Dual loyalties

Gujarat's BJP government has been unwise in lifting the ban on government employees joining the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh RSS. Hencefo...

Gujarat8217;s BJP government has been unwise in lifting the ban on government employees joining the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh RSS. Henceforth police personnel and teachers can all be indoctrinated by the RSS. It is foolish to pretend the RSS is a cultural organisation. That little fiction was exposed long ago. The RSS has an ideology which it propagates sedulously. As long as there is no breach of the law or the peace, it is at liberty to do so.

What the BJP in power is doing is to spread in insidious fashion the saffron ideology of the RSS and that is not acceptable. The question the Gujarat government must answer is, why has it amended its civil services rules to allow employees to become full blown members of the RSS? Minister of State for Home Haren Pandya speaks at length of the technicalities of seeking and receiving Central government clearance but that is not the point. The point is, is it healthy for government servants to undergo ideological training in RSS shakhas or be schooled in any otherideology for that matter? Pandya says the RSS is a patriotic, service-oriented organisation. BJP politicians whose souls belong to the RSS are bound to give it glowing recommendations.

Other organistions in whose activities government servants are not allowed to participate would describe themselves in similarly flattering terms. The list includes the Anand Margis, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Jamaat-e-Islami, groups propagating sati and so on. Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel should ask himself how the government would run with a committed Anand Margi for chief secretary and the home and education departments packed with members of the VHP and fundamentalist Muslim groups. Perhaps he intends all civil servants to wear two badges identifying their function and their ideological orientation. Perhaps government works best when its officials are pulling in different directions!

It will be said the RSS is different. But even its most ardent supporters cannot deny it has a particular world-view and its businessis to further that world-view. That puts it at odds with the civil service which must be designed to function without bias in a multicultural world, a world of many viewpoints. It would be surprising if there were not many closet members of the RSS in Gujarat8217;s government offices. The state turned determinedly saffron in the course of the last decade and civil servants have not escaped the infection. But it is one thing to be a secret sympathiser and quite another to make it legitimate to identify with the RSS, to become a formal member of the organisation and be sworn to further its goals and aims.

Civil servants are paid to function impartially and must recognise no higher authority than the law of the land. They are bound by government rules, not Hedgewar8217;s rules. The distinction between a civil servant and an RSS activist or Anand Margi is important and must be maintained. When a policeman puts on khaki shorts and drills with the RSS, he is no longer a policeman. Ideologies corrupt the civil services.All the people cry out for is efficient, responsive service, not saffron or red or green biases. Gujarat8217;s decision is bad and should be reversed immediately.