Making sense of RSS constellation
The Sangh Parivar has an ever-expanding periphery now: organisations set up with "RSS inspiration" by Sangh volunteers.
Muslim men and women converged here days back to celebrate the memory of
former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, an “ideal, nationalist Muslim.”
The function — in which Muslim children came dressed as emperor Ashok,
Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, etc. — saw RSS functionary Indresh Kumar as
chief guest. The Muslim Rashtriya Manch, of which Mr. Kumar is mentor,
organised the programme.
Barely a month before this, a sewing centre to train girls came up at a
village close to Kothputli in Rajasthan. Eighteen girls have already
enrolled there. It is named after the Delhi-based founder Ram Swarup
Agrawal’s father. This is the 17th project started by Ganga Sewa
Sansthan, founded by Anil Gupta, the zilla sanghchalak of Keshavpuram in
Delhi. The aim of the organisation: connecting people to their
ancestral villages, where they sponsor an employment-generating activity
named after an ancestor.
These disparate activities are part of the latest expansion in the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s zone of influence, 90 years after it was
founded in 1925 on Vijaydasami day.
The Sangh Parivar has an ever-expanding periphery now: organisations set
up with “RSS inspiration” by Sangh volunteers. Many such organisations
have mushroomed in the last two decades, and they have no formal Sangh
link except the founder.
This loose Sangh constellation is the latest variant of the wider RSS
universe, which began with the setting up of branches (shakhas) in 1925.
“During the lifetime of our first RSS chief Dr. K.B. Hedgewar, shakhas
came up across India. The Sangh was about shakhas, which were directed
at person-building [vyakti nirman] and organising Hindus [Sangathan],”
said an RSS functionary. “The aim was to secure the glory of Hindu
Rashtra.”
The shakhas, numbering about 51,000 now, have physical exercises and
ideological discourses, which connect the volunteer to Hindu traditions,
extolling “Hindu heroes.”
Expanding reach
In the next phase of its expansion from close to the 1940s, the RSS
began to penetrate directly into various segments of society, like
students, tribals, workers, farmers, and Hindu religious orders. This
expansion created the Sangh family [parivar] of allied organisations.
Women also became a “segment” in this sense, with the Rashtriya Sevika
Samiti being founded on RSS lines by Lakshmibai Kelkar in 1936.
Many other affiliates came up: the ABVP among university students, the
Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh among workers, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram for
spreading the Sangh worldview among tribals, and many others.
The Bharatiya Jana Sangh came up as a political front in 1951. When the
apolitical RSS was banned after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, it felt
the need for a political body to speak on its behalf.
The RSS got wide legitimacy for its support to Jaya Prakash Narayan’s
movement against Indira Gandhi’s regime in the 1970s. The Sangh entered
the popular imagination on a civil libertarian plank for the first time.
The Jana Sangh dissolved itself into the Janata Party and tasted power
in 1977. Problems surfaced on the issue of “dual membership” — on
whether Janata Party leaders like A.B. Vajpayee and L.K. Advani should
be RSS volunteers too — and the Janata Party split. The BJP came up as
the former Jana Sangh’s successor in 1980.
From the Emergency — say RSS functionaries — began the era of the RSS’
mass movements. The most prominent were the Ram Janmabhoomi movement for
a Ram temple at Ayodhya in the late 1980s and early 1990s; the Ram
Sethu campaign and the Vishwa Mangal Gou Gram Yatra for cow protection
in the late 2000s.