Chapter 4: The RSS ‘Family Takes Shape
1. These terms are somewhat arbitrary. The attitudes of the pracharaks vary along a continuum between the activist and traditionalist poles.
2. Much of the information we have regarding the activist stirrings in the 1940s comes from interviews with three men who were active in the RSS in the 1940s: B. K. Kelkar, 2 August 1983, at New Delhi; Madhukar Deval, on 12 July 1983, at Pune; D. V. Gokhale, on 26 May 1983, at Bombay.
3. The lack of such support led some activists to suspect that the RSS leadership had pro-Congress political leanings. See S. R. Date, Maharashtra Hindusabhechya Karyacha Itihas (Pune: S. R. Date, 1975), pp. 210–13, in Marathi.
4. One sign of this high standing was the increased attendance at shakha in Punjab during the first half of 1947. According to Punjab government figures, attendance increased from 47,000 in January 1947, to almost 50,000 in June 1947. Statistics from The R.S.S. in Punjab (Lahore: Government Printing Press, 1948).
5. Golwalkar spelled out his justification in a speech to senior pracharaks in October 1949 at Nagpur. See his speech in Sri Guruji Samagra Darshan, Vol. 2 (Nagpur: Bharatiya Vichar Sadhana, 1979), pp. 110–147, in Marathi.
6. Material regarding the internal tensions resulting from differing views on the activities of the RSS are drawn from Samagra Guruji Darshan, Vol. 2 (Nagpur: Bharatiya Vichar Sadhana, 1978), pp. 110–147, in Marathi; Gangadhar Indurkar, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: Kal, Aaj, Aani Udya (Pune: Sri Vidya Prakashan, 1983), pp. 141–49, in Marathi; and Swarnalata Bhishikar, Samarpit Ek Adyam Utkat Chaitanya, Dr V. V. Pendse (Pune: n.p., n.d.), pp. 27–63, in Marathi. Also interviews with Madhukar Mahajan, 21–22 May 1983, at Bombay; and D. V. Gokhale, 26 May 1983, at Bombay. Both were activist pracharaks at the time.
7. Golwalkar’s speech on ‘positive Hinduism’ reprinted in Shri Guruji Samagra Darshan, Vol. 3 (Nagpur: Bharatiya Vichar Sadhana, 1978), pp. 1–38, in Marathi.
8. Interview with Madhukar Mahajan on 21–22 May 1983, at Bombay.
9. Letter from K. B. Hedgewar to Appaji Mular on 13 February 1932, in Hedgewar files, translated from Marathi.
10. Letter from K. B. Hedgewar to Vasant Krishna Oke on 11 December 1936, in Hedgewar files, translated from Marathi.
11. There is an excellent description of the methods employed to sell shares, in Dr K. D. Jhari, ‘I Was a Swayamsevak–VII: Open Involvement in Politics’, Secular Democracy 3 (September 1970), pp. 9–10.
12. The source for most of the information on trusts is an interview with K. R. Malkani, editor of Organiser, in Delhi, on 25 June 1969.
13. The former was published from Lucknow and the latter from Nagpur. The editors of both were RSS pracharaks. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first editor of Panchjanya, later became president of the Jana Sangh. C. P. Bhishikar, editor of Rashtra Shakti, new is editor of Tarun Bharat, a Marathi daily published in Pune and managed by an affiliated RSS trust.
14. By 1971, RSS-affiliated newspapers and journals were published in Hindi (nine weeklies, ten dailies), Marathi (two weeklies, one monthly, one daily), Telugu (two weeklies), Gujarati (two weeklies), Assamese (one weekly, two monthlies), Kannada (one weekly, one monthly), Sindhi (one weekly), Urdu (one weekly), Malayalam (one weekly). RSS-affiliated trusts also control one English and one Hindi national journal. Over the following decade the number of affiliates in the print media remained stable, though the circulation increased significantly.
15. These figures were provided by S. S. Apte, the manager of the Bombay office of the Hindustan Samachar, on 11 January 1969.
16. Motherland was one of the few RSS-affiliated newspapers which did not reopen after the Emergency. The financial costs of reviving it were considered prohibitive.
17. The government quickly recognized that RSS members were forming a number of front organizations; and Nehru, during the ban on the RSS, suggested to the home minister that the police watch these developments very carefully. Letter from Jawaharlal Nehru to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel dated 28 February 1948, published in Durga Das, ed., Sardar Patel’s Correspondence: 1945–1950, ten vols (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1973), Vol. 6, pp. 55–56.
18. The All-India Students’ Federation was formed in 1926 with the support of the Congress, and it included a mix of Gandhians, socialists, communists, and other nationalist students.
19. Philip Altbach has a good description of the radicalization and disillusionment of Indian students during World War II. See his Student Politics in Bombay (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1968), pp. 85–96.
20. This argument was developed by Datta Devidas Didolkar, one of the early organizers of the Vidyarthi Parishad, during an interview with him at Nagpur, on 20 April 1969. Didolkar was himself a participant in the AlSC-sponsored Quit India movement and recalls many RSS participants in that movement.
21. This argument was developed by professor Yeshwantrao Kelkar in an interview on 14 January 1969. Professor Kelkar was a former Vidyarthi Parishad president and also a participant in the Quit-India movement.
22. Madhok mentioned this to Reuben Auspitz. Auspitz wrote what is still the best study of the Vidyarthi Parishad, ‘The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad: An Introductory Study of Rightist Student Politics in India’, an unpublished paper completed for the University of Wisconsin’s College-Year-in-India Programme (The Delhi School of Social Work, 1968), pp. 45–47.
23. Interview with Ved Prakash Nanda on 7 September 1969, in Delhi. Nanda was one of those swayamsevaks assigned by the RSS to work for the Vidyarthi Parishad.
24. This is an estimate provided by Giriraj Kishore, the organizing secretary of the Vidyarthi Parishad, at an interview with him on 31 July 1969, in Delhi.
25. Professor Yeshwantrao Kelkar claims that the reversal on campus politics was a reaction to the atmosphere of violence created by other student groups and that the Parishad‘s new approach to student strikes was a response to the intransigent attitude of college administrators towards the legitimate needs of students. Interview with him on 14 January 1969, in Bombay.
26. Some of the more dramatic examples of the Vidyarthi Parishad’s success were its victories at Delhi University. After years of domination by the Congress or the communist student affiliates, the Vidyarthi Parishad gained control of the students union in 1972, and repeated its victory in 1973. In the 1973 election, the union president was, for the first time, directly elected. The Parishad candidate won 15,053 votes, and his nearest rival 3,677. It also won all four of the union’s executive positions, and 26 of the 37 union presidents in the affiliated undergraduate colleges belonged to the Parishad. Reported in Organiser, 18 September 1973. The Parishad reasserted its dominance of Delhi University after the lifting of the Emergency.
27. The topics at a 1969 All-India Students and Teachers workshop provide a clue to the types of topics considered by the Study Circles. Delegates were asked to prepare themselves on the following subjects: ‘Prophecy of regionalism—a suicidal loyalty’, ‘Naxalbari—a challenge to democracy’, ‘Future for imperialism—red and white’, ‘Centres of the 3rd world war’, ‘Remedies to end untouchability.’ The delegates were told that formal lectures would be given on ‘Students participation in university affairs’, ‘Students’ unrest: diagnosis and cure’, ‘Education unemployment problem’, ‘Young leadership in nation-building activities’.
28. We were informed that these two programmes are best organized at the Bombay University unit.
29. Taken from a brochure prepared by the Bombay University unit of the Parishad, printed in 1968.
30. Ibid. Since the programme was launched in 1966, the Parishad has placed up to 400 young tribals each year in various university programmes.
31. Taken from the pamphlet, ‘General Secretary’s Report to the 23rd National Conference, Varanasi, 4–6 November 1977’, p. 3. RSS informants estimate that only about one-third of the Vidyarthi Parishad members have ever taken part in any RSS activities and that an even smaller percentage are RSS members.
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32. Information regarding these discussions from ibid., p. 4.
33. Ibid., p. 2.
34. He was president of the Delhi University Students Union.
35. Information on the underground activities from an interview with Professor Yeshwantrao Kelkar, on 14 July 1983, at Bombay.
36. Information from an interview with Professor Om Prakash Kohli, national president of the Vidyarthi Parishad, at Bombay on 7 May 1983; and from the General Secretary’s Report, 23rd Session, p. 11.
37. The Bharatiya Yuva Sangh, the youth group of the Jana Sangh element in the Janata Party, also attended, but the Yuva Sangh was not included on the steering committee on the ground that the Vidyarthi Parishad was the Jana Sangh’s ‘representative.’ This incident underscored a dilemma faced by the Parishad. In fact, it was not the youth wing of the Jana Sangh; but the common links of the Jana Sangh group and the Parishad to the RSS tended to blur the distinction between them and the general public.
38. Information on the Vidyarthi Parishad’s walkout is from an interview with K. N. Govindan, organizing secretary of the Parishad’s south zone, at New Delhi on 31 July 1983. Other amalgamation efforts can be found in Ashok Tandon, ‘Janata party ke Yuva Sanghatano ke Tutne ka Atut Silsila,’ in Rashtriya Chhatra Shakti (February–March 1980), pp. 51–61, in Hindi.
39. In contrast to the Vidyarthi Parishad, other pro-Janata Party groups permitted their members to contest in elections. Information in this paragraph from an interview with Professor Om Prakash Kohli, op. cit.
40. Interview with Professor Yeshwantrao Kelkar, op. cit.
41. Organiser, 18 June 1978.
42. For example, in Bombay according to Professor Yeshwantrao Kelkar, over three-fourths of the Parishad members are non- RSS.
43. The Parishad as well as other members of the RSS ‘family’ did not totally agree with the objectives of the All-Assam Students Union. For example, the Parishad does not consider the Hindu immigrant from Bangladesh illegal, and the Parishad is willing to accept a later cut-off date to determine who is an illegal immigrant.
44. From a press interview with Golwalkar, published in Organiser, 23 October 1948.
45. The press statement was released on 2 November 1948, and is published in Justice on Trial, pp. 78–79.
46. For discussion of the negotiations between Mookerjee and the RSS, see Craig Baxter, The Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political Party (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969), Ch. 4; Myron Weiner, Party Politics in India: The Development of a Multiparty System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 181–94; Bruce Graham, ‘Shyama Prasad Mookerjee and the Communalist Alternative’, in D. A. Low, ed., Soundings in South Asian History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968); pp. 330–74.
47. Organiser, 25 June 1956.
48. For a comprehensive biographical sketch of Mookerjee, see J. I. Das, ‘Syamaprasad: The Uncompromising Patriot’, Modern Review 121 (June 1970): p. 318.
49. As Bengal’s Muslim community became more politically articulate, Mookerjee began to exhibit a Hindu revivalist urge to unite the Hindu castes to protect Hindu interests in Bengal, a province with a Muslim majority. Fazlul Haq, leader of the Krishak Praja Party, a party which drew most of its support from rural Muslim constituencies, organized the first ministry in Bengal under the 1935 Government of India Act. The ministry’s policy of extending government control over educational institutions, of increasing the percentage of Muslims employed in government services, and of supporting the interests of landless labour and tenant farmers were viewed by Mookerjee as thinly veiled attempts to diminish the influence of the Hindu community.
50. Reported in the Statesman (Calcutta), 7 February 1948.
51. Resolution 7 of 14–15 February 1948 working committee meeting in New Delhi. Taken from the minutes of that meeting.
52. Resolution 4 of 8–9 August 1948 working committee meeting in New Delhi. Taken from the minutes of that meeting.
53. Resolution 10 of the meeting defined a Hindu: ‘A Hindu means a person who declares that he is a Hindu and regards this land of Bharatvarsha from Sindhu to the Seas as his Fatherland and his Holy-land.’ This definition is an almost direct quotation from Savarkar’s definition of Hindu in Hindutva, a book he wrote to describe the shape of the future Hindu nation. It indicates the powerful intellectual influence he still exerted over the Mahasabha.
54. In a rare display of solidarity with the RSS, the delegates at this meeting requested the government to lift the ban on the RSS. L. B. Bhopatkar, the Mahasabha’s president, prepared a lengthy statement full of effusive praise for the RSS. The leadership was well aware of the fact that the RSS possessed resources that were politically valuable. It had a large committed cadre; it had pracharaks who could help organize party units; it had widespread sympathy among Hindus because of its refugee relief work. Mahasabha informants relate that Dr N. B. Khare was chosen president of the Mahasabha in 1949 largely because he had close connections with the RSS leadership and might be able to arrange some kind of cooperation between the two Hindu groups. However, Golwalkar had no intention of supporting a party with so little prospect of political success. Moreover, the RSS leadership was still uncertain about what political role to assume. The RSS dramatically signaled its non-support of the Mahasabha with minimal help during its 1949 all-India meeting at Calcutta.
55. See Graham, ‘Shyama Prasad Mookerjee’, p. 338.
56. N. B. Khare, My Political Memoirs or Autobiography (Nagpur: J. P. Joshi, 1959), pp. 427–28.
57. Interview with Appaji Joshi on 21 December 1968 at Chandrapur, Maharashtra.
58. Reported in a biographical sketch of Dani in Organiser, 31 May 1965.
59. Graham comes to the same conclusion. See his discussion in ‘Shyama Prasad Mookerjee’, pp. 346–52.
60. Patel died on 15 December 1950, and Nehru, who had previously left organizational matters to him, began to take an active interest in the party’s organization. Three months before Patel’s death, Purushottam Das Tandon, a supporter of Patel, was elected Congress president. Nehru resigned from the Congress Working Committee on 6 August 1951, claiming that he could not work with people who had ‘the wrong kind of ideas’, clearly referring to Tandon’s more Hindu nationalist orientation. On 8 September the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) accepted Tandon’s resignation and elected Nehru president. This gave Nehru unprecedented power within the Congress, controlling both its ministerial and organizational wings.
61. Golwalkar discusses his talks in Organiser, 25 June 1956. While sorting out the terms of cooperation with Mookerjee, RSS activists were mounting a campaign to involve the RSS in the political process. Organiser was one forum for their views. The editor of Organiser, writing under the pen name ‘Kamal’, wrote four articles which analysed the role which the RSS should play in politics. He defended RSS involvement by arguing that politicians had their ‘hand on the pulse of the Nation’, and could facilitate the acceptance of ‘natural cultural trends’. He advised the RSS leadership that they would not be faithful to their civic duty if they left nation building to political parties who had little respect for Indian culture (obviously referring to the Congress). In the last of four articles, he wrote that the RSS must enter politics to protect itself from future political attack, an argument which figured prominently in the leadership’s decision to support Mookerjee’s party. These articles published in Organiser, 23 November, 30 November, 7 December and 14 December 1949, written before Mookerjee’s resignation from the cabinet, summarize the arguments which the activists used to support their case.
62. Balraj Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr: Biography of Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerji (Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1969), p. 98. Madhok, who played a key role in forming the party, writes: ‘R.S.S. leadership was not yet clear in its mind about the shape and character of the political party to which it could lend its support, and the role it would have to play in bringing it into existence. There was no unanimity even about
the advisability of having such a political organization.’ In addition, Madhok writes that the RSS leaders feared that politics ‘would corrode idealism and spirit of selfless service to society in the R.S.S. and create an unhealthy rivalry between the R.S.S. workers working in different fields’. Ibid., p. 97.
63. See Golwalkar’s article on Mookerjee in Organiser (25 June 1956).
64. The preparations for this meeting had begun in January 1951 when prominent RSS citizens, including Hans Raj Gupta, RSS sanghchalak for Delhi and Punjab, met to draw up plans for a new party in Punjab, PEPSU (Patiala and East Punjab States Union), Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. Mookerjee attended the meeting to inform the group of his own plans to form a party in Bengal and to propose that an all-India party should be considered to link the non-Congress nationalist parties. For discussion, see Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, pp. 99–102.
65. An organization was hastily created in the first week of January 1952, shortly before the general elections were held. The reason for this delay was that Bombay Pradesh Congress committee president, S. K. Patil, a follower of Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel, wanted RSS support in the first general elections and was willing to offer assembly seats to swayamsevaks in exchange, according to RSS sources. However, the talks collapsed. Interview with Madhukar Mahajan, former Jana Sangh organizing secretary, 21–22 May 1983, at Bombay.
66. The text of that speech was printed in Mahratta (Pune), 22 June 1951.
67. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 121.
68. Thengadi, a graduate of Nagpur’s law college and an RSS pracharak, served as an RSS organizer between 1942 and 1948. He was one of the organizers of the Vidyarthi Parishad. Prior to forming the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, Thengadi had worked as an organizing secretary in INTUC, the labour movement affiliated with the Congress. His uncle, Dhundiraj Thengadi, was one of India’s pioneer trade unionists.
The Brotherhood in Saffron Page 28