When the RSS took the battle to pseudo-secular forces

‘Who has won and who has lost’ in this ideological-political Olympiad, which seized the nation’s attention for no less than seven days and concluded with historic lectures by two giants, Dr Mohan Bhagwat and Dr Pranab Mukherjee? The question assumes significance because India has never seen such a debate and discourse involving all political segments, the media, intellectuals, and the masses. It involved a basic principle and question, which has been haunting Indian politics for seven decades: Whether people with ‘secular’ credentials should share the dais with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This has been the great dividing line between the cultural nationalism represented by the RSS and the pseudo-secularism of the Congress, Communists and their conformists in the academia and media. Instead of debating with the RSS, they debated on the RSS, treating it as an illegitimate object — ‘fascist’, ‘communal’ and ‘anti-minorities’. Anyone willing to waste time to read a plethora of literature produced by these politically and intellectually dominant forces till the 1990s on the RSS would be highly disappointed to find that the choicest of invectives have been used to describe its ideology, organisation, and leadership. AG Kher, a minister in the then United Provinces, warned in an article in Mahratta, an English daily once published from Pune, that “calling them fascist and communal and repeating the same allegations again and again hardly serves any purpose.” He spoke against ideological and political untouchability in democracy and suggested a dialogue with the RSS. But for utilitarian politics, it was unacceptable. Sadly, today perception-based ideological and political discourse has taken the centrestage. The erosion of political fertility and ideological constructiveness in the pseudo-secular camps forced them to rely more on polarisation, identity politics, and binaries.

This is the reason that the pseudo-secular parivar (PSP) led an unprecedented campaign when it was revealed that Mukherjee had accepted the RSS invitation to be the chief guest in its annual third-year training camp in Nagpur. He faced criticisms and unsolicited suggestions. When he remained firm in his decision, the PSP began to remind him of his credentials and suggested what he should say at the event. This sort of fascism is based on centrally-controlled public activism. It guides its intellectuals and followers on ‘what to speak, where to speak and how to speak’. The world had witnessed such ominous designs between the two World Wars in Germany and Italy.

Mukherjee confronted this intellectual and political fascism and demonstrated the highest level of wisdom by silently rejecting them. His speech was full of gratitude to the past, moral duty to the present and obligations for the posterity. His speech was preceded by Mohan Bhagwat presenting a beautiful bunch of ideas, reflecting the idea of India which has a history of thousands of years and a great future. The two speeches have natural commonalities and together they constitute the manifesto of intellectual and political discourses and the vision to transform India. Both speeches highlighted the diversities as India’s internal beauty and dialogue as the essence of democracy. The duo reaffirmed the ideological currents led by the philosophy of Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Lokmanya Tilak and BC Pal. The fundamental basis of India is a culture, which believes in expansiveness, and not in stagnation, by taking the route of assimilation.

This has been the tradition of the RSS: To invite people into its ideological and organisational fold as chief guests. Earlier, five Presidents of India, either during their tenure or later, had been part of the various programmes of the Sangh Parivar. They are Dr Rajendra Prasad, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Dr Zakir Husain, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy and APJ Abdul Kalam. When it came to Mukherjee, a narrative had been systematically built to deride Hindutva in general, and the Narendra Modi government and the RSS, in particular. It was said that they represent brute majoritarianism. There is a difference between the present and the past narratives against the RSS. Both Nehru and Indira Gandhi confronted and coerced the RSS, but also accepted it as a part of domestic politics. But the present generation of Left-liberals and the Congress unfailingly and shamelessly colluded with the international forces without understanding the consequences. The Western media and intellectuals have been their great allies who fostered dangerously deceptive campaigns against Hindutva. They lacked substance and critiqued the RSS using falsehoods, imagination, and conspiracy theories. The two recent letters from the Indian representatives of the Vatican (the Archbishops of Delhi and Goa) highlight the consternation in the Western camp. At this juncture, a humble and bold Mukherjee acknowledged the importance of resurrecting the culture of dialogue and his decision punched a hole in the pseudo-secularist narratives and campaign.

The meeting of Bhagwat and Mukherjee and their togetherness in the RSS headquarters punctured the conspiratorial politics based on ideological untouchability and servility and served as soft guardrails of democracy. Lastly, democracy has won, and the pseudo-secular apologists had met their Waterloo.

The author is founding Honorary Director of India Policy Foundation, a Delhi-based think tank. Views expressed are personal.