Rss 360°

by Ratan Sharda

  EPILOGUE

  Shuddh satvik prem apane karya kaa adhaar hai

  (Pure spiritual love is the foundation of our work.)

  – From a Sangh song

  XV

  The Ultimate Secret

  I must confess that, so far, I was only giving you information in a dry mechanist way by talking about form and structure and philosophy of RSS. Yes, I talked about its reach, its philosophy, its work in different dimensions of national life, some live examples of people who make up this organisation. But, I feel that these details may not have adequately brought out the essence of what makes it all possible. I have given strong hints about what keeps it going and growing through various real life anecdotes. But, I have not clearly stated the ultimate secret of RSS which has more to do with spirit and heart, than with intellectual understanding of this phenomenon.

  RSS, like most successful social or cultural movements, is ignited purely with fire emanating straight from the heart – heartfelt pain and compassion for the society and a burning desire to do something to improve it. The aura of patriotism and searing desire for a strong nation envelopes all its activities and programmes.

  Unalloyed love for motherland and readiness to do anything for it is passed on by the seniors to the juniors through their conduct. This passing on is purely through example. Recently, a colleague of mine shared a story about his mentor in his shakha, who had unfortunately died falling prey to cancer at a relatively young age. This gentleman Yashwant Prabhudesai had come from Ratnagiri on a bank job and joined the same shakha that I used to attend as a boy. Like any ambitious married young man, he managed to purchase a house with some loans. When he was about to shift to his own home, he came to know that a few of his junior wards in shakha were appearing for engineering exams and they did not have place for studies as their houses were too small. Without a second thought he decided to postpone his house warming and pooja till after their exams. He gave the house over to those four young boys for three months. Not only that, but he would come personally on many nights to look after their wellbeing and never failed to make tea for them before returning home!

  The spirit of sacrifice that the RSS invokes in its members translates in such simple acts that one does not even note it. What value would you attach to an RSS worker Bhaurao Belvalkar’s sacrifice who went as a teacher to the annual month long Sangh Shiksha Vargas without a single break for 36 years, foregoing his summer holidays and simple pleasures of family life?

  As I mentioned in the initial chapters of the book, I don’t know of many people who became members of the RSS after understanding of its goals and objectives. It is a more recent phenomenon with the advent of internet-based social networking. An overwhelming majority of people came to the Sangh shakhas attracted with its games, songs, disciplined and a very cultured environment. But, they graduate to more serious subjects influenced by selfless love of their seniors, their conduct in personal life and their honest dealings with others. Simply, a case of leading by example. It is an irony that people talk of the need of towering icons that could influence us positively, but overlook examples around us that could transform the way we look at our own lives and society around us.

  The sense of brotherhood in RSS is infectious. In this era of purely career-driven, self-centered life, you do not easily believe that such people, with only unselfish love to give, exist. The sense of being part of a very big family is all pervading. This is what keeps a person going in worst of times. Pure selfless love that RSS members radiate for each other and society, sense of joy with which they sacrifice for the society and nation brings more people into its fold than anything else.

  Nearly all the people who have kept working through life for long years in the RSS, those who went on to become prachaaraks have generally been influenced and mentored by their teacher (or shikshak as RSS members call him), a senior activist or a prachaarak. I have recounted many stories in preceding pages that illustrate this point. It reminds me of a light hearted Sangh geet (song) in a Marathi village dialect which says, “We have been moulded, you too should get moulded. A touch of paaras has turned us into gold, and gold has become one with paaras.” (Paaras is a mythical elixir or magic stone that is supposed to convert a base metal into gold with its touch.)

  The total faith that this brotherhood generates is seen to be believed. This faith pervades all relationships within the Sangh ecology. A good swayamsevak is supposed to have excellent relations not only with his fellow members but with his whole family. So, one’s family members become family members of the other and they too adopt him as one of them. Volunteers are told that if they wish to be a good kaaryakartaa or worker, they should be able to enter the kitchen of his colleague as a son, as a brother.

  The spotless character developed in Sangh shakhas is a cause of envy for all other social organisations. While some appreciate it, for others it takes the form of visceral hatred. People of any ideological leanings are much more comfortable contributing to various social causes when approached by RSS swayamsevaks. This character building is through living role models and the motivation one receives, and persuades one to set up higher selfless goals for one’s life.

  A thinker has noted that that any ideology and organisation passes through three stages – ignorance, ridicule, and acceptance. RSS has passed through all these phases successfully. Its members are told not to react to irritants, nor to sap energy by responding to pointless criticism and keep working silently. Ultimately the positive results of its work would result in acceptance of its philosophy and its approach to national re-construction. They understand that today’s critic can turn into a supporter once he sees the RSS closely.

  While people and organisations, supposedly equipped with much better intellectual armoury, who ridiculed the RSS have fallen by the sides in the march of history, RSS has kept pace and grown with each stride. This, in no way, means that intellectual rigour is not required by a social organisation like RSS; it only underlines the fact that intellectual knowledge by itself does not guarantee the success of a movement. Any movement must appeal to the heart to grow and succeed; and its participants must be motivated with live examples to drive them to give off their best with compassion.

  XVI

  Secretiveness of RSS and Media

  I had noted in the beginning of the book that the exercise of writing this book began with a news story that talked of secretiveness of RSS. I am sure, by now; any unbiased reader would have realised that there is nothing secret about RSS’s working and its organisation. It is more a problem of lack of familiarity with the idiom and language that RSS uses that is different from the ones established by the dominant intellectual elite and media. It is also a problem to understand an organisation which doesn’t work on established norms of a typical Indian social organisation, its non-interest in publicizing itself or its work.

  I quote below an interesting passage from Guruji’s biography written by veteran prachaarak Shri Ranga Hari. It provides an insight into the mindset of an average Sangh worker and why RSS reacts to publicity and media the way it does, especially the previous generation of party workers. The second Sarsanghchaalak of RSS, Shri Guruji had nursed the nascent RSS for 33 years with his strong spiritual and intellectual personality. No doubt, he dominated the thinking of two generations comprehensively.

  In the first year after his appointment, a well-known scholar asked Guruji during his Bombay tour in 1941, “Are you opposed to be publishing literature about Sangh? Why don’t you create various kinds of literature to spread Sangh ideology?” Guruji’s response was, “I hope that a great scholar like you would be well aware of the tradition of this country. We give more importance to spoken word – shruti. As long as one can manage with the spoken word, one should work through this system only. Sangh swayamsevaks make contacts by visiting homes and meeting people face to face; and move forward on the basis of ‘shruti’, that is, sharing what they have experienced in their own lives. While doing this, based on o
ur experience about the growth of organisation, if we feel that it is no more possible to work without ‘smriti’ i.e. written word, we shall not hesitate to create ‘smriti’ or channel our thoughts and philosophy in writing. Is it not correct to say that in our own country, code of conduct – ‘aachaar samhitaa’ – was written only after ‘shruti’ had been established?” Bouddhik (intellectual training) in Sangh falls under this classification of shruti. This is not an exhibition of one’s intellect, but a radiation of emotions of the heart.”

  There is another example in Guruji’s life which indicates his abhorrence to any kind of publicity for service done to the society by Sangh volunteers. A book about RSS volunteers’ role during the partition had been published in Punjab. When Guruji was asked to release it he refused, saying when a son serves his mother he does it as his dharma and doesn’t go to newspapers broadcasting his services. What swayamsevaks did was their duty to motherland and there is no need to publicise it.

  This culture was nurtured assiduously by Dr K B Hedgewar, the founder of RSS who had worked in political field for many years, including in Congress. before he decided to dedicate his life to organizing Hindu society. He understood the pitfalls of propaganda and public projection that can create schism within an organisation that diverts attention from work on the field. Even after he founded RSS, he took part in various agitations with his RSS workers but as citizen, not as RSS.

  During my innings as RSS media-in-charge for Mumbai, I found that very few journalists turned up for briefings and discussions with RSS leaders. They were interested only in the RSS Chief as they never understood the collective nature of its leadership. It hardly took invitations to visit camps or special programmes seriously. Reports would not be found in media even when a journalist had visited a programme. I am not sure if it was due to editorial policies or reluctance to publish ‘non-interesting’ positive news.

  Since my young days, it has saddened my heart that none of the massive RSS gatherings, marches, camps were reported in so called national press, though regional press would generally cover them. It never seemed to amaze a press person that an organisation could organise a camp of 10,000 or 20,000 volunteers for three days immaculately without any chaos with the help of amateur volunteers working part time. I recall seeing photographs of a group of nine to ten hapless RSS volunteers taking bath under common taps in a well organised camp in UP which boasted 20,000 attendees; but not a single image of such a grand and disciplined gathering!

  It never mattered to media that the biggest student organisation like ABVP or the biggest labour organisation, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh could organise massive highly disciplined agitations that went well without any violence. It did not matter to them that a student organisation could hold a disciplined convention with delegates paying out of their pockets, even for travel without a single instance of misbehaviour of any kind with people or persons of opposite sex. Probably, they found it too boring!

  I have mentioned earlier in the book about the envy RSS aroused in the Congress which led to some the leftist party leaders to push their agenda forward, namely cornering RSS even before Gandhi was assassinated. One can still see this Nehruvian-Leftist nexus alive and at work. On one such instance, the RSS finally decided to haul Arjun Singh to the courts on Gandhi murder charges. This case was reported in the media, but media did not follow the case well enough to show how Arjun Singh has shied away from courts with one excuse or the other and wriggled out of a difficult situation until he passed away. Last year Mr. Rahul Gandhi has got embroiled in a similar defamation case in Bhiwandi near Mumbai for accusing RSS of murdering Gandhi ji.

  Recently media went to town about Union Carbide story talking of escape of the then head of Union Carbide India operations under the watchful eyes of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi and Arjun Singh. It spoke out when Arjun Singh was down and out, but was totally asleep when the Bhopal gas tragedy happened in 1984. The fact that a person like Anderson could not have escaped without complicity of the Centre is handled very ‘sensitively’ by media so that ‘fair name’ of Rajiv Gandhi is not besmirched. The Union Carbide tragedy has been reduced to Anderson’s escape and the worst aspects of government’s apathy, negotiating most pitiable and embarrassing settlement in financial terms, misuse of funds etc., have all been forgotten in this most shameful episode in post-independent history.

  The media kept silent on the anti-Hindu persecution and riots in Bengal under ‘secular’ Mamata Banerjee. It is a blot on so called independent media. The riots in Deganga on 6 September 2010 was first reported by the print media on 8th September after the Army had been called in to restore peace. Two hundred army personnel had to be posted there, as the West Bengal police was a mute spectator to the carnage, even as a fellow-officer received serious injuries. The leader of rioters was allegedly, a Trinamool Congress MP from the area. Only Pioneer and Kolkata edition of the Times of India covered the news, while television media was totally blind and deaf to it. Significantly this small town is only 35 kilometers from Kolkata and near the Bangladesh-India border. Similarly, Bareilly riots in 2012 were also hidden from public view for more than a week. Imagine even fraction of something like this happening in Gujarat! Thus, an allergic reaction towards RSS is borne more out of inveterate dislike fundamentalist secularist for anything to do with Hindus or Hindutva. Meaning of ‘secularism’ has been reduced to bias for minorities (read Muslims) and against Hindus.

  The memories of Jhabua nuns’ rape case of 1998 may have faded but damage has been done, as the entire media went berserk indulging in accusations against RSS and VHP for this horrible deed. But, when police enquiry and court cases proved this to be a case of rape by their own religious brethren, press forgot to highlight it prominently, or did any editor or senior journalists thought it fit to apologise for causing harm to RSS’s image. Same scenario unfolded, as if a repeat episode when an elderly nurse in Bengal was raped in 2015 and RSS name was dragged in without any proof. Ultimately a Bangladeshi was convicted in 2017. Again no sense of remorse by media could be seen. In the same vein, we know about different parameters adopted for covering the murder of Graham Steins and Swami Laxmanaanand Saraswati. While murder of Graham Steines was a “heinous crime against humanity by the Hindu extremists”, murder of Swami Laxmanaanand Saraswati was a “routine inside page news” until there was violence. Violence and ‘horrible communal killings by RSS and VHP goons’ became the main news immediately. Not only that, almost entire debate on this issue was covered by media without a capable VHP person on panels in nearly all discussions on the topic.

  Narendra Modi and his government have been pilloried for Gujarat riots with worst kind of adjectives, even though one third of the dead are Hindus. Time and again it has been labelled a ‘pogrom’. After it was proved that Teesta Setalvad had used immoral stratagems like tutored witnesses, false evidence, false stories, she was not put on the mat on television and print media. Even after Modi has been acquitted by Supreme Court of India supervised SIT probe, abuse and accusation of Modi from secular media has not stopped.

  The hotly debated issue of Triple Talaq also shows bias of the so-called liberal media. Suddenly, the secular liberal media feels it is a matter of faith and not of gender justice. Even as Supreme Court pronounced Triple Talaq illegal in 2017, there were apologists for Wahhabi elements supporting it.

  Ram Madhav, then in RSS, was in Mumbai for one of our programmes as a keynote speaker a few years back. We persuaded Ram Madhav to give some time for interview with a senior journalist from the Times of India. He had a long serious sitting with Ram Madhav. It was an exclusive interview which had covered many subjects. And what do we get the next day as an anchor story on the front page of the newspaper? “RSS considering replacing its khaki half pants in uniform with full length trousers!” There was no mention of any other subject covered in that Q&A. I am sure, Ram Madhav is not a person who would put in one hour discussing a raging ‘ideological’ issue of half pants vs. full pants!

 
We note that though RSS volunteers are generally the first to reach a disaster site, media never highlights its work. I have actually seen camera stall and move away as soon as an ‘RSS half pant’ comes into view. Since, now I am deeply into media as a regular TV panelist, I have it straight from a TV reporter how his sequence showing RSS relief work was chopped off. How many newspapers give coverage to RSS disaster relief work or any of its social service work, forget lauding its selfless service?

  After his appointment as RSS Chief, Dr Mohan Bhagwat took a countrywide tour of 50 cities over one year (one public programme every Sunday). All the programmes were in uniform for RSS volunteers apart from general public. Total attendance may have gone into million plus. The last leg of the programme, Kerala saw an unprecedented congregation of nearly one hundred thousand volunteers in uniform from across Kerala in grounds near Kochi. It was a spectacle worth watching when these people did physical drills and collectively sang an RSS song. The whole lecture was given in English by the RSS Sarsanghchaalak Dr Mohan Bhagwat and translated in Malayalam by a senior RSS functionary. I am sure, hardly any reader of this book would have read this news at all, let alone in the next day’s newspapers, apart from local dailies of Kerala. However, when RSS supporters use YouTube or other Social Media for disseminating such news, a senior journalist, Sagarika Ghosh calls for censorship on net!

  The most laughably sad spectacle of media bias was exposed yet again when it was found that new Rajya Sabha members Tarun Vijay and Arun Dave, one former and one current prachaarak, had no assets. Media has not celebrated the story of value-based and moral life of these anti-thesis of modern politicians, on the contrary it has tried to find loopholes in this story. There was a debate on CNBC where Karan Thapar, Vinod Mehta and their ilk refused to believe that it is possible. I can understand media kings disbelieving that a much appreciated journalist like Tarun Vijay can lead his life committed to his mission without amassing any wealth inspite of being in media for decades. It is probably embarrassing for them! A simple Anil Dave in the thick of Madhya Pradesh politics without assets is an anachronism hard to digest! Same media czars harangue people on lack of morality and values in politics and tar all the politicians with black brush of corruption.