The Double Standards Of RSS

By Suraj Kumar Thube

20 March, 2016
Countercurrents.org

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, during the recently concluded World Cultural festival, ruffled a few feathers by one particular remark. 'Pakistan Zindabad', he said, in the midst of an imposing crowd present at the festival. Sharing the dais with a bewildered looking Rajnath Singh among others, he urged the countries to strive toward a harmonious relationship with this particular remark. Incidentally, it was one of the slogans which recently caused great pandemonium at JNU, for which sedition charges were hastily slapped against a few 'anti-nationals'. A change in time and place, along with the situation and the 'public worth' of a person is all that took for a seditious remark to instantly become a benign and courteous harmonious response. It doesn't seem to have perturbed the Sangh Parivar as it was 'one of them' who was ingeniously using a much deplored remark to his advantage. The RSS is a master of such foul creativity.

Another recent example of trivialising and later overtly demonising the entire framework of debate is that of the whole insistence on chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. After Asaduddin Owaisi was criticised for his refusal to say these words, along with a party member who was later suspended, it was seen as a moral victory by the RSS over the intransigent zealots. At the same time, this very act of framing the nationalist discourse on their terms needs to be questioned on multiple fronts. What is the RSS idea of 'Bharat Mata KI Jai'? If their strong insistence on the dream land of Aryavarta is anything to go by, it is 'territorial nationalism' that it values the most. It is this lopsided idea of giving primacy to 'land' more than the 'people' that reside on them which is the most appalling of all. This idea gets epitomised the most when there is a militant drive by this group to protect 'Kashmir' from alien forces, giving scant attention to the lives of the 'Kashmiris' who live on that land. This is where one gets the best practical example of the ideas of punyabhoomi and pitrabhoomi propounded first by the father of Hindutva himself, V D Savarkar. So it is essential to put such hyper jingoistic claims of maintaining national security into proper perspective.

This streak of double standards by the RSS seems quite interminable in many ways, ranging from the time of its birth to the present times. It was the reluctance of V D Savarkar to associate himself with the nationalist movement to begin with which continued till the country attained independence. He being frequently coy with the Britishers for getting himself exonerated from the sundry charges against him has been well documented and is a sure sign of his pusillanimity. For the supporters of this proto nationalist to constantly serve and revere this country sounds highly misplaced. Another figure who shared his polarising tendencies is M S Golwalkar. His reservations on accepting the Indian constitution verbatim at his time, as he points out in his Bunch of Thoughts, is constitutive of the non committal nature of the Sangh mentality to accept it as the most supreme legal text of this land. It will be interesting to know what the young RSS sympathisers feel about this dichotomy and where they envision themselves of standing in this larger debate. Do they have an open mind in choosing between the two - one which envisions a socially egalitarian idea of Indian citizenry and the other that represents modern hate.

Linking this shrewd duality to the JNU episode, one can see the same rank hypocrisy on the part of Sangh Parivar in upbraiding the anti national students for not having a national flag in the campus. Much to the disappointment of their haphazardly claimed victory in the episode, it was later pointed out that a national flag has been flying high atop the social sciences building for years. In fact, much to their chagrin, it was noted by academics that the RSS headquarters in Nagpur did not have the Indian tricolour flying above their office till as late as the advent of this century. A certain youth wing forced the authorities of this 'cultural' organisation to unfurl the flag and show their patriotism toward it. Again, it is a well documented fact that the radical elements of this umbrella organisation had a problem with 3 colours ( the number allegedly being inauspicious ) among having other reservations. No wonder why they manage to remain a significant actor in debates of critical political importance. It is their calculated ambiguity that pays rich dividends and helps them cast a vice like grip on society with relative ease. This quintessential nature of hesitancy masked by progressivism can be understood in its recent example where the RSS was seen making a positive remark about homosexuality only to add a caveat of it being 'socially immoral'. By doing so, it subtly deemed the activity to be a psychological case that needs treatment.

The laundry list of the RSS double standards is self explanatory. We would be neglecting them at our own peril.

Suraj Kumar Thube is currently pursuing his MA in Political Science from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He is interested in Indian politics and Indian political thought. He spends most of his time reading books, playing football and listening to Hindustani classical music.