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December 13, 2015

India: 1987 book on RSS by Andersen and Damle being updated for a new edition

The Times of India

28 years on, RSS classic to be rewritten
Akshaya Mukul | TNN | Dec 14, 2015

The book by Walter Andersen and Shridhar Damle will chronicle the contribution of K S Sudarshan (in pic) and Balasaheb Deoras, who emphasised on social activism and decentralised the office of Sarsanghchalak.The book by Walter Andersen and Shridhar Damle will chronicle the contribution of K S Sudarshan (in pic) and B...

NEW DELHI: Considered a classic, 'The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism' (1987) is getting rewritten, bringing an insider's account of the RSS during the Emergency years, under Balasaheb Deoras and K S Sudarshan as well as a captivating tale of intense power struggle across Nagpur and Delhi. It will also feature what some in RSS felt was Indira Gandhi's attempt to split the organization.

An unlikely team of Walter K Andersen, who worked with the US state department and was even posted in Delhi once, and Shridhar Damle, a public relations man with connections within the RSS, had written the book in 1987. Twenty-eight years later, Andersen, now with Johns Hopkins, and Damle, who has moved to Chicago as an independent researcher, have come together to rewrite the book.

Damle said the new edition will chronicle the contribution of Balasaheb Deoras who, he claimed, emphasized on social activism and decentralized the office of Sarsanghchalak (head of RSS). The new version will also have Deoras's reason behind the apology to Indira Gandhi during the Emergency.

With a ban on RSS and Deoras in jail, Damle said the organization was run by a group of general secretaries, Bhaurao Deoras, Rajendra Singh, H V Seshadri, Moropant Pingle and Dattopant Thengadi. Damle said it was the Rashtriya Swayamsevika Sangh (women's wing of RSS) that kept the organization running by collecting guru dakshina.

After Deoras was released, he called 25 sevikas to attend the RSS meeting which some did not like. "Deoras told his colleagues that during both the bans (1948 and 1977) many RSS leaders showed feet of clay but sevikas proved themselves. Now, there are 150 women in the pratinidhi sabha of RSS," Damle said.

Damle said Deoras's apology was a strategy and even Atal Bihari Vajpayee was asked to apologize. "Vajpayee told me 'nothing I do is without permission'," Damle said, referring to his resignation.

But the most interesting bit about the Emergency years in the new book relates to the story of Eknath Ranade, highly revered within the Sangh, who was general secretary for six years when Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar was the head of RSS. A great votary of 'one life, one mission', Ranade was not a great supporter of lending swayamsevaks to Jana Sangh but later, much to his chagrin, was sent to set up the Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari. He could never come back to RSS.


However, Indira Gandhi, during one of her trips to the south, had visited the memorial and had come back impressed. At the beginning of the Emergency, Damle said, Congressmen P C Sethi and V C Shukla alleged that during the ban, RSS was getting money from Vivekananda Kendra. Ranade came to Delhi and met Indira Gandhi and offered to get the accounts audited.


He is also believed to have told her that in case she was bent upon closing the Kendra, some time should be given since it ran many schools in the north-east.


In the RSS, Damle said, it was well known that Ranade was not in favour of ABVP participating in agitations before and during Emergency. What made a section of RSS suspicious about Ranade, Damle said, was Indira's decision to make him a member of Indian Council of Cultural Relations and not arresting him. "Some in RSS felt Indira was trying to split RSS just the way she had done to Congress," Damle said.


Fireworks happened after the Emergency during the meeting of pratinidhi sabha when many criticized Ranade for his non-activism to which he had to remind them about his contribution to the Sangh all his life and also the fact that he was once a general secretary when Deoras was just assistant general secretary.