A principal proponent of strengthening party cohesiveness is party president Advani, elected to his position in May 1986. More outspoken in defence of his own RSS ties and of RSS norms than former party president Vajpayee, Advani seems to be emerging as the most powerful figure in the party. Having the support of organizational leaders, he can be expected to reorient the party in the Jana Sangh image.
In his presidential address at the 9–11 May 1986 annual party session, Advani emphasized the BJP’s Jana Sangh roots.98 Barely concealing his appeal for the support of the RSS cadre, he demanded the scrapping of Article 370 of the constitution, which gives Jammu and Kashmir a special status; and he called for a common civil code while denouncing Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s government for enacting legislation forcing the courts to apply traditional Islamic law—rather than a common civil code—to alimony cases involving Muslim women. In addition, Advani’s warnings about the threats to national unity may have been intended to convince the RSS cadre that the BJP would be a better manager of national interests than Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress party.
Besides the appeal to the RSS cadre, his message seems to have been calculated to regain Hindu support in anticipation of the May 1987 state elections in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Mizoram and West Bengal, as well as possible mid-term polls in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. The BJP’s performance in those state elections may well determine whether the party retains the confidence of the RSS cadre. If the BJP repeats its earlier dismal electoral performance, the RSS may decide that it has more to gain by expending resources to strengthen other affiliates like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, and the Vidyarthi Parishad.
While the May 1986 national conference underscored the BJP’s Jana Sangh legacy, the party leadership did not totally sever its links with the Janata past. Gandhian Socialism was retained as a party principle, though of course not on a par with Integral Humanism, and some non-Jana Sangh/RSS officers were retained. But the party continued to move away from its Janata association. This was most clearly reflected in the appointment of men from RSS backgrounds to staff the four general secretary positions: Kidar Nath Sahani (Delhi), Murli Manohar Joshi (Uttar Pradesh), Krishan Lal Sharma (Punjab), and Pramod Mahajan (Maharashtra). It is likely that the centralized structure of the BJP will eventually accord one of these men major responsibility for organizational work. Indeed, Advani may be testing the four to determine who would be best suited for a position so central to all the constituents of the RSS ‘family’.
The post-1977 experience of the Jana Sangh group underscores the political dilemmas created by the symbiotic linkages between the RSS and a political party. The RSS wants a representative in the political arena which will speak out on behalf of its Hindu nationalist ideology, if only to provide protection to the RSS and its affiliates. But the more successful such a party becomes, the more obvious it is that the links between the RSS and the party could harm both organizations. The political enemies of the party might well gang up against the RSS, identified as the source of the party’s strength.
RSS: A SHIFT IN FOCUS
The fall of the Janata Party government in 1979 and the subsequent fragmentation of the party was a setback for the RSS activists, and these events forced the RSS to rethink its tactics. The traditional element in the RSS had always demanded a distancing from the political arena. After 1980 their activist colleagues were inclined to agree that political activities might play a much reduced role in bringing about the desired unity of Hindus, and that other affiliates might be more important for achieving this goal. Moreover, the increasing respectability of the RSS in the 1980s reduces the compulsions for it to be closely linked to a political party. After 1980 the RSS shifted its focus to the affiliates, especially the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
In late 1982 the conversion of some low-caste Hindus to Islam at Meenakshipuram (Tamil Nadu) set off alarm bells, raising fears of Hinduism in danger. The RSS felt ccmpelled to assist the VHP, the affiliate which could play the major role in meeting the perceived threat. The RSS supported the VHP’s fund-raising efforts, its Ekmata Yatra (unity pilgrimage) campaign, which sought to create all-India Hindu symbols, its effort to unify the Hindu religious establishment, and its social welfare activities aimed at insulating vulnerable groups from conversion. The other affiliates were also encouraged to take a more active interest on questions relating to national unity. In Assam, for example, the Vidyarthi Parishad was the most assertive ‘family’ participant in the anti-foreigner agitation. In Punjab the RSS itself took the lead in trying to diffuse Hindu–Sikh communal tensions, sending pracharaks from all over the country to the state. In addition, Sikh swayamsevaks were dispatched to Punjab to demonstrate that the RSS considered Sikhs a part of the Hindu community. However, this non-political approach may not help to solve the complex problems in Punjab.
The RSS shift away from politics is at least partly the result of its uncertainty regarding the electoral future of the BJP. If the BJP cannot develop into a major national political party, close identification with it could antagonize other parties. The Janata Party experience had demonstrated the dangers of even a perceived close relationship. Even if the BJP achieved significant electoral gains, the RSS interest might still be better served by keeping the party at arm’s length, thus providing incentive to other parties to woo the RSS. The rapid growth of the RSS and of its affiliates enhances the potential political value of the RSS if it does not put all its political eggs in one basket. Indeed, the RSS cadre already seem to be dividing their votes. There will be even greater incentive for them to do so if the BJP demonstrates that it cannot develop into a viable national party.
The BJP for its part will try to develop into a national political force, but it is questionable whether it can do so with a cadre drawn largely from the RSS. Within the party’s organizational structure, the cadre has been reluctant to share power with politically prominent figures from non-RSS backgrounds who could mobilize mass support for the party. The RSS training, emphasizing the sacrifice of self for the larger good, and the apolitical orientation of the RSS ideology make it unlikely that politically charismatic figures will emerge from within its own ranks.99 On the other hand, it is questionable if the BJP could survive politically without the RSS cadre, and the cadre will not stay unless the leadership of the party stays firmly in the hands of the ‘brotherhood’.
Notes
Introduction
1. The English translation is the National Volunteer Corps.
2. For a discussion of the general issue of the social effects of rootlessness, see Robert A. Nisbet, The Quest for Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 46–50; and Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1962), pp. 227–43.
3. Hans Kohn analyses the revivalist roots of nationalism in his History of Nationalism in the East (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929), Ch. 2.
4. The RSS sometimes refers to the most committed of the swayamsevaks, the RSS-trained full-time workers (the pracharaks), in the RSS itself and in the affiliates as the ‘family.’
5. The Jana Sangh, established in 1951, developed into the political affiliate of the RSS. The Jana Sangh merged into the Janata Party in May 1977. The Jana Sangh group in the Janata Party along with some non-Jana Sangh allies bolted from the Janata party in April 1980 to form the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). RSS critics maintain that the BJP is the political front of the RSS and trace its roots to the Jana Sangh. In fact, as we shall show, it is not yet clear if the BJP is a full member of the ‘family’, though early indications suggest that it is moving in that direction.
6. For a study of this psychological orientation in youth, see Kenneth Keniston, ‘Youth: A “New” Stage of Life,’ American Scholar 39 (Autumn 1970), pp. 631–54.
7. G. Morris Carstairs, The Twice-Born: A Study of a Community of High Caste Hindus (Bloomington: In
diana University Press, 1958). G.B. Murphy and A Murphy reach the same conclusion in In the Minds of Men (New York: Basic Books, 1953). A more poetic treatment of the proposition discussed in Philip Spratt, Hindu Culture and Personality (Bombay: Manaktalas, 1966).
8. For an analysis of the martial values of Maharashtrian brahmins, see Richard I. Cashman, The Myth of the Lokamanya (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 8–16. For example, Samarth Ramdas, the seventeenth century Maharashtrian religious figure, propagated a militant interpretation of the Bhagavadgita, a major Hindu religious text.
9. For a theoretical discussion of this proposition, see Giovanni Sartori, ‘From the Sociology of Politics to Political Sociology,’ in Politics and the Social Sciences, ed. by Seymour Martin Lipset (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 65–100; and Samuel H. Barnes, ‘Ideology and the Organization of Conflict: On the Relationship between Political Thought and Political Action’, Journal of Politics 23 (August 1966), pp. 513–30. For the alternative proposition of the dependence of political ideology on political culture, see Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An Introduction’, in Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, ed. by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (New York: The Free Press, 1967), pp. 1–6; and Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little Brown, 1966), pp. 110–112.
Chapter 1: Hindu Revivalism
1. For a discussion of the nationalist implications of the new education, see Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century, ed. by John Gallagher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), Ch. 1; and B. N. Javadekar, Adhunik Bharat (Pune: Rashtriya Grantha Prakashan, 1936), in Marathi.
2. Ibid., pp. 61, 87, 107.
3. For a discussion on political participation in the late nineteenth century, see Gordon Johnson, Provincial Politics and Indian Nationalism: Bombay and the Indian National Congress 1880–1915 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973), particularly Ch. 1.
4. For a discussion on the impact of Western norms on Indian culture, see Ashis Nandy’s ‘The Culture of Indian Politics’, The Journal of Asian Studies 30 (November 1970), pp. 57–79.
5. Ibid., p. 59. Nandy uses ‘restorationists’ to describe what we call the revivalists. However, his term implies that the ‘restorationists’ sought to restore Hindu orthodoxy, which is misleading, for many of the changes that the ‘restorationists’ proposed were as radical as those proposed by the ‘modernists’.
6. Ibid., pp. 59–60.
7. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 160–71.
8. See discussion in R. C. Majumdar, History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol. 1 (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhay, 1963), pp. 320–28.
9. Guiseppe Mazzini, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Conte Camillo Benzo di’Cavour and other nationalist writers were translated into Indian languages and their writings were widely read by the revivalists. Many revolutionary groups treated their works almost as catechisms of political action.
10. For a discussion of the groups which participated in the formation of the Indian National Congress in Seal, see Indian Nationalism, Ch. 1.
11. The British tended to blame almost every movement they disliked—nationalism, terrorism and communism—on the Western-educated class of Indians, who were typically portrayed as weak, effeminate and rather deceptive. In contrast, the heroic figures were the illiterate and martial tribesmen of the north-west who did not use Western political philosophy to challenge British political supremacy. The Bengali ‘babu’ was portrayed as an educated and politically conscious Indian who talked about Western values without understanding the essence of them and who was devoid of the fortitude and skill required to administer the institutions based on them. For critical portrayals of the ‘babu,’ see Rudyard Kipling’s The Enlightenment of Pagett M.P. and The Head of the District.
12. For a theoretical discussion of the structural conduciveness necessary for the development and growth of social movements, see Neil Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (New York: Free Press, 1962), pp. 319–28. The three factors discussed here are derived from Smelser’s treatment of structural conduciveness.
13. A.B. Purani (ed.), The Life of Sri Aurobindo: A Source Book (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1964), p. 81. Ghose believed that national revival would not be achieved if Western models were employed. He asserted: ‘If you try other and foreign methods, we shall either gain our end with tedious slowness, painfully and imperfectly, or we shall not attain it at all.’ Ibid., p. 82.
14. Dhirendra Mohan Datta, ‘Some Philosophical Aspects of Indian Political, Legal and Economic Thought’, The Indian Mind: Essentials of Indian Philosophy and Culture, ed. by Charles A. Moore (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1967), pp. 274–75.
15. Ibid., pp. 277–78.
16. Many Hindu religious texts propose that the gunas (qualities that make up all matter) dispose a person to behave in a certain way and determine a person’s varna, one of the fourfold functional divisions of Hindu society: (1) brahmin—priest and teacher, (2) kshatriya—political and military leader,
(3) vaishya—producer and distributor of wealth, (4) sudra—manual worker, craftsman, and artisan. Theoretically, the gunas are independently determined by an individual’s previous lives and not by the hereditary factor of birth into a particular caste. For a discussion on gunas, see Franklin Edgerton’s translation and analysis in Bhagavad Gita (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), particularly Ch. 5.
17. Rajni Kothari, Politics in India (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1970), p. 28.
18. P. T. Raju, Idealistic Thought of India (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 440–41.
19. Kothari, Politics in India, p. 34.
20. Norman Cohn, ‘Medieval Millenarism: It’s Bearing on the Comparative Study of Millenarian Movements,’ Millennial Dreams in Action: Essays in Comparative Study, ed. by Sylvia L. Thrupp (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1962), pp. 31–43.
21. The Bhagavadgita was theologically considered smriti (non-canonical) by orthodox Hindus. However, the revivalists tended to blur the distinction between noncanonical texts and the canonical shruti (the Vedas and Upanishads) and to treat both sets of texts as equally authoritative. Indeed, the less quietistic smriti texts were sometimes used to interpret the canonical texts.
22. This is Tilak’s translation of karmayoga, the path of action. Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s most systematic treatment of the subject is Gita Rahasya, 2 vols., trans. by Bhalchandra Sitaram Sukthankar (Pune: Tilak Bros., 1936). Also see Aurobindo Ghose, Essays on the Gita (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1959); Swami Vivekananda, ‘Thoughts on the Gita,’ The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 6th ed., 8 vols. (Almora: Advaita Ashrama, 1948), Vol. 4, pp. 98–106.
23. Gita Rahasya, Vol. 1, p. xxiv.
24. Ibid., p. 29.
25. Ibid., pp. 30–31.
26. The text is composed of eighteen chapters inserted into the Mahabharata, one of the major epic texts of classical Hindu literature.
27. Gita Rahasya, Vol. 1, p. 37.
28. Ibid., p. 696.
29. Ibid., p. 697.
30. Ibid.
31. Charles H. Heimsath, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 323–27.
32. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, trans. by Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati Memorial ed., 8 vols. (Almora: Advaita Ashrama, 1948–1955), Vol. 3, p. 379.
33. Vivekananda discusses the power potential in the context of advaita, ibid., pp. 366–84. Also Ghose speaks on the subject in very naturalist terms in Bhavani Mandir, a treatise written during the debate of the 1905 partition of Bengal. Presented in Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, pp. 75–86. For a general discussion of the doctrine, see John Woodroffe, Sakti and
Sakta: Essays and Addresses, 7th ed. (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1969); Swami Kirtanananda, The Glory of the Divine Mother (Calcutta: Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 1964).
34. According to Aurobindo, the Indian nation ‘is a mighty Shakti, composed of Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation . . . The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people . . .’ Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 79.
35. Majumdar, Freedom Movement in India, Vol. 1, pp. 329–37.
36. For a comprehensive study of the political impact of this anthem, see Haridas Mukherjee and Uma Mukherjee, ‘Bande Mataram’ and Indian Nationalism (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1957).
37. Gopal Haldar, ‘Revolutionary Terrorism,’ Studies in the Bengal Renaissance, ed. by Atul Chandra Gupta (Jadavpur: National Council of Education, Bengal, 1958), pp. 224–57. For a study of revolutionary activity in Bengal, see Richard L. Park, ‘The Rise of Militant Nationalism in Bengal: A Regional Study of Indian Nationalism’(Unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1951).
38. In 1905, twelve years after the first Ganesh festival in Pune, the festival was celebrated in seventy-two other towns. Victor Barnouw, ‘The Changing Character of a Hindu Festival’, American Anthropologist 56 (February 1954), pp. 74–85. The festival drew fewer participants after 1910 in part because of government restrictions on it. Nevertheless, Tilak’s experiment of combining religion and politics became a model for revivalist strategy. Richard Cashman discusses the political characteristics of this festival in The Myth of the Lokamanya, Ch. 4.
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