RSS has grown steadily in the Northeast, demonstrating not just persistence, but also adaptability and pragmatism.
After the announcement of results of elections in Meghalaya, Tripura and Nagaland, I remembered Vasantrao Oak whom I met in 1972 in my office at Hindustan Samachar, a news agency. I was a young agency correspondent and Chief Editor Baleshwar Agarwal introduced me to him. Oak was also on the board of management and was a seasoned social-political leader. He told me about his experience of his difficult work in the 1960s in the North East and later contesting the Lok Sabha election in Chandni Chowk, Delhi, in 1957 against Congress leader Rdha Raman. He was not upset by his defeat because of his mother’s organisation Rashriy Swwaym Sangh and her associate Bhartiya Jansangh. Vasantrao Oak was one of the earliest pracharaks and leaders of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. In October 1946, Oak, along with Dadarao Parmarth and Krishna Paranjape, established the first shakhas and daily meet-ups of RSS, in Guwahati, Dibrugarh and Shillong which were part of Assam Province. Oak had played an important role in establishing the Bharatiya Jana Sangh along with Syama Prasad Mukherjee. Baleswwarji told me about his devotion and how Sangh worked in the North East for Indian culture and saved it from anti-India elements from western countries in the name of religion. It was a chance that afterwards in 1983, I was a Political Correspondent of a Hindi weekly, Dinman (Times Group) and went to Assam and Arunachal Pradesh with a small group of journalists. Baleshwar Agarwal was the leader of this group. A senior Congress leader Bhishma Narian Singh was Governor of Assam and all seven Northeastern states. Off the record, Governor Bhishma Narain Singh told us about the role and support of people from RSS supporting government efforts to counter separatist activities and spreading the network of schools in tribal areas. One can understand that Indira Gandhi’s government at the Centre was also using these nationalist people. Since then, Hindi has been promoted in Arunachal Pradesh and other states to counter Chinese influence in the sensitive region.
The RSS has grown steadily in the Northeast, demonstrating not just persistence, but also adaptability and pragmatism. Today, 72 years after its quiet beginnings in the North-East, the RSS can claim that it has played a significant role in powering the BJP’s recent electoral successes here, especially in Tripura, Nagaland, Meghalaya and before that in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur & Mizoram. That network has expanded with shakhas, Vivekananda schools, Balwadis, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas, tuition centres, study circles, vocational training centres and a hospital. The Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), which works among tribal people, runs eight hostels, 42 nursery schools and coaching centres, holds medical camps and sends tribal teams to out-of-state sports events. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak Ramprasad and a few others worked for years in the northeast to expand social educational activities with instructions from RSS leadership. Ramprasad is from Rajasthan and I also had the opportunity to talk to him about his missions in the northeast.
For the just-concluded elections, several former swayamsevaks were drafted to lead the campaign. In 2014, Sunil Deodhar, who had joined the RSS in 1985, was made in-charge of Tripura, while two RSS alumni, now both BJP general secretaries, Ram Lal and Ram Madhav, were deployed to plan the campaign, along with Himanta Biswa Sarma (who had quit the Congress to join the BJP before the Assam elections). Madhav and Sarma supervised every move in the state, and Deodhar camped in Tripura for 500 days to implement their plan. The total convergence between RSS cadres and BJP workers helped breach Left bastions. The RSS’ work for these elections began in 2016 when Prachar Pramukh Shankar Das sent 250 workers to Tripura: soon, the number of shakhas zoomed to 250 from the 80 in existence in 2015. Indeed, it is the RSS’ boots on the ground that eventually helped breach the Left citadel of Tripura.
The RSS’ approach traditionally has been to seek “solutions” for local problems that can be meshed with its nationalistic ideology. But in Nagaland, with its long history of the secessionist movement, and the pending demand for a Greater Nagaland (which seeks a huge chunk of territory from neighbouring Manipur), it has to move with caution. So in 2014, the RSS, rather than get embroiled in an intractable problem, demanded that Rani Gaidinliu, the legendary Naga freedom fighter, be given the Bharat Ratna. Simultaneously, it continued to reach out to various tribes through a network of affiliates, including the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram also did wonderful work in Naxal-affected tribal areas for social awareness.
In Meghalaya, the RSS operates largely in the Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills: it has been focusing attention on Bangladeshi migrants who marry local girls and “take advantage” of the matrilineal system to set up businesses. In its bid to reach out to the Christians, the RSS is running four book banks, even as it helps organise health camps across the State. It has also organised processions to honour Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, who continues to be something of a local hero. If the BJP’s election machine has worked overtime in the Northeast, long years of hard work by RSS workers, behind the scenes, have laid the ground for the party’s successes.
Mohan Bhagwat, the sarsangchalak of RSS, stresses the concept of a territorial Hindu cultural identity. Five years ago, Bhagwat addressed a major gathering—a Luitporiya Hindu Samavesh—in Guwahati, organised by the Sangh. It was attended by several titular tribal kings from the Naga, Khasi, Karbi, Hajong, Garo, Mising and other communities, along with several Satradhikar (chiefs of old Vaishnav monasteries) of Assam. But beyond electoral exigencies and growing shows of strength through increased shakhas (branches), marches and bigger public meetings, Bhagwat’s assertion is in line with the larger RSS mission of assimilation and integration of the states in the Northeast into the Hindu cultural nationalism fold. In September 2022, Bhagwat went to an RSS event at the U Soso Tham auditorium in Shillong. The timing of Bhagwat’s Meghalaya trip, a few months before the state, along with Tripura and Nagaland, went to the polls, was not surprising. The RSS is known for laying the foundation for its political arm the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) electoral strategy before each campaign.
With its tribal-dominated states and Christian-majority populations, the NE region provides a peculiar challenge to the RSS and BJP. In Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Manipur, for instance, Christians make up almost 75%, 87.16%, 87.93% and 41.29% of the state population, respectively. To mitigate this demographic complication, the RSS and BJP have adopted a more multi-pronged approach, even as it tries to appropriate local ethnic myths, tribal identities and faiths, as well as drum up a common enemy in the form of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim migrants.
After the party’s success in Northeast Assembly polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that in Delhi or any other region, it is not difficult for BJP workers to work for development but in the Northeast, it is not that easy. “Today’s election results are only because of the hard work of the BJP workers in all the states…Today’s results showcase people’s belief in its democracy,” PM Modi added. He did not mentioned RSS, but everybody knows that large number of workers and leaders of BJP have roots in the RSS.
The writer is editorial director of ITV Network—India News and Dainik Aaj Samaj.