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Review: The RSS - A View to the Inside by Walter K Andersen and Shridhar D Damle

Hindustan Times | ByRanjona Banerji
Oct 19, 2018 05:06 PM IST

An insight into how the RSS has manoeuvred itself into contemporary India despite its arcane ideas

405pp, ₹699; Penguin

This is an updated version of a “study” of the RSS published in 1987. The content has been updated to take the last 30 years into account, including the rise of Narendra Modi as prime minister as well as recent events up to 2018.

If you are completely ignorant about what the Nagpur-based Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh stands for and does, then perhaps this inside view is for you. It skims through the history of the RSS, its ideas and ideology, some changes over the years, the people who made it and who changed it. However, if you seek a detailed view into how and why it thinks the way it does and how and why it functions the way it does, well, you will not find it here.

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The RSS, regardless of the current popularity of Modi and the political success of the Bharatiya Janata Party, stands in a peculiar place in the Indian political situation. It did not take part in the last century’s most seminal event, the struggle for freedom from British colonial rule. It focused its attention on the “protection” of Hindus against “outsiders” like Muslims and Christians. Its founders admired Adolf Hitler largely because of his treatment of Jews and that is why Mein Kampf remains a bestseller in India today.

The “Hindutva” idea of VD Savarkar, of militant Hinduism, filtered into the RSS ideology. It positioned itself as a “cultural” organisation and perhaps truly believed that, because its entry into politics came a few years after Indian Independence and also through associate organisations.

The reader will find none of this in this book. Instead, there is a fascinating lack of attempt to place the RSS in the context of India as a nation state, of a democratic India with a Constitution. This updated version will provide fairly interesting insights into how the RSS has manoeuvred itself into contemporary India regardless of its arcane ideas. But it will brush over the consequences of the RSS’s ideas, even if it mentions the factors which have triggered violence for instance.

This makes A View to the Inside a very fractured look into the RSS. There is information on how and why it has changed with the times. But there is no analysis of the effects of that change or of what the RSS means to the India which does not believe in its regressive ideas. Women for instance are barely touched upon, although we are regularly told by RSS leaders to stay in the kitchen and know our limitations. Muslims are seen through the prism of the RSS-affiliated Muslim Rashtriya Manch, but even that outreach effort is presented as shadowy in its connections and effect.

A lot of attention is paid to the success of the government of Narendra Modi and the RSS role in that. But there is no more insight than what any regular reader of newspapers would know. There is no critique at all of any sort. But even without that, the reader cannot gauge exactly how the Modi government and the RSS feel about actions of the VHP and Bajrang Dal and other more militant affiliates. Therefore, in the discussion of “ghar wapsi” or the re-conversion of Muslims and Christians into Hinduism or of “love jihad”, the breaking up of interreligious romances, there is no mention of the illegality of these actions or the assault on people’s civil liberties or of intrusion into personal space. It is as if for the writers, the RSS justifiably exists in its special universe that is untouched by Indian law or Indian society.

Walter K Andersen (Penguin)

Therefore, if the attitude to Muslims are restricted to the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, the murderous acts of “cow protectors” are restricted to a few throwaway sentences about aggressive acts by “outliers” on the right. The inference that ostensibly the RSS cannot control its associate organisations is neither analysed nor given much attention. Glancing mentions are made before the next subject is quickly broached. Therefore, the impact of the RSS idea that all Indians are Hindus and what this means for the Constitutional rights of other religions is never on the writers’ radar.

Shridhar D Damle (Courtesy Penguin)

Similarly, therefore, when the Gujarat riots of 2002 are mentioned, it is with this very casual reference. When the temple at Ayodhya is discussed, we have get a potted history about the destruction of the Babri Masjid and not one word about the riots that took place in several parts of India as a result. By this point it is clear that A View to the Inside is nothing but a whitewash.

Possibly the most interesting chapter is on the debate within the Sangh Parivar on “Economic Self-Sufficiency”. The conflict between the BJP’s ideas of global capitalism and the more socialist and India-centric notions of the RSS and its trade unions and affiliates is laid out for the reader, with examples of back and forth negotiations and compromises. However, once again, there is no deep analysis of the why and hows and nor any discussion on the future of such ideas.

The biggest criticism of this book would be that the functioning of various branches of the RSS are not touched upon at all. The VHP, SJM, BMS, Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini, ABVP are barely mentioned. It would have been very interesting to see how these arms function, how they are controlled or not by the RSS and how they are coordinated. Even the formation of the BJP, surely the most important wing of the RSS, and its subsequent close association with the RSS is out of the writers’ purview.

Read more: Review: Syama Prasad Mookerjee; Life and Times by Tathagata Roy

With the use of newspaper articles in the past few years, the writers have brought the book up-to-date as it were. The chapter on China therefore stands as a mix of confused nationalism and politics, a distraction even from an important discussion on how the RSS can impact India’s foreign policy, as a remote control for any BJP-led government at the Centre.

For insight into the RSS, this book is a disappointment. Perhaps its biggest value is in the tables in the appendix, which explain the hierarchical structure of this secretive organisation.

Ranjona Banerji is an independent journalist. She lives in Dehradun.

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