Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
These are very heady days for the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh,the mother of all the right wing Hindu parties,the fountainhead from which the entire saffron family (parivar), from the BJP, the ruling party at the Centre and in several States to assorted other groupings like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad,the Bajrang Dal,the student and labour frontal organizations -you name it and the parivar has it – draw inspiration from. Hindsight now suggests that the RSS may indeed have passed the stage of just being a mentor of sorts for all; these outfits.
If you had any doubts about the Sangh’s hold on the levers of power in capital, not to speak of States such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat et al these were well and truly laid to rest last week when the RSS,the mother organisation, staged a momentous coordination committee meeting – away from its Nagpur headquarters – with the entire pantheon of the top Sangh leadership on-stage receiving report cards of someone”s description of someone’s description from almost the entire Union Cabinet including,of course, the Prime Minister of India himself.
Since none of the Ministers appears to have been given the stick the assumption could well be they all ended with an A plus each. Mr. Modi himself must have gotten away with real star billing when he appeared before the parivar gurus on the final day of the three-day conclave. And, to think of it, the RSS to my mind continues , at least on record , to be a banned organization, the general approbation it garnered in the wake the Emergency notwithstanding.
The RSS has always maintained that it is not a political organisation a but as early as 1966 the Home Ministry had barred all Government employees from participating in activities organized by the RSS, a distinction it had shared then with the Jamaat-e-Islami.The ban for all one knows may still be around but its enforcement was always lackadaisical depending on which Government was in power and when at the Centre or in the States.
The Sangh suffered its first ban soon after Gandhiji’s assassination; it was banned again during the Emergency and yet again after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. But much sacred water must have flowed down the Ganga since those ugly days, as an RSS ideologue kept hammering home the other day, that two prime “pracharaks” of the RSS, namely, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Mr. Narendra Modi have adorned the Prime Ministerial.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh followed up on that with his public proclamation of the pride he took in his being a swayamsewak first. His Ministerial colleague Mr Venkaiah Naidu did indeed confessed to his own sense of pride in the Lok Sabha during its last session at his own and some of his many colleagues’ sense of pride over of their RSS linkage. In fact the party was forced out of the first Janata Government on the issue of dual membership of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh ( ancestor of today’ BJP) ministerial component – being members simultaneously of the RSS and the then BJS.
The subsequent emergence of the Vajpayeee-led NDA Government finally did enabe the RSS to flutter its wings a little but to Mr Vajpayee’s credit it must be noted that although the RSS leaders did have access to the Govern meant during his tenure as Prime Minister there was no attempt at showing the parental muscle. Vajpayee avoided public participation in the Sangh activities although attempts were made even in those early years by some, more notably Murli Manohar Joshi, then HRD Minister, to exert influence in the field of education including the institutions directly controlled by his Ministry.
Not surprisingly Mr. Modi’s singular triumph in last year’s general election and a handful of successes in the subsequent State Assembly elections have unquestionably put the saffron parivar in a commanding position, not just with the majority it gained in the Lok Sabha but by generally infusing a new vigor into the party rank and dile, particularly among the RSS ranks. As a RSS pracharak of long standing himself, Modi doesn’t have to convince others about where his heart lies.
And the RSS for its part has shown that it continues to repose faith in his leadership of the saffron Government in Delhi, a sentiment fully reciprocated in deed and word by the Prime Minister. So much so that no one these days even talks of the existence of the so-called Marg Darshaks (the path finders), Mr. Lal Krishna Advani foremost among these. And the presentations made by Modi’s Ministers at the RSS Delhi conclave – and by Modi himself – were no accident. They at once brought centre-stage the new equation between New Delhi and Nagpur.
Mr Modi’s Government in Delhi and Mr Mohan Bhagwat’s RSS karyalaya in Nagpur are working in tandem so far as their mutual domestic (and cultural, if I may) concerns go.. The two I dare say indeed working as a team dedicated to achieving the goals which they deem of primary importance to them and their cause. Coordination of a very high order has been in existence even when attempts may have at times been made to existence of certain divergences.
The Prime Minister for obvious reasons is given the freedom to appear to be above the day to day nitty-gritty of their functioning. A high-level coordination committee of sorts is in place which obviously is in total sync with the Modi view which broadly speaking is in conformity with the overall saffron view.Amit Shah,the BJP President and Modi confidant, Nitin Gadkari Suresh Bhiayaji, D. Hosbale, Krishna Gopal and Ram Lal and Ram Madhav among others are part of the coordinating set-up with some others brought in as and when required.
It is also not unknown that some of the top bureaucrats too have been encouraged to keep in touch with the RSS leadership. Good or bad, about this last one I am not quite sure. But the truth is that deep in its heart the RSS leadership knows that it will have to give a much longer rope to Modi than it may have originally wished to, considering the sense of hope and purpose he has provided to the parivar. The RSS may even have realized in the given situation Modi is the biggest and brightest hope the parivar has ever had to give meaning to its objectives. Good or bad, l yet again leave it to the country to decide. The parivar for its part believes that is on course and Modi is the helmsman for it to realize its dream.
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