings together all sections of society to transform society. Thus, there is a long list of eminent personalities, cutting across party lines and ideologies, who have addressed RSS swayamsevaks over the last 90 years. This is available in public.
There have been consistent and planned efforts since Independence to manipulate the narrative, projecting the RSS as a pariah. In light of the above-mentioned facts, the opposition to Mukherjee’s address at an RSS camp appears to be a similar attempt.
Engagement with RSS should be normal. But Congress is panicking.
Spokesperson, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)
Fuss over Pranab Mukerjee going to the RSS meet is a reflection of an old mindset from an old era. There was a time when the RSS was treated like an untouchable, and any association with them was blasphemous. Today, the RSS is the ruling party. It has a government at the centre and in 21 states. Engagement with the RSS should be normal. But, the Congress is panicking. It shows that the Congress will take some more time to grow up.
Intellectually, this is typical of the Left’s impression on the Congress. Left, though in Indian context, proclaims to be inclusive, but globally it has always been exclusivist. It annihilated millions where ever it ruled. It did not show respect for the rival ideologies. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot are some examples.
India is, for the first time, witnessing an “ideology state”. It’s grammar and chemistry is different than the previous regimes. The rival parties will have to live with this new scenario. And to fight with the “new nature” of the Indian state, opponents have to innovate new strategies. It has to educate people, engage with the RSS leaders and dominate the discourse. Unfortunately, despite the best of efforts, the Left-liberals-Congress trio is still not dominating the discourse, and the RSS is still setting the agenda.
Mukerjee is a seasoned politician. Why should his intent be misunderstood? As a former president, it is his duty to engage with every citizen and every group. The Congress should stop being paranoid. It should be worried if he praises the RSS, which I strongly doubt. And even if he does, how should it affect the Congress and its self-confidence?
That Pranab is doing something out of the ordinary by going to Nagpur is a myth
Political commentator
When Pranab Mukherjee was President, Mohan Bhagwat had paid him a courtesy visit. During their brief chat, Pranab Mukherjee had said that he would like to have an informal discussion over lunch. Bhagwat agreed, but on one condition: “I will come to lunch at your place, only if you come to mine”.
That’s how the story began.
When Mukherjee was President, he couldn’t visit Nagpur due to time constraints. Now, he has the time to do it. He isn’t there to meet only the Sangh elders. The primary intention behind the visit is to address the next generation of RSS leaders. RSS as an organisation has always tried to expose its young cadres to multiple perspectives, especially those different from their own. Mukherjee being a political veteran can provide them that exposure.
This is not a political visit.
People who are surprised that a non-BJP, non-RSS eminent person is visiting the RSS headquarters should remember that Gandhi addressed two RSS camps, in Delhi and in Wardha. B.R. Ambedkar addressed an RSS camp too. So did Rajendra Prasad, that too when he was President. Even APJ Abdul Kalam did so.
That Pranab Mukherjee is doing something out of the ordinary by going to Nagpur is a myth. Barring the unpleasantness of the Nehru years, the RSS and the Congress have had an easy relationship. It was Indira Gandhi who inaugurated the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s ‘Ekatmata Yatra’.
The post-Truth idea of democracy being about dissent and resistance is a negative one. Democracy is about dialogue and discussion, neither of which can happen unless there are differing points of view. Political untouchability as propounded by the Left is a crime against democracy.
Unfortunately, opinions have become a substitute for facts. Political discourse is guided by the young who don’t read. The older generation that has seen things is not part of this discourse anymore.
RSS doesn’t need Pranab Mukherjee for legitimacy. They are already ruling India
Contributing Editor, ThePrint
As President, Pranab Mukherjee repeatedly lectured the Modi government on tolerance and secularism. Yet, nobody from the right-wing is criticising the RSS for calling Pranab Mukherjee to address them in Nagpur.
Like religious missionaries, pracharaks of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh go around persuading anybody and everybody about their point of view. To make people accept their idea of Hindu supremacy, they will do anything and everything. From violence to saving people in natural calamities, from demonising Gandhi to appropriating him, from cherry-picking Ambedkar quotes to having a programme to convert tribals, from running schools and coaching centres to online propaganda armies, there’s no space the RSS leaves. They want to be present in every room.
The left-liberal spectrum from Maoists to Gandhians believes in exclusion. They suffer from a disease called radicalitis, which is a condition where you are always more radical than the next person. Every morning they wake up, they feel more radical than they did the previous day.
Establishing one’s radical purity requires radicalitis patients to quarantine themselves from the radically impure. Thus, the radicalitis-stricken keep marginalising themselves, going a step closer to the margin each day until they fall over the cliff and the RSS establishes complete dominance over the public sphere.
Radicalitis patients think that Pranab Mukherjee accepting an invite to speak at an RSS function will ‘legitimise’ the RSS. They don’t need your legitimacy. They are already ruling India. A pracharak is the Prime Minister.
Hats off to Pranab Mukherjee for accepting this invitation. Conversation is the life-blood of democracy. He should be judged only for what he says on that stage.
Pranab’s ‘engagement’ with RSS can compromise his children’s careers
Editor, Opinion, ThePrint
Former president Pranab Mukherjee has just RSVP’d an RSS event next month. And overnight, he has become a pariah. He is being criticised for mainstreaming the RSS, and going against the Congress ethos.
Technically, Mukherjee quit politics when he became the nation’s president. But even during his presidency, he kept reiterating principles of tolerance and diversity in almost every speech. The Congress party and its supporters, at that time, would cheer him loudly for being ‘our man’ in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Every speech of his was interpreted as a gentle rap on the country’s political climate.
He had said there is no room for the ‘intolerant Indian’; pluralism is the bedrock of Indian civilisation; that public discourse must be free of all forms of violence, physical as well as verbal.
But now, by choosing to go to the RSS event, he is also signalling a post-retirement disenchantment with Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who doesn’t consult him on important issues or treat him as the party elder.
So, Mukherjee is crafting a legacy of his own. As president, he already missed the bus on being the most ‘popular’ president. In recent months, he has been meeting non-BJP and non-Congress politicians, fuelling speculations that he is trying to mentor a coalition for 2019. Is he trying for another legacy now? Is Pranab Mukherjee no longer satisfied with the title of ‘the best PM India never had’?
During his years at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, he made up with several of the Congress’ political opponents, like Mamata Banerjee, Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal. His advisers would like him to keep Modi in good humour and, indeed, the latter obliges too.
But in his quest for an elusive legacy, Mukherjee’s ‘engagement’ with the RSS stands to compromise the careers of his daughter and son.
Compiled by Deeksha Bhardwaj, journalist at ThePrint.