In the lead-up to its 100th year, Narendra Modi just gave a birthday gift to the RSS. Amidst speculations of a deepening rift between the RSS and the Modi-Shah-controlled BJP, the NDA government withdrew the order dated 1966 that prohibits government employees from participating in RSS activities. The order was quietly reversed and it found its way to social media without the notification being made public — not as a masterstroke.
Is this an olive branch, considering the inexplicable statement made by J P Nadda, almost declaring independence from the RSS in the middle of the Lok Sabha elections? Whatever the motive behind the move, the RSS has now become a state within the state — much like the dreaded Schutzstaffel.
This comes on top of several cultural institutions, grants and appointments going to people and organisations belonging to or close to the RSS. From Sainik Schools to campus capture; from bureaucracy to UPSC and NTA, the RSS now infiltrates every facet of our lives, undermining merit for ideology. In fact, this looks like a leaf straight out of Project 2025 — prepared by the Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for Trump 2.0 — to ensure ideologically friendly civil servants.
This hydra-headed slippery organisation called the RSS has always been highly secretive. Behind the benign facade of social service and cultural revivalism, it has been involved in fanning communal divisions and widening cultural fault lines with the sole objective of controlling political power for its electoral arm, the BJP. The Sangh has often been viewed with suspicion because it is an unregistered organisation which has no membership register and no account books. Disowning those forces that get caught indulging in undesirable activities becomes easy in the absence of a publicly available membership register.
Following Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, Sardar Patel imposed a ban on the RSS. The notification dated February 4, 1948, banning the RSS said, “The professed aims and objects of the RSS are to promote the physical, intellectual and moral well-being of the Hindus and also to foster feelings of brotherhood, love and service amongst them… the Government have, however, noticed with regret that in practice members of the RSS have not adhered to their professed ideals… (fostering feelings of brotherhood, love and service among Hindus).
Undesirable and even dangerous activities have been carried on by members of the Sangh… individual members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition. They have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect firearms, to create disaffection against the government and suborn the police and the military. These activities have been carried on under a cloak of secrecy.”
M S Golwalkar kept trying to negotiate with Sardar Patel and in these negotiations, Patel demanded, as a precondition, that the RSS adopt a written constitution. Golwalkar began a satyagraha on December 9, 1948. Later, RSS leaders Bhaiya ji Dani, Eknath Ranade and Balasaheb Deoras suspended the satyagraha in January 1949 and wrote the draft constitution with the help of T R Venkatarama Sastri of the Servants of India Society. Patel approved the draft and lifted the ban on July 11, 1949. The Government of India was informed that the conditions imposed on the RSS and agreed to included: The rejection of secrecy and violence, respect for the Indian flag and the Indian Constitution and adoption of a non-political, cultural role.
The preamble of the RSS constitution states that “till now” the organisation had “no written constitution” but has now become “expedient” in “the present changed conditions”. Article 4(b) states that the Sangh “as such, has no politics”.
The RSS, in its written undertaking given to Sardar Patel, clearly said it will remain a cultural organisation and not participate in political activities. However, immediately after the ban was lifted, the RSS started internal brainstorming to have a political outfit of its own as no political party had come to its defence when the ban was imposed on it. The Jana Sangh was born out of these deliberations. It remained an open secret — more open than secretive — that the Jana Sangh and later the BJP were totally governed, controlled and driven by the RSS in its typical smoke-and-mirrors fashion.
On June 4, 2005, then-president of the BJP L K Advani along with his family visited the mausoleum of M A Jinnah in Pakistan and hailed him as a secular leader and an architect of Hindu-Muslim unity. A miffed RSS directly intervened and got Advani to resign from his post. Later, Advani himself confirmed the direct intervention of the RSS in politically driving the BJP. In September 2005, at the national executive of the BJP in Chennai, Advani lamented that the “impression had gained ground” that the BJP could take “no decision” without the consent of the RSS: “This perception, we hold, will do no good either to the Party or to the RSS. The RSS must be concerned that such a perception will dwarf its greater mission of man-making and nation-building. Both the RSS and the BJP must consciously exert to dispel this impression.”
In 2013, when an upset Advani resigned from party positions following the announcement of Narendra Modi as the chief of the campaign panel, the RSS again intervened and “asked” Advani to respect the decision of the BJP Parliamentary Board.
Do these examples show RSS as a cultural organisation? The RSS is as cultural as Spic Macay is political. Let us not be under any such impression that RSS is a non-political organisation. The question to ask is should organisations with virtually no accountability be allowed to decide the destiny of the nation? If a Spic Macay or a Chinmaya Mission do not get to decide who would be the prime ministerial candidate of a party, why should the RSS do so and still call itself a cultural organisation?
The recent order of the government removing the ban on government employees from participating in the activities of the RSS will spell doom for whatever remains of a free and fair bureaucracy. From now on, just the attire of a bureaucrat will ensure his posting to the position and place of his choice. Reward and punishment will both be decided by the local shakha. Will government employees who must uphold the Constitution, be able to do so without fear of upsetting the Shakha Karyawah, Nagar Karyawah, Zilla Karyawah or a Vibhag Karyawah? Will the Indian National Congress be allowed to use any of its frontal organisations to officially infiltrate government offices?
The writer is chairman, media and publicity department, Indian National Congress
