One Hundred Years Of... Resistance

Who is afraid of the RSS? No one is today

- Harish Khare

WHY should anyone be afraid of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) just because it has completed 100 years of its existence? Minus the trappings of a very flabby militia, the organisation looks like any other outfit. Nothing special, nothing different about it.

If at 100, this Nagpur-based body of (mostly) men does not inspire the awe and respect it thinks it once did, it is because it no longer can lay a claim to being the custodian of our collective morals. In its own self-perception, the Sangh arrogates to itself the mantle of a sole overseer of patriotism, nationalism, and idealism in public life. It is a different matter that other than its own functionaries, no one else has ever conceded this claim.

This downward journey can perhaps be traced back to the March 1998 National Executive (Pratinidhi Sabha) of the RSS. Atal Bihari Vajpayee had just been sworn in as the Prime Minister of a coalition government, though he was still to win a vote of confidence—which he did on March 28. This was an expedient and transactional alliance of calculating political parties, but the RSS Chief Rajendra Singh (Rajju Bhaiya) chose to interpret the formation of the Vajpayee government as a rejection of the allegations and biases against ‘the pro-Hindutva forces’.

At the first hint of proximity to power, the moralistic and idealistic Sangh was ready with a convoluted logic to read popular approval and legitimacy into an experiment with opportunism. That experiment flopped within 13 months, but by now the RSS had trapped itself into the role of a godfather of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its politics of compromise and convenience.