Tag: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

More than ever before, the Indian nation and its nationalism are defined by Brahminism today. Many of us found this latest slogan from Modi quite distasteful and callous, referring as it did to a section of society engaged as security persons or chowkidars – a class of heavily underpaid people, exploited by making them work long hours and with little or no dignity in their work. Notwithstanding the entirely ridiculous campaign invoking chowkidars by the learned prime minister, – through which the government wants to salvage its image of patronising big capital and abetting the escape from India of other cronies – Swamy has been quite honest and sincere. He doesn’t hide his Brahminism the way his party does. In fact, when he says he ‘cannot be a chowkidar’ given his Brahminical divinity, the joke is actually on the government who cannot even counter Swamy’s utterances because his is the divine truth that actually informs their everyday politics: the politics of brutalizing Dalits, Adivasis and religious minorities as ordained by the nation conceived by Brahminism. What Subramanian Swamy said was in continuance of the action and statements of the likes of Bandaru Dattatreya, whose interference led to the institutional oppression of Rohith Vemula resulting in his death. The government is yet to come clean on this. This is the outcome of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) ideological model of India being a ‘Hindu rashtra’ (nation), while what they actually mean is an India structured on the principles of Brahminism. How else to characterise Rahul Gandhi’s numerous temple visits and the dumbstruck efforts of leaders like Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, who never confront the hydra-headed face of the RSS cultural model ideologically. It is the battle to rescue politics itself, for if not done now, we will soon have a political system which will be bereft of any politics, let alone the politics of social justice.

Barely 20 feet away, at Smriti Sthal (spot of remembrance), lay the mortal remains of his party’s behemoth — former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In the wake of the Gujarat riots in 2002, Vajpayee, the then prime minister, had reminded Modi, then the chief minister (CM) of Gujarat, about a public servant’s inalienable accountability and non-negotiable commitment to “Raj Dharm” (duty of the ruler). Telling words, coming from a veteran who had been a part of India’s freedom struggle, who was jailed during former prime minister Indira Gandhi’s draconian assault on democracy in the name of Emergency. No one will perhaps ever know whether Modi’s mind had raced back to Vajpayee’s sagacious advice, as smoke billowed from the pyre at Smriti Sthal on Friday. He never let his ideology play second fiddle to opportunism. If the five years of full term as prime minister, between 1999 and 2004, brought Vajpayee the statesman to the fore like never before, then his role as the lodestone for India’s largest Hindu nationalist party — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — was no less significant. His own man The transformation of the erstwhile ultra-rightist Bharatiya Jan Sangh into the present-day BJP was made possible to a large extent by the Vajpayee brand of politics of consensus and inclusivity. Vajpayee was the foremost Hindu nationalist leader who had realised very early in his career in active politics that nationalism, as the vast majority of Indians see and interpret the concept, isn’t something that ought to be worn on one’s sleeve. Rather, nationalism, and Hindu nationalism in particular, ought to be a way of life that is bereft of all forms of regimentation and indoctrination. He was his own man all through his life and career.

Above all they voted decisively for change from the elitist Indian National Congress-dominated politics of the past and for a new openness in the hope that Modi would lift the country out of low-level growth and political scandal and corruption. The RSS has thousands of disciplined, ideologically inspired members and many of them have powered the BJP’s election successes. Modi’s huge mandate and the BJP’s absolute majority were thus both a blessing and a burden. Modi’s challenge was to demonstrate unequivocally that he was leading for all of India not just the nationalist forces that supported him. Political empowerment through many political parties and political activism at all levels is a notable achievement since independence 71 years ago. Modi’s BJP government is the first single-party government since 1984. Indeed, there are a number of disturbing developments associated with the RSS, which counts as members Modi, Indian President Ram Nath Kovind, and several ministers including Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma. Other concerns include Modi’s pick for Uttar Pradesh chief minister, a Hindu priest who has incited violence against Muslims, and legislative developments in BJP-controlled states that presume guilt until proven innocent in cases of cow slaughter and urge the enforcement of archaic laws against cattle slaughter (even in Muslim-majority communities). Events since 2014 raise the question of whether the BJP is the new dominant party of Indian politics. The mobilisation of local alliances against the BJP in the national elections of 2019 is a long shot, says Adeney, although this strategy worked at the state level in Bihar in 2015.