But over the short run even the remedies envisaged by Rajendra Singh and Chandra Sekhar to defuse the dual-membership question would probably not have reduced the apprehensions regarding the Jana Sangh group. Jana Sangh cohesiveness, not RSS manipulation, was the problem. The Jana Sangh group acted as a unit,50 and this capability enhanced its potential to assert power because the other groups were not nearly so united. The Jana Sangh group’s cohesiveness was largely a function of its recruitment policies—drafting RSS cadre who were socialized to work together as a unit. Many of the critics of the Jana Sangh group mistakenly attributed its cohesiveness to RSS manipulation and believed that by delinking the RSS and the Jana Sangh group, the Jana Sangh group would become more like the other elements of the Janata.
Internal party elections might have reduced group loyalties over time by encouraging inter-group alliances. But proposals to hold organizational elections were continually shelved because the various partners, with the prominent exception of the Jana Sangh group, feared that their relative standing would suffer. Moreover, the Jana Sangh’s opponents could not be certain that the RSS would not instruct its cadre and those in such powerful affiliates as the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and the Vidyarthi Parishad, to work on behalf of the Jana Sangh in organizational elections. There was historical precedent. Thirty years earlier, the swayamsevaks in the young Jana Sangh worked together with tacit RSS blessing to remove senior non-RSS figures from the party.
A Jana Sangh bid to take over the Janata Party, however, would have been much more difficult than the earlier bid to take over the young Jana Sangh. The Janata Party, unlike the Jana Sangh after Dr Mookerjee’s death, had powerful political figures like Morarji Desai and Charan Singh who had strong political bases of their own. The RSS element in the Janata Party was comparatively much smaller than was the case in the young Jana Sangh. It is highly unlikely that the RSS leadership would have sanctioned a takeover bid, even in the improbable event that the Jana Sangh group had tried to do so. Such an effort would have earned the RSS the enmity of powerful political forces who might well have ganged up to impose crippling restrictions on its activities. A consistent feature of RSS behaviour since its founding has been to avoid, whenever possible, actions which invite political retribution. Finally, such a move would have undermined the Jana Sangh group’s efforts to achieve political respectability. This could be accomplished only by proving that it was a reliable—and non-assertive—partner. Consequently, the Jana Sangh group did not push for representation in government and party bodies commensurate with its position as the largest element within the Janata party.51
RSS ACCEPTS NON-HINDUS
Besides the dual-membership issue, the exclusively Hindu membership of the RSS was still another issue which was used to attack the RSS and its affiliates, including the Jana Sangh group in the Janata Party. The issue was linked to the dual-membership question in two ways: RSS members in the Janata Party, it was argued, would alienate minority groups, especially Muslims. Second, membership in the RSS was sufficient cause to deny membership in the Janata Party because the RSS was defined as a communal organization.
Admitting Muslims (and other non-Hindus) to the RSS had been considered, if not very seriously, by senior RSS figures even before the Emergency. The Emergency experience may have encouraged the RSS to open its doors to non-Hindus. RSS cadre worked closely with non-Hindus in Jaya Prakash Narayan’s LSS. RSS leaders shared prison cells with non-Hindus. There is some evidence that the question of accepting non-Hindus was discussed at a rather high level during the Emergency.52 Soon after the ban was lifted, Balasaheb Deoras wrote that he personally had not yet given much thought to the question, though he added: ‘We have accepted in principle that in spite of separate modes of worship all of us are Indian nationals . . .’53 However, he did note that the question of Muslim membership ‘had cropped up in jail’, but the swayamsevaks discovered the problems in doing so because their Jama’at-i-Islami jailmates, members of another organization banned during the Emergency, ‘were the most orthodox Muslims in India’.54
Nonetheless, the RSS leadership was under great pressure, including pressure from Jana Sangh leaders, to act quickly to open the RSS to non-Hindus. The question was closely tied to the dual-membership debate in the Janata Party. Such respected national figures as Jaya Prakash Narayan advised the RSS to disband if it did not accept minority members.55 The RSS wanted to preserve the respectability gained during the Emergency; and many important figures, like Narayan, were not prepared to accord legitimacy to the RSS unless it adopted more inclusive membership policies.
Among the earliest indications of serious consideration of altering the RSS membership rules was a statement by the RSS general secretary in August 1977 that, ‘We are in contact with non-Hindu workers in different parts of the country’ on the question of closer Hindu–Muslim ties.56 He noted that as an initial step the RSS was considering programmes such as inter-dining and joint celebrations of religious festivals. However, he also cautioned that the membership issue ‘is a delicate matter which merits careful handling’. One important reason for the caution must have been apprehensions within the ranks that a more inclusive membership might undermine the Hindu revivalist orientation of the RSS. Still another reason for caution was the likely lukewarm response from Muslims. Addressing the latter concern, an editorial in Organiser stated
Muslims have no doubt developed love and respect for the RSS. But how many of them will respond to the morning whistle in khaki shorts, lathi in hand? Probably not many. And perhaps the only Hindus who would like to join the Jama’at-i-Islami [whose leaders were being consulted] would be intelligence men.57
Nonetheless, Deoras in the fall of 1977 announced that the RSS had opened its door to non-Hindus and that some were already participating in its activities,58 though there is no evidence of a formal decision taken on this matter.
While opening its doors to minority membership, the RSS did not change its traditional revivalist goals, which Balasaheb Deoras described in his 1979 Vijaya Dashami speech (a day when Hindus celebrate the triumph of good over evil) as uniting the Hindu community and removing from it such practices as untouchability, the caste system and dowry.59 The RSS leadership was clearly reluctant to take any action which might undermine the brotherhood’s commitment to each other and to the RSS. A significant change in membership or ritual might have done just that.60
THE RSS AND POLITICS: A DILEMMA
The frantic efforts to remove the RSS question from politics had no appreciable effect on political developments in mid- and late 1979. Indeed, the RSS question, like the efforts to excise the issue, was a political theatre intended to gain support in parliament. None of the jealous groups in parliament were able to put together a majority after Morarji Desai’s 15 June 1979 resignation. After a number of unsuccessful attempts to do so, President Sanjiva Reddy on 22 August 1979 asked Charan Singh, the last politician to be given a chance to mobilize a majority, to serve as caretaker prime minister until the next general elections in early January 1980. The rump Janata Party selected Jagjivan Ram as its standard-bearer. During the long parliamentary campaign, the dual-membership issue was relatively dormant within the Janata Party, though its opponents used the issue to attack its secular credentials.
The seventh general elections in early January 1980 were a disaster for the Janata party. It won only 31 seats, compared to the 203 it had when Desai resigned.61 The Jana Sangh group won 16 of these seats, compared to the 93 it had won in 1977, but closer to the 22 it had won on its own in the 1971 elections. Charan Singh’s BLD,62 with concentrated support in a few Hindi-speaking regions, did better with 41 seats. Mrs Gandhi’s Congress party won 351 seats, compared to the 153 her party had won in 1977. The code words she had employed—‘law and order’, ‘discipline’, ‘a government that works’—had a resonance with many voters disgusted with the interminable bickering among senior figures in the Janata Party government.
Janata Party politicians
looked around for reasons to explain the defeat, and the dual-membership issue became one of the commonly cited causes. Jagjivan Ram wrote to Chandra Sekhar, still the party president, on 25 February 1980, demanding a discussion of the dual-membership question. The Jana Sangh group was now prepared to fight back. Two of its senior figures, Lal Krishna Advani and Sunder Singh Bhandari, had toured the country to test opinion at the grass-roots level and had discovered a groundswell of resentment among Jana Sangh activists regarding their ‘second class’ treatment in the Janata Party.63 The cadre was disappointed by the number of parliamentary seats allocated to their group (about one-fourth the nominees) and were apprehensive about the number they would get for the forthcoming state assembly elections in May. The press speculated that traditional Jana Sangh supporters refused to support the Jana Sangh group’s candidates because of their shoddy treatment within the Janata Party. (This is another way of saying that many RSS workers sat on their hands during the election, and there is apparent substance to this speculation.)
Jagjivan Ram for his part blamed the party’s poor showing on the ‘hostile activities of the RSS’, even charging that a ‘secret’ agreement existed between the RSS and Mrs Gandhi’s Congress party.64 It is likely that the RSS cadre was lukewarm towards many of the Janata Party’s non-Jana Sangh candidates. Reporters covering the March 1980 meeting of the central assembly of the RSS wrote that some delegates asserted that RSS workers did not support Janata Party candidates.65 An editorial in Organiser reminded Ram that the ‘RSS as such does not work in elections—and that swayamsevaks in their individual capacity are free to support candidates and causes of their choice’.66 Organiser’s ‘Political Correspondent’ warned that the persisting dual-membership controversy alienated ‘not only a chunk of its [Janata Party’s] own sincere workers, but also a large number of supporters outside’,—a thinly veiled reference to the RSS.67
Still other critics of the Jana Sangh group argued that the presence of RSS members in the Janata Party tarred the party with the brush of communalism. Presumably, the party had done poorly in the general elections, and would continue to do so in the future because of this association with the RSS. However, the available evidence of voting in 1980 is ambiguous on this proposition. The swing back to Mrs Gandhi’s Congress party was as great in non-Muslim constituencies as in those with a large Muslim population.68 Whatever the causes for the Janata Party’s poor showing, many Janata Party’s politicians believed that the communal issue had damaged the party.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s decision to hold state assembly elections in May 1980 forced the Janata Party to act on the dual-membership question. Senior party figures on both sides of the controversy believed that a decision one way or the other was necessary if the party were to put together a viable strategy. But there was no consensus regarding who should make the decision regarding restrictions on RSS members. The Jana Sangh leadership insisted that the central assembly of the RSS, which was scheduled to consider the question at its annual 21–23 March 1980 meeting should make the decision, whereas Chandra Sekhar (and others) maintained that the party had the right to act on a question involving its own membership requirements.
The Jana Sangh’s decision to leave the matter to the RSS was the only real option it had. The Jana Sangh leadership risked being on the wrong side of the RSS if it were to come down on either side of the dual-membership question. The central assembly of the RSS had not yet acted, and it could conceivably go either way. Deoras and Singh in their discussion with Chandra Sekhar in 1979 seem to have tilted towards restrictions, but the political circumstances which had then influenced their stand had changed. In fact, press reports note considerable confusion among the Jana Sangh cadre regarding the question, suggesting that the RSS leadership did not arrive at a decision on the question until the very last minute.69 But the Janata RSS critics did not wait for the RSS to act. The parliamentary board of the party, against strong Jana Sangh group objections, proposed on 18 March 1980 a formula for the consideration of the national executive that would bar legislators and office-bearers from participating in RSS activities.70
The central assembly of the RSS at its 21–23 March meeting decided to take no action, ostensibly on the grounds that the Janata Party’s parliamentary board had pre-empted the issue by its vote on 18 March,71 even though the parliamentary board’s decision was only an advisory one for the party’s national executive, which was to meet on 4 April. The RSS leadership clearly decided to back away from the question, and the Janata parliamentary board’s decision provided a convenient excuse not to act.
What led Singh and Deoras between July 1979 and March 1980 to make what appears to be a shift in stand on the dual-membership question? It could not have been only the considerable opposition within the RSS ranks (and within the Jana Sangh group as well) to the proposition that RSS members not hold elective offices.72 If the RSS leaders had insisted on such exclusion, the central assembly of the RSS would have gone along with their decision, whatever the degree of discontent. What had changed were the political circumstances. In mid-1979 the Janata Party, weakened by defections, still had some prospect of returning to power. After Indira Gandhi’s 1980 parliamentary victory, the Janata Party was reduced to a small group of 31 members in the Lok Sabha. The RSS now ran the risk of earning the enmity of the ruling party if it tried to preserve the unity of one of the Congress party’s major political opponents. Furthermore, the Janata Party itself could not be relied upon to be friendly towards the RSS. The party contained a large element (a majority of its officers, as events were to reveal) who were implacably opposed to the RSS. Indeed, the RSS may well have wanted the Jana Sangh group to leave the Janata Party. Its non-action line on the dual-membership question placed the ball in the court of the Jana Sangh group, and the RSS thus preserved its apolitical credentials.
Within a few days of the RSS central assembly’s adoption of a no-action line, the Jana Sangh group announced plans for a national convention to be held on 5 April, one day after the Janata Party’s national executive was scheduled to decide on the dual-membership question. Despite a flurry of last-minute efforts by Morarji Desai (and others) to work out a compromise acceptable to both sides, the Janata Party’s national executive rejected by a vote of 17 to 14 Desai’s compromise, and opted for the hard-line stand earlier recommended by its parliamentary board.73
On 5 April over 3500 ‘delegates’ (including 15 of the remaining 28 Janata Party members of the Lok Sabha), representing both the Jana Sangh group and some others who had also walked out of the Janata Party, met to form a new party. The conveners portrayed the new party—named the Bharatiya Janata Party—as the ‘real’ representative of Jaya Prakash Narayan, as well as that of Deendayal Upadhyaya, a choice clearly intended to underscore the philosophic orientation of the new party. The choice was also perhaps intended to demonstrate that this new party was not simply a resurrected Jana Sangh, but that it was a party which aspired to a much broader following. Vajpayee, who was selected the new party’s president, chose several non-Jana Sangh figures to serve on his working committee. One of the general secretaries, Sikander Bakht, was a Muslim.74
The leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had to determine what kind of party they wanted. First of all, they clearly wanted the RSS cadre. With this in mind, the dual-membership issue was formally resolved with an explicit reference in the BJP’s Basic Policy statement: ‘The Party reiterates that the members of all those social or cultural organisations which are working for the social or cultural uplift of the masses and are not engaged in any political activity are welcome to join the BJP . . .’75
But the recruiting of talented RSS cadre might be a problem. The disenchantment of the RSS with politics was deep. Rajendra Singh noted in mid-1983 that ‘many [RSS members] have left politics because it is considered a dirty business’.76 The depth of the alienation with politics was suggested in an article written by Nana Deshmukh when the Jana Sangh group withdrew from the Jan
ata Party.77 He questioned the legitimacy of the political vocation. He wrote that those engaged in politics had to ask some hard questions regarding the efficacy of politics, given the experience of the prior three years: ‘Did the leaders corrupt the political process or did the political process corrupt them? Will it be possible to defeat the present immoral dictatorial tendencies in Indian politics through a resort to the power-oriented opportunistic and vote-getting politics? If not, what is the alternative to see that grass roots people’s [sic] power comes into being?’
Besides seeking RSS cadre (for organizational purposes), the party leadership also wanted to portray the BJP as the legitimate successor of Jaya Prakash Narayan’s idealism (for mobilization purposes). Accordingly, the Jana Sangh leadership retained the word ‘Janata’ in the new party’s name; it adopted Gandhian socialism rather than Deendayal Upadhyaya’s Integral Humanism as the party’s statement of first principles, although the party gave an honoured place to Upadhyaya’s ideological statement. It chose a different flag, a more ‘secular’ green and saffron similar to that of the Janata Party rather than the solid saffron flag of the Jana Sangh; and it adopted a new symbol, the lotus rather than the lamp. It also did not restore the office of the organizing secretary, the position that had constituted the iron frame of the Jana Sangh. Rather it adopted the looser organizational model of the Janata Party.
But there is a certain tension between its two legacies, and the party would have problems working out a synthesis between the two. For example, Jaya Prakash Narayan’s organizational model was a decentralized structure based on participatory democracy, but the RSS cadre are socialized to accept democratic centralism. A massive infusion of non-RSS activists would undermine the sense of community that had attracted swayamsevaks to the Jana Sangh. In general, the symbols adopted by the BJP were not those of the brotherhood, which would create a certain psychological distance between it and the new party. They worried that the new party would be characterized by the factionalism which they regarded as the bane of Indian institutions.
The Brotherhood in Saffron Page 22