There was a time not so long ago, when I thought that your boys in the RSS were quite
harmless -with their rituals and ceremony, their prayers and drill, their nikkers and lathis.
Altogether naive and innocent, I thought. Rather like the Boy Scouts. When reports and
statements charged the RSS with inciting every communal riot, I thought that your outfit
was a convenient whipping-boy for the govemment and the media, rather like'the foreign
hand', even though I knew that old cliche about no-smoke-without-fire.

That was some time ago. Till I went to Baroda and Meerut. Since then have began to
notice the large-scalp expression of communal sentiment everywhere,particularly  the
resurgence of Hindu revivalism.

It began with my meeting Jaspal Singh, police commissioner of Baroda, before he was
transferred. You should have heard him speak of the "stupid fellows" and "bearded buggers"
whom he was expected to protect as the senior-most police officer in the city.

Since then, I have read the utterances of Karan Singh, Gulzarilal Nanda, the four
sankaracharyas, MGR and, of course, you too apart from those hundreds of hardly
known Hindus. All you're saying is nothing new to me. I have been told often enough that
"Hinduism is threatened", "Hindus must unite", "Hinduism is a tolerant religion but the
minorities have taken undue advantage of this virtue". This, you'll say, must stop now.
"Hindus must fight back". After all, as Lord Krishna told Arjun ...

There was a time when this kind of hyperbole was confined to middle-class 'drawing rooms'
when the neighbours were over. Today, I am amazed by the public currency which it has
gained. Obviously, someone is making capital out of all this.

I have seen the progress of a week-long Gita Yagna in the August Kranti Maidan
in Bombay (now, isn't that ironic --the yagna and Kranti ) I was part of the traffic jams
on Marine Drive which arose because Murari Babu, patron saint of "endangered Hindus",
was delivering spiritual discourses at Chowpatty. I heard that he had given his benediction
to Jaspal Singh while he was in Baroda. A friend also mentioned that before the rioting
began in Baroda Murari Babu's audience was usually no more than a few thousands. This
number has now swollen to lakhs.

I find that forums with names like Vishwa Hindu Sammelan, Hindu Ekta Sammelan,
Vishwa Hindu Parishad ...are multiplying geometrically. They all speak a language you
are familiar with. They tie up with the thousands of mathams and samajs that litter the
country, intent on preserving the "glorious" heritage of this avowedly Hindu country.

Side-by-side, the bylanes of Baroda, Meerut, Bombay --everywhere --display cloth
banners which I recognise now only because of their alarming similarity, always advertising
some mitra mandal's religious or festive celebration. The props for such festivities have
standardised themselves too --loud music, which is often vulgar, coloured lights, imitatton
temples with tinsel gods aartis, bells and conches. You must know of this already, so I'll
skip the details for now.

You see, for a while I was confused by the barrage of my observations. I could not tell if it
was my heightened perception that was exaggerating the reality, since each input sensitised
me to many more. But slowly, I began to realise that the fragments of reality I was observing
were not merely a spontaneous resurgence of the "humanely" Hindu spirit. Out of this
understanding, undoubtedly shredded, arose a hint, a clue, a question: is there a vital link
between all these separate phenomena, is there a superior body governing the functions
of its various organs ? The query lingered and troubled me for some time.

What was necessary was the introduction of a crustallising catalyst. And when such a
moment came it was, both, coincidental and paradoxical. It was coincidental because I
happened to be in Baroda the day you addressed an RSS rally at the Agiary ground. It
was paradoxical because had I not heard you that day I might never have been
enlightened, if you know what I mean. There was a dialectic in the situation which I must
tell you about.

That day, yours was the thesis, commanding and overwhelming my colleague and me who
were like two stray waifs in a dense crowd of believers. But, and here's where the dialectic
comes in, your postulation triggered off a process of crystallisation in my mind. All of a sudden,
the jigsaw puzzle I had constructed quickly fell into place and in the process, there arose a
thesis opposed to yours. Let me elaborate with a couple of images that remain with me
till today:

One.
At the RSS marchpast that preceded the gathering. A gaint centipede worms its way through
narrow tense streets. On each of its hundred legs is a jackboot. Saffron flags bravely point
out the route the march is taking.

Two.
At the rally. Hundreds of spectators. A hushed audience over which your strident voice
booms, proclaiming the need for Hindu dominion. I atune myself to the waves of congenial
Hindu harmony that the crowd exudes. In a forty-five minute speech you have made each
person present there believe that only a Hindu Rashtra is the answer, the response to the
fallen state of the nation. Going beyond this, you presume that the RSS with its votaries
is the sole vehicle that will transport this assorted bunch or middle-class devotees to the
land of milk and honey.

This task, the congregation knows, requires iron-will, courage, determination and discipline,
but your boys have just shown that they have it.  Look at the way they twirl lathis, salute
flags and recite prayers.  Virtually everybody present at the rally feels overwhelmed and the
Doubting Thomases are chastened by the intoning of Sanskrit Shlokas.  They are made to
feel sufficiently cretinous in the face of a proud Hindu inheritance till doubt give way to
belief.

This is what is worrisome.This belief.  Within the confines of a temple it is perhaps
acceptable. But when it arrogantly displays itself in a parade, when it intrudes upon
everyday life, this belief can be dangerous.

It is this belief that gives you confidence.  To hear you is to realise that hysteria is the
preserve of the frustrated.  Which you do not betray at all.  You speak with a smugness
which is enviable and to tell you the truth, I was amazed at the quality of response you
elicited from you audience--the abject silence, the silent acknowledgement.  I had to keep
reassuring myself that the year in 1983, that we have not been transported back into
a dark recess of Indian history.

In trying to recreate a part of your measured rhetoric not ad verbatim I must endeavours to
preserve that hypnotic incantation: " People ask me, why does the RSS aspire for a Hindu
Rashtra, why not Bharat Rashtra and Bharatiya-ta.  I tell them, because Bharath is Hindu,
India is Hindu.  There is no doubt in this.  For thousands of years the Hindu dharma has
been integral to Bharat.  Even abroad, if our culture and dharma is Hindu, if our society
is Hindu, them what is wrong if we call this country a Hindu Rashtra ?"

A thousand heads nod.

" Now, of late, there has been a lot of Charcha about the conversions of Harijans to
Islam.  Some people are saying that his happened because Hindu society practice
inequality.  This is wrong.  Hindu dharma does not practice inequality. Even a thousand
years ago Hindu sages knew about equality and democracy.  In the Sangh, Harijans and
Hindus perform drill together, they eat and sleep together.  Hindu society is all one, it is
unified.  Whenever there is disunity because of caste or creed, that is bad.  But we
don't need outsiders to tell us that.  We have had social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan
Roy, Vivekanand and Aurobindo..."

You know, we are all a ware that the Hindu tradition harbours diverse elements.
Often these are contradictory.  But they still support a unity of beliefs because all these
elements are only manifestations, at best they are varying attitudes dictated and codified
in differing circumstances for over a thousand years.  In the absence of an organised
church and in the evolution of a Hindu philosophy, or weltanschaung, most of these
elements have undergone concentrations and distillations, so that, in its essence,
Hinduism projects itself as a spiritual and metaphysical corpus or knowledge that can be
interpreted in as many ways as you choose.

This open-endedness is successfully exploited by its present-day spokesmen who are
using it today to support the revival of militant Hinduism.

In this endeavour, they are exploiting the tension that arises out of the juxtapositioning of
present-day realities vis-a-vis a dominant tradition. It has been observed throughout history
that in moments when a community or a nation undergoes accelerated development, whenever
its social and political structure tends to be dynamic rather than static, the classes, castes or
communities at the top of the social hierarchy assumes a xenophobic and jingoistic character.
When this happens a dominant tradition, often long out-moded, is sought to be reasserted as
the principle means of communal salvation.

Let's talk of a society which turns in upon itself. When constant flux scares the conservative
elements, makes them want to consolidate their vested interests, makes them want to
arrest change. Because change signifies a loss of bourgeois security and middle-class values
like The Family, The Tradition, The Temple of Learning, The Loss of Godhood. Isn't this
what everybody's bothered about? The loss of Hindutva.

In such a situation you make complete sense with your simple and direct appeals to
obscurantism. Look how Hindus cling to the achievements they made thousands of years ago.
Look at millions of Hindu puffed-up chests recalling those golden, halcyon days. And you, with
your vast knowledge of the Hindu shastras encapsulate these ditty dreams into ritualistic
Sanskrit shlokas. The process of rejuvenation is complete and everybody feels a lot better.
They can now revel in the scientific temper of Hindu society, recall Aryabhatta, Panini
et al, forgetting that every year more than 20,000 doctors and engineers leave the country's
shores for want of employment.

This is a typical game of leapfrogging which you and your ilk are very good at. You take
a modem point of reference, plunge back a thousand years and find a parallel there.
Which is all very well but you do not leave it at that. You expect us to believe that because
Hindu society was vigorous then, merely a reassert ion of Hindutva will solve the modem
problems of India in 1983. And people believe you.

In this respect, what Ved Mehta wrote in The New India more than a decade ago was
perceptive and bears repetition ..."Signs of backward-looking political and religious nationalism
are everywhere. On All India Radio, there are daily news broadcasts in Sanskrit. There is
constant talk of the glories of ancient India --about how the Hindus in Vedic times travelled
around in 'flying machines', talked to each other on 'skyphones' and constructed 'bridges of
stones' spanning oceans. The heroic feats and the anthropomorphic characteristics of devas,
or gods, and assuras, or demons, in the ancient Hindu epics are being taken literally again ..."

There is so much currency to such beliefs that one would think that the Hindus have done
enough punya for several janams. So no one bats an eyelid when a young bride gets burnt
to death for her dowry. Or Harijans are killed because they are Harijans and dared to raise
their voices. Politically, you have agitated against reservations for backward communities.
Communally, you have institutionalised the killings of Muslims. Economically, you stand for
exploitation and inequity. Socially and philosophically, you stand for degradation of the
human spirit since you deny the egalitarian basis of modem citizenhood.

Through this process, the economic and political dimensions of a nation's development get
rapidly inter-woven with the social, communal and religious groupings that exist and these
reach virtually every member of society. The throes of industrial development are adequately
reflected in the lives of individuals participating in it and their chaotic experiences often warrant
a crutch, an answer to the apparent madness visible everywhere. Whenever a healthy and
dynamic modem response cannot be found to shape the situation, ante-diluvian systems are
hastily grafted on. With diastrous results.

Look at what happened to Germany and its Third Reich, its blue-blooded Aryans. See the
similar fate of the Duce and his Republic or Hirohito with his Bushido code. Still we cannot .
resist falling into the same trap ourselves for who doesn't want to be told that his or her
community or nation was great. Once upon a time ...its borders were far-flung and everybody
was prosperous. In India, such a fairy tale is further substantiated by claims that we
even possessed atomic knowledge and weapons while jet aircraft were not uncommon too.

The Hindu feels so proud of his glorious heritage that he is unwilling to accept the fact
that is was only because Hindu or Indian society was so inherently weak and powerless
that it could not withstand the successive waves of pressures from preponderant systems
that came from without --Islam and colonialism.

Even after seven hundred years of a material history that challenges any claim regarding
the strength of Hindu society and that leaves no room to believe that any impulses towards
modernism can spring from within it, the core of Hindu tradition is still hearkened back to.

Meanwhile, any impulses from without are treated as foreign, alien and somehow unworthy
of being accepted within the Hindu belief system. The Hindu will still believe that his religion,
or way or thought, has contemporary relevance though it is plain that the last vestiges of a
powerful Hindu social reform movement cannot be traced since after the emergence and
spread of Arya Samajism, which, too, was an extremely restricted and reactionary
response to the decadent nature of Hindu society in the nineteenth century.

I suspect that the genesis of this problem can be traced to the static nature of Hindu
society, and in particular to the amazingly flexible nature of the Brahmins who, as a group,
have been entirely successful in adapting to changing circumstances and preserving their
social hegemony over affairs Hindu. A parallel to this singular feat, of one caste or class
maintaining its social position for several centuries, cannot be found. The achievement is
even more spectacular when it is considered that, by and large, this social group has
exercised a prasitic hold over the rest of Hindu society even while monopolising a certain
brand of knowledge which has since long been redundant and inane. Since the Brahmins
have intervened in every stage of the development of Indian history, and because they have
always sought to maintain their dominance, they have vitiated any attempts to change the
Hindu social fabric, thereby effectively restraining the rest of the society from a movement
that can purge and cleanse Hindu society of the canker of ritualism, inegalitarianism and
social tyranny.

So much so that even movements that originated, in revolt against Brahmanical orthodoxy
and ritualism -.Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and the Bhakti movement period --are today
sought to be subsumed within the Greater Hindu wheel. You say it too. That these are after
all only off-springs of Hinduism.

If we position this tendency within more recent historical parameters we find that even the
initial social and cultural response to British colonialism was collaborationist, till economic
developments and the pressure of an indigenous bourgeoisie made it imperative to adopt
a nationalist stand.

In this too, the genuine need for securing a hold over the instruments of government, self
dominion, which was demanded by the national bourgeoisie, was defined ideologically in
Brahmanical terms. The philosophical weaponry used to mobilise anti-British opinion
emanated  out of Brahmin perceptions, which is why the freedom movement finally, at this
level, degenerated merely into an anti- imperialist struggle while the need for establishing
a genuine socialist democracy was ignored and conveniently set aside.

Your organisation, the RSS, occupies that recess in Indian history reserved for reactionary,
conservative and communal organisations. Before you object that you are not alone, let
me state that there are many more in this dark nook --like the Hindu Mahasabha and the
Jamaat-e-Islami, and for that matter any other body that seeks to impose upon modem Indian
society an outlook that springs out of false divides OOsed on religion and caste.

It is no coincidence that the inception of the RSS was bom out of an alliance of Brahmins
and decadent feudal lords, since both of them were insecure of their social positions in the
fast-changing circumstances' o f the 1920s.

It also speaks volume for the apprehensions of the Hindu petty-trading classes, as well as
some large industrial houses, that they too have chosen to align themselves with dictates
that emanate from outside the economic development of the country.

Let us look at the ideological basis of the utterings we are increasingly hearing from all parts
of the country. To put it frankly, the ideology of the RSV is at best a bunch of thoughts, a relic
of the past which was unfortunately not exorcised during the freedom movement. Today under
differing circumstances it is raising its head again.

It is tragic that more than fifty years after the enunciation of the basic principles for the
establishments of a Hindu Rashtra, the chief theoretical planks of your gurus Hedgewar
and Golwalkar are still being touted as the means to the country's salvation.

Today, you are the mouthpiece for your master's voice. In their pristine form the bunch of
thoughts live on and were it not for the marked increase in their chanting no one would grudge
such longevity. A healthy society is capable of withstanding the toxicity' of malingering and
festering sores. But we are not speaking about a healthy society. Nor one that is sane and
rational. Not if it is lapping at cliched dictums that seemed reactionary at the tum-of-the-century.

I will try to qualify the exact nature of such right reaction. Since its inception on the
day of Dussehra in 1925, the RSS has been sloganeering for the acceptance of one
fundamental tenet for the country. That "Hinduism is nationalism". This by itself sounds
ridiculous but since so many of you take this dictum seriously it merits our attention.

First of all, can you define "Hinduism" without bringing in further qualifications of region,
caste, language, social strata, economic position ...Is, there only one sort of Hindu in the
country? On what is this Hindu nationalism based? Is there one book or one shastra
in the Hindu tradition refers to national Hindusm?.

No wonder them for more than fifty years you have had nothing more to stand on apart
from the appeals for Hindu unity, a Hindu Rashtra and Hindutva.  But towards what
end will this unity, once it is achived, be used ? Do you have any policy that
suggests solutions for the problems of development which a bourgeois democracy
seeks to address--unemployment, health, education etc.  Is this unity of all Hindus
an end in itself ?.
 

Or is your programme conspicous by its absence, so that I am left to deduce that your
organisation is communal because it is aimed against Muslims and other minorities.
It stands for "free enterprise" because you are "anti-communist". It is Hindu because it
rejects Western axioms and models while hearkening the dream of something called
"Ram Rajya", which is legendary in the strictest sense of the term. It is atavistic
because its entire being is based on a regression of history and because you reject
and do not accept newer forces. You are unwilling to accomodate them. Quantitative
and compositional changes, in the membership of your organisation (like the recent
induction of the scheduled castes into your pale) are not reflected in the qualitative
content of the organisation's guiding principles. The Greater Brahmin Wheel rolls on
and conquers, like the horse and emperor in Vedic aswamedha sacrifices.

I know that none of this criticism will alter the ,situation materially. The, increasing
number of members who turn up at your shakhas are proof enough that there are,
possibly, millions in this country who subscribe to all the notions and theories you
propound.

The effects of their association with you are also becoming obvious in the spread
of communal violence throughout the country. For instance, in Assam and
Kerala the RSS has been directly implicated in cases of arson and rioting.

In other places, various front organisations, allied to yours, have cropped up and
these operate in all the spheres of Hindu life. You have, in fact, effected community
participation in the reassertion of Hindu values, be it in the sphere of social get-togethers,
cultural programmes, eductional institutes, pujas and mahapujas etc.

All these find political shelter under the umbrella of the BJP, a patty whose base
depends entirely on the work of its hard-core RSS activists.

Fortunately, there are enough Indians who reject the forms you seek to impose upon
the future of the country. They realise that a situation will always offer several options
and that once one of them are adopted any future development will be governed by the
choices that are being exercised today.

Some options are progressive. They entail an understanding of the material base of history,
they require a constant search for asserting those facets of development which will be
dynamic, which will lead to further progress, which will be guided by the principles for
which millions the world over have fought for --an equal and just society for all.

You might say that you too stand for this ideal. After all isn't this a definition of
Ram Rajya ?

Here's where the difference lies in regressive options that negate the dynamic inherent
within history, that they always look behind them and project a backward development
as a blue-print for the future. In doing so they yearn for a static situation. Because they
uphold the present, they cannot create, for the process of creation is inextricably linked
to the process of destruction.

Which is why, for those who are connected with the process of creation and destruction
your option cannot exist. Your ideology, your options, will be amenable to only those who
are involved in preservation, which is actually negation.

There are varying choices between these options, but spelling out the extremes makes
matters clear because then we all know what the determining parameters are. Both
options are here with us in India today. Both have their strerngths and weaknesses. So
far as we are concerned, the present-day developments are alarming and make it imperative
to be censorious and critical now. For, if the forces of reaction triumph, we might not get
the opportunity to speak aloud thus.