Repackaging the RSS

This time round, a generational change of sorts took place, with Bhagwat expanding the national executive from a 16-member to a 22-member body, and inducting several new faces in the team. While Suresh Soni and Suresh (Bhayyaji) Joshi from the old team were elevated to the key posts of sah sarkaryavah (joint general secretaries), a number of relatively young men in their 40s and early 50s were brought in — among them Dattatreya Hosabale, K C Kannan, Adhish Kumar, Laxmanrao Pardikar, and the new young spokesman Ram Madhav. Explaining the change, Ram Madhav said, ‘‘Four or five youngsters make a lot of difference. In view of the growing requirements of the organisation, we need the guidance of seniors and the vigour and enthusiasm of the youngsters.’’ (see interview)

That men past 40 can be called ‘‘youngsters’’ is a telling comment on the real challenge being faced by the RSS, an organisation that prides itself on youth power. On the face of it, both RSS membership and spread is impressive. It remains, arguably, the biggest NGO in India today, with its own members as well as a plethora of front organisations working in every field of civil society in the country. According to the latest figures presented at the Nagpur meet, the total number of RSS upa shakhas (the primary unit) stands at 45,960. With 15 members on average per upa shakha, there are close to seven lakh men and boys who daily don their khaki shorts and attend the shakha. In addition, there are 7,923 Saptahik Milans (weekly meetings) and 7,200 Mandalis (meetings of volunteers who do not attend daily or weekly shakhas.)

Apart from the daily drill at the shakhas, the RSS also runs a gamut of ‘social welfare’ activities. According to the annual report presented by Bhagwat to the delegates at Nagpur, RSS volunteers run 36,320 service programmes — ‘‘809 organisations/ trusts are involved in this activity which run 19,480 educational, 4,977 medical, 7,477 social and 4,396 self-help programmes.’’

It is this massive network that Bhagwat and his team want to strengthen and build on over the next three years. Delegates who attended the Nagpur session maintain that the discussions revolved only around organisation issues, with representatives from across the country reporting on the nature and progress of their shakhas and ‘service’ programmes. Though the RSS remains the ideological mentor of the Hindutva forces, it is its organisational prowess that holds the key to its power. With the BJP in power at the Centre and the VHP making all the noises on ideological concerns, Bhagwat’s brief is to ‘‘convert the conducive atmosphere into an instrument of social consolidation’’ through the shakhas.

Beneath the impressive statistics and gung-ho optimism, there is growing concern about how to attract young people to the shakhas, and more importantly, how to maintain the gunvatta (quality) of swayamsevaks. Though the number of shakhas has registered a rise each year, the average number of attendants has been on the decline. RSS members are loathe to give out figures that do not suit them, but they do concede that not enough young people are being drawn to the disciplined life of the swayamsevak. There are around 4,000 pracharaks (full time workers) but the base from which to draw them is decreasing.

An RSS swayamsevak blamed ‘‘the three Ts — television, tuitions, and technology’’ for the decline in the number of new recruits to the Sangh. The primary recruiting ground of the RSS has traditionally been students, preferably secondary school students. The five-fold division of the shakhas reflects this obsession: The first stage is the shishu shakha (6-10 years), followed by bal shakha (10-13), kishore shakha (14-21), tarun shakha (21-45) and praudh shakha (45+). There is no rigid compartmentalisation on the basis of age, but most RSS-BJP leaders of today, including Vajpayee and Advani, entered the RSS before they stepped into their teens.

Many apolitical boys are first attracted to the shakhas because of the many games, sports and exercises that form the daily ritual, and are then slowly politicised (or poisoned, as their detractors prefer to put it) into the ideology of Hindutva. But with increasing competitiveness in society, coupled with consumerism and round-the-clock entertainment, young men prefer to watch cricket on TV or surf the net or swot for exams than play kabbadi and kho kho in the shakhas every evening, bemoans a former pracharak. The RSS has tried to keep up with the times by introducing other games (they no longer frown on cricket, for instance) and opening up chat rooms and websites dedicated to their activities. While the latter has increased RSS influence among NRIs, it hasn’t quite compensated for the declining attendance in real, as opposed to virtual, shakhas.

The other major cause of worry is the ‘‘politicisation’’ of the swayamsevak, thanks largely to the ascendancy of the BJP. The RSS has always claimed that ‘‘character building’’ is its primary aim and politics is anathema to it. Both Hedgewar and Golwalkar were keen to keep the organisation insulated from the corrosive effect of electoral politics, though the RSS under Golwalkar controlled the Jana Sangh right from its inception in 1951. His successor Balasaheb Deoras shifted gears and blessed the Jana Sangh’s merger into the Janata Party. The BJP, born as it was as a result of the dual membership issue, was inextricably linked to the RSS and the umbilical cord is yet to be broken.

The BJP’s rise to power is, however, proving to be something of a double-edged sword for the RSS. At one level, its members attribute the rise of the BJP to the work done by the RSS both at the ideological and organisational level and want the BJP to follow their dictates. The frequency with which Sudarshan and Dattopant Thengadi has attacked policies of the BJP (Sudarshan even demanded the resignation of Brajesh Mishra, only to be snubbed by the PM) has shaken the image of the Sangh Parivar as India’s foremost Hindu Undivided Family. The greater cause of concern for the RSS, however, is not the occasional differences aired publicly but the corrosion in the quality of the average swayamsevak, who wants his share of the fruits of power. RSS members and fronts have figured in both the petrol pump and land allotment scams, and favour seekers at the lower levels are on the increase.

Even while this phenomenon is dismissed as a ‘‘minor’’ aberration, BJP leaders concede that the real power of the RSS within the Parivar lies in its apolitical and incorruptible image. Pramod Mahajan, often regarded as a lapsed swayamsevak, likens the RSS to the ‘‘third umpire.’’ The Sangh’s authority, he says, ‘‘comes from its neutrality’’, its ability to have the last word when members of the family fight among themselves. But its word as third umpire is law because ‘‘its strength comes from sacrifice, from a simple lifestyle, from objectivity, from ideology.’’ Dismissing notions that the Sangh’s authority over the BJP is on the decline, Mahajan says, ‘‘This strength will always be there so long as they have these qualities.’’ But there is a rider — for these qualities to remain, the Sangh must eschew electoral politics. Mahajan quotes Golwalkar who reportedly said, ‘‘A man can slip anywhere but politics is like a bathroom where the floor is that much more slippery.’’ Though a veteran on slippery slopes, Mahajan would hate to see his erstwhile brethren in the RSS go on the same path.

BJP vice-president Pyarelal Khandelwal, also an RSS man, echoes the same sentiment. ‘‘The majority of RSS cadres has nothing to do with election politics. Those who want to do election politics do not remain pracharaks. If he joins politics, he will have to resign, and therefore the respect for the pracharak remains intact within the parivar,’’ says Khandelwal.

For all their avowals against politics, the RSS is and has always been an intensely political organisation, closely interacting and often interfering with its electoral wing, the BJP, from the mandal level upwards. It has also prospered greatly through the BJP’s control over state power. Despite its tentacles in civil society, the RSS has always stood in fear of hostile governments (the leadership’s efforts to get the ban on the organisation lifted in both 1948 and 1975 are testament to this) and taken advantage of a sympathetic government. The RSS’s objective of creating a Hindu rashtra cannot bypass state power, and its leadership knows it.

The challenge before the RSS is how to balance the benefits of power with the corrosion it inevitably brings. As Organiser editor and former RSS pracharak Seshadri Chari puts it, ‘‘Applied ideology is likely to be different from theoretical ideology. The pulls and pressures of applied ideology are bound to affect the core ideology. What is important is to insulate this core ideology from fundamental distortion.’’

He and many others view Mohan Bhagwat’s leadership as the much-needed ‘‘insulator’’ against the possibilities of a fundamental distortion in the RSS’s austere style of functioning. For Bhagwat himself, the answer lies in going back to the shakhas. In a rare interview to the Organiser in March 2000, he said, ‘‘We believe that the individual is the best instrument to effect change in the society. And shakha is the best instrument to create such individuals.’’ Hedgewar said the same thing, but then he did not have the three Ts — or indeed the three Ps (power, pelf, and politics) — to contend with.