The Majoritarian Bargain
No other book exposes so viscerally the instrumentalism of the RSS effort to woo the disprivileged castes even while nurturing casteism deep in its savarna heart.
The Story of a Dalit in the RSS
When
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) held a much-publicised three-day
lecture series in New Delhi in September 2018, attendees were greeted
by two gigantic free-standing portraits. On one side, unsurprisingly,
rose K.B. Hedgewar, founding sarsanghchalak of the RSS and an early
exponent of its ideology of Hindu supremacy. More startling was the
occupant of the adjoining panel: Bhimrao Ambedkar, the 20th century’s
most formidable and trenchant critic of that very ideology. The display
implied that Dr Ambedkar somehow approved of, or participated in, the
Hindu nationalist project of which, in fact, virtually his entire oeuvre
and political career were a systematic condemnation.
If this effort to appropriate Ambedkar, and with him, Dalits, seems incredible, Bhanwar Meghwanshi’s potent insider account of the RSS reveals that attempts like these are but the polished tip of a vast and menacing iceberg. In I Could Not Be Hindu: The Story of a Dalit in the RSS, Meghwanshi guides the reader into the parallel universe of those RSS schools, shakhas and camps that target the youth of disprivileged castes for indoctrination and training in militant ethnoreligious nationalism. In these institutions, the inculcation of disregard for historical fact in favour of majoritarian myth is merely a first step. Ultimately, the RSS achieves its aims through acts of intimidation and violence against Muslims and Christians, acts orchestrated by the Sangh’s savarna leadership, but carried out, in an irony painfully explored throughout the memoir, by backward caste and Dalit volunteers stigmatised by the very religion they are ostensibly defending.
One
could hardly ask for a more credentialled eyewitness. First inducted
into the RSS by his sixth-standard geography teacher, Meghwanshi was by
the age of 15 a battle-scarred karsevak with jail time, street fights
with Muslims, and bruises from the lathis of the Uttar Pradesh police to
his credit. In his home district of Bhilwara, Rajasthan, he swiftly
ascended the Sangh’s ranks to become, before the age of 20, pramukh or
chief of the city office. He received weapons training, lathis, knives,
Molotov cocktails, from his RSS mentors. In a fast-paced narrative
delivered in bold, straightforward prose, Meghwanshi describes the
culture of militancy and mutual respect, he points to the practice of
volunteers addressing one another with the honorific “ji” as especially
powerful for youth accustomed to being treated with contempt, that
attracted him to the Sangh.
The mutual respect, however, proves false. The turning point in the narrative comes when, following a joint RSS-VHP function in his village in honour of “martyred” karsevaks whose ashes are being carried through the region, Meghwanshi has his family laboriously prepare and pack a dinner to feed the honoured assembly of sants and sadhus, only to discover the next morning that his Hindutva mentors dumped the entire meal on the roadside after leaving his village, having never intended to eat food cooked by Dalit hands. Devastated, Meghwanshi seeks redress from higher RSS authorities, only to find that the bad faith was not a local aberration, but the institutional norm.
From a Hindutva foot soldier, Meghwanshi transforms in the following years into an Ambedkarite truth seeker committed to anti-caste struggle and interreligious bridge-building. As a student leader, teacher, journalist and activist with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, he takes part in a series of grassroots struggles, over temple entry, mosque destruction and trident-distribution in Rajasthan, the Gujarat pogrom, and more, that pit him against his erstwhile RSS confederates and make the book a chronicle not just of an extraordinary life but of three consequential decades of the nation’s history.
No other book exposes so viscerally the instrumentalism of the RSS effort to woo the disprivileged castes even while nurturing casteism deep in its savarna heart. In the present moment, when the Faustian bargain that Hindutva extends to Dalits and backward castes has never been more politically salient, the lessons of Meghwanshi’s searing memoir could not be more urgent.
Joel Lee is assistant professor of anthropology, Williams College, Massachusetts
If this effort to appropriate Ambedkar, and with him, Dalits, seems incredible, Bhanwar Meghwanshi’s potent insider account of the RSS reveals that attempts like these are but the polished tip of a vast and menacing iceberg. In I Could Not Be Hindu: The Story of a Dalit in the RSS, Meghwanshi guides the reader into the parallel universe of those RSS schools, shakhas and camps that target the youth of disprivileged castes for indoctrination and training in militant ethnoreligious nationalism. In these institutions, the inculcation of disregard for historical fact in favour of majoritarian myth is merely a first step. Ultimately, the RSS achieves its aims through acts of intimidation and violence against Muslims and Christians, acts orchestrated by the Sangh’s savarna leadership, but carried out, in an irony painfully explored throughout the memoir, by backward caste and Dalit volunteers stigmatised by the very religion they are ostensibly defending.
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The mutual respect, however, proves false. The turning point in the narrative comes when, following a joint RSS-VHP function in his village in honour of “martyred” karsevaks whose ashes are being carried through the region, Meghwanshi has his family laboriously prepare and pack a dinner to feed the honoured assembly of sants and sadhus, only to discover the next morning that his Hindutva mentors dumped the entire meal on the roadside after leaving his village, having never intended to eat food cooked by Dalit hands. Devastated, Meghwanshi seeks redress from higher RSS authorities, only to find that the bad faith was not a local aberration, but the institutional norm.
From a Hindutva foot soldier, Meghwanshi transforms in the following years into an Ambedkarite truth seeker committed to anti-caste struggle and interreligious bridge-building. As a student leader, teacher, journalist and activist with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, he takes part in a series of grassroots struggles, over temple entry, mosque destruction and trident-distribution in Rajasthan, the Gujarat pogrom, and more, that pit him against his erstwhile RSS confederates and make the book a chronicle not just of an extraordinary life but of three consequential decades of the nation’s history.
No other book exposes so viscerally the instrumentalism of the RSS effort to woo the disprivileged castes even while nurturing casteism deep in its savarna heart. In the present moment, when the Faustian bargain that Hindutva extends to Dalits and backward castes has never been more politically salient, the lessons of Meghwanshi’s searing memoir could not be more urgent.
Joel Lee is assistant professor of anthropology, Williams College, Massachusetts
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