05-24-2009, 10:35 AM
RSS - The "Sangh"
What is it, and what is it not?
by Partha Banerjee
Is RSS really fascist?
Why is the RSS labeled as fascist by some circles and how much
justification is there? Why call anybody a fascist? Before RSS or BJP
is called fascist, we need to describe their ideas. Let's explain what
fascism is, and compare these ideas with what the "Sangh Parivar"
practices. 26
The word "fascism" describes a set of overlapping and sometimes
contradictory beliefs that first became fashionable in continental
Europe in the 1920s. According to Dr. Mark Trisch of Johannes
Gutenberg Universitaet, Germany 27, the following set of ideas (in
varying combinations) fostered by a party or organization would brand
it fascist:
(1) Calling for a return to the "ancient traditions of the race"
(2) A hierarchical, militaristic, corporate social organization
(3) A cult of leadership
(4) Calls for national self-reliance
(5) Calling for "full employment"
(6) Aggressively nationalistic foreign policy.
According to Dr. Trisch, although it is the combination of all these
that makes for trouble, the first three seem to be the most important.
Do the RSS, and its sister organizations such as the BJP or VHP foster
these ideas? Unfortunately, they do. A return to the ancient so-called
"glorified Bharatiya traditions" of the Hindu race is their number one
creed. Every single day, RSS, in its militaristic shakhas or
gatherings, preaches to its workers and sympathizers that the "oldest
nation of Bharatvarsha" was the "greatest" on earth and that its
inhabitants were "happy, prosperous, and religious". The Sangh leaders
never forget to mention that all the ills of India began when, due to
the "disunity of the Hindu race", Muslim and then British aggressors
invaded and took over this "holy land". The long term goal of the
Sangh Parivar is of course to bring back that "past era of glory" by
creating an "Akhand Bharat" (i.e., an Undivided India ranging from
"Himalaya to Kanyakumari" and "Gandhar to Brahmadesh" (i.e., from
Tibet in the north to the southern tip of India, and from Afghanistan
in the west to South East Asia including Burma, Laos, Thailand, and
Cambodia)-culturally and politically. This dream of "unity" is to be
reached by organizing Hindus from all around the globe.
The RSS is indeed a hierarchical, militaristic organization that
actively practices regimentation. 28 RSS has a "Sarsanghchalak"
(Supreme Leader) who is never elected (for that matter, no other
leaders are elected-there is no system of internal elections in the
organization)-the supreme leader's commands are obeyed without
question. Further, Dr. Keshavrao Baliramrao Hedgewar, the founder of
the Sangh and Madhavrao Sadasivrao Golwalkar, the second and most
well-known supreme leader of RSS, are remembered in Sangh circles with
a sense of divinity and admiration that reaches the level of
God-worshipping. Indeed, these two men are officially given the status
of Avatars (reincarnation of God) by the RSS. Pictures of these two
Sarsanghchalaks are distributed and sold by RSS offices and bookstores
and decorate walls of workers' homes. Stories, often exaggerated,
about their lives are discussed at RSS camps and gatherings on a
regular basis, essays are written on their lives and works and the
best ones are awarded prizes. 29 Portraits of the present
Sarsanghchalak Rajendra Singh ("Rajju Bhaiya") is now promptly posted
on RSS' Internet homepage by active workers in the USA. 30 Similarly,
Shiv Sena's new official homepage, on its title page, now has the
picture of its supremo, Balasaheb Thackeray.
This is what the Shiv Sena homepage declares about its leader: "People
from all parts of Hindustan have only one hope. "Hon'ble
Shivsenapramukh Shri Balasaheb Thackeray is our only hope. He is our
national Leader" they say."
National self-reliance is preached by the RSS: the Sangh has now
actively taken up the issue of self-reliance and put forth a program
called the "Swadeshi Jagaran Manch"-a platform to champion the idea of
total economic self-reliance. They decry the US investments in India
and pro-US fiscal treaties such as the GATT and NAFTA-RSS' opposition
to American investment might well have been a headache for the US
government (and the) CIA in deciding between the faltering Congress or
rising BJP to be covertly pushed as the next ruling party of India. 31
But the international investors can now breathe a sigh of relief as
this call for national self-reliance has proved to be just a
politically expedient move without any real will behind it as evident
by what the BJP in fact did vis-Ã -vis the multinational Enron power
project.
Full employment for labor (but without any real power or control over
the workplace) has been a centerpiece of RSS and BJP actions
implemented through the activities of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh or BMS,
one of the largest labor organizations in India. BJP's ultra-right
ally Shiv Sena has come up with plans to support the Hindu labor force
in the state of Maharashtra. The irony here is that the Shiv Sena was
originally floated by national and international vested-interest
groups to crush the once-powerful trade unions of Bombay back in the
1980's and has operated a protection racket ever since. In recent
months, American pop-singer Michael Jackson and eminent Indian film
playback singer Lata Mangeshkar and actor Dilip Kumar participated in
huge Shiv Udyog Sena 32 -sponsored concerts purportedly to raise funds
for the Hindu laborers of Bombay.
An aggressively nationalistic foreign policy has always been at the
forefront of RSS propaganda. Much toned-down by the BJP now, during
the Jana Sangh days, it was much more overt. America was never
well-liked by Sangh members-the United States has always been
portrayed as the very image of immorality and profanity on earth.
However, a previous Jana Sangh president and one of its most famous
orators Balraj Madhok was an ardent pro-American who had a small but
powerful following in his days. But he could not make RSS, and
consequently Jana Sangh, openly pro-American. This was largely due to
the opposition of the all-powerful Golwalkar and leaders like Vajpayee
the latter being a supporter of non-alignment with a less vociferous
objection against the then USSR (this was however a strategy for them
to internationally undermine and isolate China-the Sangh's one main
enemy). RSS' and Jana Sangh's (and now BJP's) foreign policy stands on
the dictum of anti-Pakistan and anti-China hatred-and for that matter,
hatred against any Islamic or socialist countries or alliances. George
Fernandez, an important minister in the current BJP government, has
proclaimed China to be India's number one enemy (May 1998). Israel now
has become a hot favorite of the Sangh Parivar-Vajpayee, Advani, and
other BJP leaders have frequented the country to show their support
for the ferociously anti-Arab nation. Attempts have often been made,
allegedly, to iron out the Sangh's previously bitter relationships
with USA via the mediation of Israel. Note the irony here-a
Hitler-admiring organization is having a mutual love-fest with the one
nation that has the most reason on earth to despise anything that even
remotely seeks of Hitler and the Nazi party.
What now?
Congress' fortune has plummeted. The party that many arguably say won
Indian independence from the British and later degenerated into a
party of corruption, inefficiency and anarchy, is now much weaker than
before. Sitaram Kesari, the previous Congress president, withdrew
support in late 1997 to the left-leaning United Front government
paving way for a mid-term election and the new BJP-led coalition
government at the center. RSS' Vajpayee is now the prime minister of
India 33. Congress is breaking up again and its more conservative
section is leaning towards BJP. Some well-known Congress leaders such
as Buta Singh, Maneka Gandhi, Sukh Ram, K.C.Pant are now supporting
the BJP government.
Clearly, BJP now seems to be the party of choice of the upper caste
conservative Hindus-the traditional kingmakers of India-and the
political equilibrium seems to have shifted in their direction. How
much effort BJP makes to implement the Hindu supremacist ideas of RSS
and to what extent, if any, it resists them, remains to be seen. To
the poor and ever-oppressed of India, one dark chapter of rule is now
being replaced by another one.
To these Indians, who have been trampled upon by the Brahmins and
other upper castes and social patriarchs for ages, the only hope is
the true consolidation of a third force-a force of the untouchables,
religious minorities, women, poor laborers and marginal peasants. The
recent developments show that such a possibility, before it really
crystallized, was destabilized mostly by outside forces through
inevitable Congress sabotaging and due to internal squabbling. BJP has
suddenly become the hot favorite of the big industrialists of
India-the big businessmen put out huge newspaper advertisements in
1998 in favor of the party culminating in its victory.
Who is going to reap the harvest of all this? Other than the national
and international power-brokers and anti-India agents, it will no
doubt be the saffron supremacists of the "Sangh Parivar".
1 Sita Ram Goel. 1994. Jesus Christ An Artifice of Aggression. Voice
of India, New Delhi.
2 See appendices for more details.
3 New York Times, May 1996. Also, see Appendix VI.
4 During the seventies, I remember the socialist leader Jaya Prakash
Narayan calling all Brahmans to give up their "holy threads" a symbol
of their so-called superiority. However, the then Sarsanghchalak
Balasaheb Deoras opposed this call -- Deoras said that all
non-Brahmans should wear holy threads instead. Obviously, he knew that
the Hindu Brahman would never accept that measure.
5 See Chapter 5 on the Ekatmata Stotra.
6 What is the truth about Godse's RSS connection? ... Godse himself
had stated before the Court: "I have worked for several years in RSS
and subsequently joined the Hindu Mahasabha..." (Godse, Gopal: "May it
Please Your Honour: Statement of Nathuram Godse"). The most
significant is the revelation by his brother about the last moments of
his life: "On reaching the platform they recited a verse of devotion
to the Motherland: "Namaste sada vatsale matribhume..." [This is the
RSS prayer sung even today - author]. The above is quoted from D. R.
Goyal: Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh . Radha Krishna Prakashan. New
Delhi. 1979.
7 To know more about ABVP, BMS, and other Hindutva organizations, see
Chapter 3.
8 M. S. Golwalkar. 1938. We or Our Nationhood Defined. Bharat
Prakashan, Nagpur.
9 This rhetoric reminds us of the anti-immigrant decree of Pat
Robertson, the leader of the Christian Coalition of USA a personality
much despised by the RSS and VHP people of America. The Republican
governor of California, Pete Wilson, won the recent elections in the
state upon this anti-alien, anti-immigrant plank known as Proposition
209-a measure that denies all human rights to illegal immigrants and
their children and some benefits even to legal immigrants.
10 Savarkar's presidential address to RSS members in Nagpur on 28
December 1938. Indian Annual Register, 1938 (1939), Vol. II, Calcutta.
11 This section has been paraphrased after Des Raj Goyal, Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh, Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979.
12 Swatantra Bharat. December 24, 1965. Lucknow. Cited in D. R. Goyal.
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979.
13 The Organiser (RSS English weekly). February 2, 1962. New Delhi.
The Sangh Parivar is fervently pro-Hindi.
14 Sheikh Abdullah was the Kashmir chief minister for a long time
since its inclusion in India. He was also close to Jawaharlal Nehru,
the first Indian prime minister.
15 Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay was one of the most intelligent,
scholarly, and ethical leaders RSS has ever produced. My father knew
him well. I remember how shocked he was when Upadhyay was brutally
murdered on a train he was traveling by himself. Among others who paid
tribute after Upadhyay's death, the eloquent Communist Party leader
Hiren Mukherjee called him "ajatashatru" the one with no enemies.
16 Nana Deshmukh, popularly known as Nanaji, is another Sangh leader
much respected for his organizational skills and little personal
ambitions. Nanaji knew me through my father. I even ran into him
during my 1997 trip to New Delhi. Once he asked me to write a paper on
Rabindranath Tagore's social views (The Nobel-laureate poet Tagore was
a skilled and benevolent zamindar or land owner. He also established
two great universities named Shanti Niketan and Sri Niketan the latter
being a vocational school). Nanaji paid me for the essay. My father
translated it from Bengali to Hindi.
17 See Appendix IV for a description of RSS work overseas.
18 The political activities are often masked by religious activities
at Hindu temples, teaching of Sanskrit to youngsters, private
gatherings, etc.
19 This section is paraphrased after Amrita Basu's article "Women and
religious nationalism in India: an introduction", Bulletin of
Concerned Asian Scholars, December 1993.
Also see Dr. Gopal Singh's report, Minorities Commission, 1983
(Source: Emergency Assessments, Vijay Prashad, Social Scientist,
September-October 1996, p. 61).
20 Koenraad Elst. 1991. Ayodhya and After Issues before the Hindu
Society. Voice of India, New Delhi.
21 The Statesman Miscellany. September 12, 1993, Calcutta.
22 Granta, Spring 1997. New York and London.
23 Vajpayee has some history of defying orders from RSS. In the
sixties, he defied RSS' Golwalkar's insistence that an unknown
Bachhraj Vyas be selected as the Jana Sangh chief instead of the
popular leader Deendayal Upadhyay.
24 Vijay Prashad and Biju Mathew, from a letter written to India
Abroad and other Indian newspapers in USA.
25 CIA's Robert Gates "confirmed" that India and Pakistan headed
toward a nuclear confrontation in April/May, 1990. Gates visited India
and Pakistan to dissuade the governments from such confrontations.
Intelligence Newsletter 4/1/93.
26 Also read, Achin Vanaik, Communalism Contested, Vistaar
Publications, New Delhi, 1997. Vanaik prefers to call the Sangh
Parivar a "pre- or potentially fascist" group. p. 279.
27 Per Indology mailing list discussions on the Internet, December
1995.
28 See Chapter 2 on the activities of a Sangh shakha.
Moreover, RSS and BJP have also been linked with Ranabir Sena, a
private army for big landowners that has most recently been
responsible for the killing of sixty-one poor people in
Lakshmanpur-Bathe village of Bihar's Jehanabad district on Dec. 1, 97.
The angry people in the village recently did not allow Vajpayee to
visit the killing fields.
29 I too was once awarded a first-prize for an essay I wrote about the
founder of the Sangh. The prize was another biography of Dr. Hedgewar!
30 A meeting of prominent RSS workers was held on November 9 and 10,
1929. It decided against the 'cumbersome clap-trap of internal
democracy' and opted for a centralized authority-based structure...
The principle was called "Ek Chalak Anuvartitva" (following one
leader) and was explained to the swayamsevaks by V. V. Kelkar who told
them that it was on the lines of the traditional Hindu joint family
system and was most appropriate for an organization wedded to reviving
and rejuvenating the Hindu way of life. It is rather difficult to
distinguish this arrangement from what has been called the "Fuehrer
Principle" followed by the Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany in
the decade leading up to WWII. Quoted from D. R. Goyal: Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh . Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi. 1979.
Recently, in an interview carried in the Panchjanya, a magazine with
close RSS connections, Ms Uma Bharati, the BJP MP from Khajuraho and
president of the party's Yuva Morcha, has quoted the RSS chief,
Professor Rajendra Singh, to say that despite the number of police
stations in the country, and thousands of policemen, Muslims cannot be
safe if they have enmity with the Hindus. Source: The Hindu, January
18, 1998.
31 To know more about RSS' fiscal policies, see Chapter 3.
32 Shiv Udyog Sena is the commerce front of the Shiv Sena.
33 Vajpayee became the Indian prime minister in 1996 for 13 days his
minority government resigned rather than face a vote of confidence on
the floor of the parliament. The only legislation the BJP government
managed in those days were some silly but nonetheless chilling
restrictions on the broadcast media. The current BJP govt. is now
extending the task by manipulating with the Prasar Bharati.
What is it, and what is it not?
by Partha Banerjee
Is RSS really fascist?
Why is the RSS labeled as fascist by some circles and how much
justification is there? Why call anybody a fascist? Before RSS or BJP
is called fascist, we need to describe their ideas. Let's explain what
fascism is, and compare these ideas with what the "Sangh Parivar"
practices. 26
The word "fascism" describes a set of overlapping and sometimes
contradictory beliefs that first became fashionable in continental
Europe in the 1920s. According to Dr. Mark Trisch of Johannes
Gutenberg Universitaet, Germany 27, the following set of ideas (in
varying combinations) fostered by a party or organization would brand
it fascist:
(1) Calling for a return to the "ancient traditions of the race"
(2) A hierarchical, militaristic, corporate social organization
(3) A cult of leadership
(4) Calls for national self-reliance
(5) Calling for "full employment"
(6) Aggressively nationalistic foreign policy.
According to Dr. Trisch, although it is the combination of all these
that makes for trouble, the first three seem to be the most important.
Do the RSS, and its sister organizations such as the BJP or VHP foster
these ideas? Unfortunately, they do. A return to the ancient so-called
"glorified Bharatiya traditions" of the Hindu race is their number one
creed. Every single day, RSS, in its militaristic shakhas or
gatherings, preaches to its workers and sympathizers that the "oldest
nation of Bharatvarsha" was the "greatest" on earth and that its
inhabitants were "happy, prosperous, and religious". The Sangh leaders
never forget to mention that all the ills of India began when, due to
the "disunity of the Hindu race", Muslim and then British aggressors
invaded and took over this "holy land". The long term goal of the
Sangh Parivar is of course to bring back that "past era of glory" by
creating an "Akhand Bharat" (i.e., an Undivided India ranging from
"Himalaya to Kanyakumari" and "Gandhar to Brahmadesh" (i.e., from
Tibet in the north to the southern tip of India, and from Afghanistan
in the west to South East Asia including Burma, Laos, Thailand, and
Cambodia)-culturally and politically. This dream of "unity" is to be
reached by organizing Hindus from all around the globe.
The RSS is indeed a hierarchical, militaristic organization that
actively practices regimentation. 28 RSS has a "Sarsanghchalak"
(Supreme Leader) who is never elected (for that matter, no other
leaders are elected-there is no system of internal elections in the
organization)-the supreme leader's commands are obeyed without
question. Further, Dr. Keshavrao Baliramrao Hedgewar, the founder of
the Sangh and Madhavrao Sadasivrao Golwalkar, the second and most
well-known supreme leader of RSS, are remembered in Sangh circles with
a sense of divinity and admiration that reaches the level of
God-worshipping. Indeed, these two men are officially given the status
of Avatars (reincarnation of God) by the RSS. Pictures of these two
Sarsanghchalaks are distributed and sold by RSS offices and bookstores
and decorate walls of workers' homes. Stories, often exaggerated,
about their lives are discussed at RSS camps and gatherings on a
regular basis, essays are written on their lives and works and the
best ones are awarded prizes. 29 Portraits of the present
Sarsanghchalak Rajendra Singh ("Rajju Bhaiya") is now promptly posted
on RSS' Internet homepage by active workers in the USA. 30 Similarly,
Shiv Sena's new official homepage, on its title page, now has the
picture of its supremo, Balasaheb Thackeray.
This is what the Shiv Sena homepage declares about its leader: "People
from all parts of Hindustan have only one hope. "Hon'ble
Shivsenapramukh Shri Balasaheb Thackeray is our only hope. He is our
national Leader" they say."
National self-reliance is preached by the RSS: the Sangh has now
actively taken up the issue of self-reliance and put forth a program
called the "Swadeshi Jagaran Manch"-a platform to champion the idea of
total economic self-reliance. They decry the US investments in India
and pro-US fiscal treaties such as the GATT and NAFTA-RSS' opposition
to American investment might well have been a headache for the US
government (and the) CIA in deciding between the faltering Congress or
rising BJP to be covertly pushed as the next ruling party of India. 31
But the international investors can now breathe a sigh of relief as
this call for national self-reliance has proved to be just a
politically expedient move without any real will behind it as evident
by what the BJP in fact did vis-Ã -vis the multinational Enron power
project.
Full employment for labor (but without any real power or control over
the workplace) has been a centerpiece of RSS and BJP actions
implemented through the activities of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh or BMS,
one of the largest labor organizations in India. BJP's ultra-right
ally Shiv Sena has come up with plans to support the Hindu labor force
in the state of Maharashtra. The irony here is that the Shiv Sena was
originally floated by national and international vested-interest
groups to crush the once-powerful trade unions of Bombay back in the
1980's and has operated a protection racket ever since. In recent
months, American pop-singer Michael Jackson and eminent Indian film
playback singer Lata Mangeshkar and actor Dilip Kumar participated in
huge Shiv Udyog Sena 32 -sponsored concerts purportedly to raise funds
for the Hindu laborers of Bombay.
An aggressively nationalistic foreign policy has always been at the
forefront of RSS propaganda. Much toned-down by the BJP now, during
the Jana Sangh days, it was much more overt. America was never
well-liked by Sangh members-the United States has always been
portrayed as the very image of immorality and profanity on earth.
However, a previous Jana Sangh president and one of its most famous
orators Balraj Madhok was an ardent pro-American who had a small but
powerful following in his days. But he could not make RSS, and
consequently Jana Sangh, openly pro-American. This was largely due to
the opposition of the all-powerful Golwalkar and leaders like Vajpayee
the latter being a supporter of non-alignment with a less vociferous
objection against the then USSR (this was however a strategy for them
to internationally undermine and isolate China-the Sangh's one main
enemy). RSS' and Jana Sangh's (and now BJP's) foreign policy stands on
the dictum of anti-Pakistan and anti-China hatred-and for that matter,
hatred against any Islamic or socialist countries or alliances. George
Fernandez, an important minister in the current BJP government, has
proclaimed China to be India's number one enemy (May 1998). Israel now
has become a hot favorite of the Sangh Parivar-Vajpayee, Advani, and
other BJP leaders have frequented the country to show their support
for the ferociously anti-Arab nation. Attempts have often been made,
allegedly, to iron out the Sangh's previously bitter relationships
with USA via the mediation of Israel. Note the irony here-a
Hitler-admiring organization is having a mutual love-fest with the one
nation that has the most reason on earth to despise anything that even
remotely seeks of Hitler and the Nazi party.
What now?
Congress' fortune has plummeted. The party that many arguably say won
Indian independence from the British and later degenerated into a
party of corruption, inefficiency and anarchy, is now much weaker than
before. Sitaram Kesari, the previous Congress president, withdrew
support in late 1997 to the left-leaning United Front government
paving way for a mid-term election and the new BJP-led coalition
government at the center. RSS' Vajpayee is now the prime minister of
India 33. Congress is breaking up again and its more conservative
section is leaning towards BJP. Some well-known Congress leaders such
as Buta Singh, Maneka Gandhi, Sukh Ram, K.C.Pant are now supporting
the BJP government.
Clearly, BJP now seems to be the party of choice of the upper caste
conservative Hindus-the traditional kingmakers of India-and the
political equilibrium seems to have shifted in their direction. How
much effort BJP makes to implement the Hindu supremacist ideas of RSS
and to what extent, if any, it resists them, remains to be seen. To
the poor and ever-oppressed of India, one dark chapter of rule is now
being replaced by another one.
To these Indians, who have been trampled upon by the Brahmins and
other upper castes and social patriarchs for ages, the only hope is
the true consolidation of a third force-a force of the untouchables,
religious minorities, women, poor laborers and marginal peasants. The
recent developments show that such a possibility, before it really
crystallized, was destabilized mostly by outside forces through
inevitable Congress sabotaging and due to internal squabbling. BJP has
suddenly become the hot favorite of the big industrialists of
India-the big businessmen put out huge newspaper advertisements in
1998 in favor of the party culminating in its victory.
Who is going to reap the harvest of all this? Other than the national
and international power-brokers and anti-India agents, it will no
doubt be the saffron supremacists of the "Sangh Parivar".
1 Sita Ram Goel. 1994. Jesus Christ An Artifice of Aggression. Voice
of India, New Delhi.
2 See appendices for more details.
3 New York Times, May 1996. Also, see Appendix VI.
4 During the seventies, I remember the socialist leader Jaya Prakash
Narayan calling all Brahmans to give up their "holy threads" a symbol
of their so-called superiority. However, the then Sarsanghchalak
Balasaheb Deoras opposed this call -- Deoras said that all
non-Brahmans should wear holy threads instead. Obviously, he knew that
the Hindu Brahman would never accept that measure.
5 See Chapter 5 on the Ekatmata Stotra.
6 What is the truth about Godse's RSS connection? ... Godse himself
had stated before the Court: "I have worked for several years in RSS
and subsequently joined the Hindu Mahasabha..." (Godse, Gopal: "May it
Please Your Honour: Statement of Nathuram Godse"). The most
significant is the revelation by his brother about the last moments of
his life: "On reaching the platform they recited a verse of devotion
to the Motherland: "Namaste sada vatsale matribhume..." [This is the
RSS prayer sung even today - author]. The above is quoted from D. R.
Goyal: Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh . Radha Krishna Prakashan. New
Delhi. 1979.
7 To know more about ABVP, BMS, and other Hindutva organizations, see
Chapter 3.
8 M. S. Golwalkar. 1938. We or Our Nationhood Defined. Bharat
Prakashan, Nagpur.
9 This rhetoric reminds us of the anti-immigrant decree of Pat
Robertson, the leader of the Christian Coalition of USA a personality
much despised by the RSS and VHP people of America. The Republican
governor of California, Pete Wilson, won the recent elections in the
state upon this anti-alien, anti-immigrant plank known as Proposition
209-a measure that denies all human rights to illegal immigrants and
their children and some benefits even to legal immigrants.
10 Savarkar's presidential address to RSS members in Nagpur on 28
December 1938. Indian Annual Register, 1938 (1939), Vol. II, Calcutta.
11 This section has been paraphrased after Des Raj Goyal, Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh, Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979.
12 Swatantra Bharat. December 24, 1965. Lucknow. Cited in D. R. Goyal.
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979.
13 The Organiser (RSS English weekly). February 2, 1962. New Delhi.
The Sangh Parivar is fervently pro-Hindi.
14 Sheikh Abdullah was the Kashmir chief minister for a long time
since its inclusion in India. He was also close to Jawaharlal Nehru,
the first Indian prime minister.
15 Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay was one of the most intelligent,
scholarly, and ethical leaders RSS has ever produced. My father knew
him well. I remember how shocked he was when Upadhyay was brutally
murdered on a train he was traveling by himself. Among others who paid
tribute after Upadhyay's death, the eloquent Communist Party leader
Hiren Mukherjee called him "ajatashatru" the one with no enemies.
16 Nana Deshmukh, popularly known as Nanaji, is another Sangh leader
much respected for his organizational skills and little personal
ambitions. Nanaji knew me through my father. I even ran into him
during my 1997 trip to New Delhi. Once he asked me to write a paper on
Rabindranath Tagore's social views (The Nobel-laureate poet Tagore was
a skilled and benevolent zamindar or land owner. He also established
two great universities named Shanti Niketan and Sri Niketan the latter
being a vocational school). Nanaji paid me for the essay. My father
translated it from Bengali to Hindi.
17 See Appendix IV for a description of RSS work overseas.
18 The political activities are often masked by religious activities
at Hindu temples, teaching of Sanskrit to youngsters, private
gatherings, etc.
19 This section is paraphrased after Amrita Basu's article "Women and
religious nationalism in India: an introduction", Bulletin of
Concerned Asian Scholars, December 1993.
Also see Dr. Gopal Singh's report, Minorities Commission, 1983
(Source: Emergency Assessments, Vijay Prashad, Social Scientist,
September-October 1996, p. 61).
20 Koenraad Elst. 1991. Ayodhya and After Issues before the Hindu
Society. Voice of India, New Delhi.
21 The Statesman Miscellany. September 12, 1993, Calcutta.
22 Granta, Spring 1997. New York and London.
23 Vajpayee has some history of defying orders from RSS. In the
sixties, he defied RSS' Golwalkar's insistence that an unknown
Bachhraj Vyas be selected as the Jana Sangh chief instead of the
popular leader Deendayal Upadhyay.
24 Vijay Prashad and Biju Mathew, from a letter written to India
Abroad and other Indian newspapers in USA.
25 CIA's Robert Gates "confirmed" that India and Pakistan headed
toward a nuclear confrontation in April/May, 1990. Gates visited India
and Pakistan to dissuade the governments from such confrontations.
Intelligence Newsletter 4/1/93.
26 Also read, Achin Vanaik, Communalism Contested, Vistaar
Publications, New Delhi, 1997. Vanaik prefers to call the Sangh
Parivar a "pre- or potentially fascist" group. p. 279.
27 Per Indology mailing list discussions on the Internet, December
1995.
28 See Chapter 2 on the activities of a Sangh shakha.
Moreover, RSS and BJP have also been linked with Ranabir Sena, a
private army for big landowners that has most recently been
responsible for the killing of sixty-one poor people in
Lakshmanpur-Bathe village of Bihar's Jehanabad district on Dec. 1, 97.
The angry people in the village recently did not allow Vajpayee to
visit the killing fields.
29 I too was once awarded a first-prize for an essay I wrote about the
founder of the Sangh. The prize was another biography of Dr. Hedgewar!
30 A meeting of prominent RSS workers was held on November 9 and 10,
1929. It decided against the 'cumbersome clap-trap of internal
democracy' and opted for a centralized authority-based structure...
The principle was called "Ek Chalak Anuvartitva" (following one
leader) and was explained to the swayamsevaks by V. V. Kelkar who told
them that it was on the lines of the traditional Hindu joint family
system and was most appropriate for an organization wedded to reviving
and rejuvenating the Hindu way of life. It is rather difficult to
distinguish this arrangement from what has been called the "Fuehrer
Principle" followed by the Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany in
the decade leading up to WWII. Quoted from D. R. Goyal: Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh . Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi. 1979.
Recently, in an interview carried in the Panchjanya, a magazine with
close RSS connections, Ms Uma Bharati, the BJP MP from Khajuraho and
president of the party's Yuva Morcha, has quoted the RSS chief,
Professor Rajendra Singh, to say that despite the number of police
stations in the country, and thousands of policemen, Muslims cannot be
safe if they have enmity with the Hindus. Source: The Hindu, January
18, 1998.
31 To know more about RSS' fiscal policies, see Chapter 3.
32 Shiv Udyog Sena is the commerce front of the Shiv Sena.
33 Vajpayee became the Indian prime minister in 1996 for 13 days his
minority government resigned rather than face a vote of confidence on
the floor of the parliament. The only legislation the BJP government
managed in those days were some silly but nonetheless chilling
restrictions on the broadcast media. The current BJP govt. is now
extending the task by manipulating with the Prasar Bharati.