No organisation held captive by its past can hope to grow.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat’s exposition of what the 93-year-old organisation stands for ought to have been welcome, but, unfortunately, the usual suspects who have made visceral hatred of the Sangh their calling card seem to have found yet another ground to decry Bhagwat. The newest charge is that he dissimulates, saying one thing to the World Hindu Congress in Chicago and another to the hand-picked audience in New Delhi.
Nothing can convince the congenital critics of the RSS that it is possible for it to change, nay, evolve. With the changing times, the advance of modernity, greater awareness through education and a 24×7 audio-visual media, no longer can any organisation hope to prosper if it continues to be rooted in a long gone-by past, if it always harks back to yesterdays to reference its today and day-after. Seen from this perspective, Bhagwat’s vision enunciated in the three-day lecture series makes immense sense.
Not only did he discard the de rigueur baggy knickers which was an essential part of the ganabesh of swayamsevaks for decades, replacing them with khaki-coloured trousers, he seems keen to change the mental outlook of the RSS as well in order to bring it up-to-date with the present times. The way he elaborated the Sangh vision, unhesitatingly responding to ticklish questions about Muslims and Section 377, anyone untouched by the anti-Sangh virus would give him the benefit of the doubt. The minimal the reasonable people would do is to wait for evidence to see if Bhagwat’s outfit measures up to his words.
History is replete with scores of examples of men acquiring new personas, new outlooks. We can do no better than to cite the example of Indian Communists who set out at the time of Independence to overthrow the democratic system, to launch a violent insurrection in parts of the country, and, some years down the line, came to swear by the very same constitutional order. Indeed, the Communists who deified the mass murderers such as Lenin, Stalin and Mao, have no right to pooh-pooh Bhagwat, as they did following his three-day lecture series this past week. Happily, the Communists are no longer relevant.
Or take this overnight image transformation following a cataclysmic event. All through the decades leading up to the Partition, the Congress was widely known to be a “party of Hindus”. So much so it failed to win a single seat in the 1937 elections wherever there was a substantial Muslim presence. The few Muslim leaders it had were derided as charlatans and token Muslims. However, after the Partition, the same Congress was embraced by Muslims, even if the relationship was transactional with the party providing a sense of security and the Muslims a captive vote-bank. Nehru was hated for refusing to share power with Jinnah, and, instead, settling for Partition. Following Independence, he overnight became the darling of the Muslims who had chosen to stay back.
The point is that Bhagwat and the organisation he leads cannot be denied the right to transform itself into a forward-looking outfit keen to allay the apprehensions and prejudices of a section of the people and to try and embrace in its fold everyone willing to join regardless of his or her religious persuasion. To my mind, Bhagwat distancing himself from Bunch of Thoughts, Guru Golwalkar’s book often quoted by RSS haters to dub it fascist, was the boldest and the clearest step he has taken to bring RSS into the modern era.
No organisation can hope to survive, much less prosper, if it is stuck in a time-warp. Before Partition, what Nehru said about Jinnah and millions of his followers cannot be held against him. RSS and Golwalkar were products of their time. The Hindu-Muslim divide was badly negotiated by the Congress leaders before Independence. RSS became the sword arm of the Hindus just when Jinnah and his rich zamindar minders were pushing him to create a separate land for Muslims, often using violence to terrorise intrinsically peace-loving Hindus. There was hardly a Congress leader in much of North India then who was not directly or indirectly associated with the RSS.
Anyway, it is human to make peace with the moving times. If what Bhagwat said in New Delhi earlier in the week is what he now believes in, in my view he may have ensured longevity for the RSS. Change being the only constant in human life, living organisms need to evolve, to imbibe new ideas, embrace new imaginations and advance new narratives. The RSS Sarsanghchalak not disapproving the legal sanctity granted to homosexuality is no less courageous for his outfit.
Indeed, the Bhagwat that came across at Vigyan Bhavan seemed to have moved the RSS a step or two ahead of the BJP. His unambiguous condemnation of the killings in the name of cow and an unstinted endorsement of caste-based reservations so long as the beneficiaries themselves do not want to end them should help demolish many shibboleths constructed around RSS.
Even the Hindu Rashtra narrative was sought to be put in perspective. His Hindus were not a monodimensional group. No, like the French who believe that everyone born in India, that is Bharat is a Hindu regardless of his caste, creed, religion, etc., Bhagwat’s Hindu Rashtra accords the same place and dignity to Muslims as it does to Hindus. The term minorities was a British insertion. In a ringing enunciation he intoned, “The day it is said that Muslims are unwanted here, the concept of Hindutva will cease to exist.” Okay, if some people have a problem with Hindutva, they can settle for “Bharatiya”, he would have no problem with it.
Now, it is the turn of Asaduddin Owaisi and his liberal-secularist ventriloquists to disavow partisanship and try and understand RSS as it turns a new page in its nine decades-plus career.
Postscript: L.K. Advani some 15 years ago told me that “The RSS-Jana Sangh was never anti-Muslim… It is you refugees from Pakistan who gave it an anti-Muslim image.” I protested, saying, “One, my family belonged to what was then East Punjab, and, two, if it was really so, it was the failure of the leadership that it did not correct that widespread misconception.”
Hollande’s motive is clear
Former French President Francois Hollande has good reason to shift blame for the Rafale makers choosing Anil Ambani as its offsets partner. He is under fire from the French media for facilitating the contract for Ambani since the latter had financed the movie starring his partner, the actress Julie Gayet. Simply put, Ambani chose Hollande’s partner for making a movie, in turn Hollande chose Ambani to partner the state-controlled Dassault. QED.
Where is the motive for anyone in India selecting the bankrupt Ambani brother for the Rafale contract? But then you cannot put common sense into people’s head, can you? Please understand there is no Quattrocchi Uncle here. Yes, the same uncle who took hefty bribes in almost every deal signed by the Congress governments and shared the loot with very influential compatriots back home in Italy.