Modis’ Election Propaganda: Falsehoods and Sectarianism Galore | Ram Puniyani

Modis’ Election Propaganda: Falsehoods and Sectarianism Galore

 

Ram Puniyani

 

BJP has a strong electoral machine, well backed up by its parent organization, RSS. The core module of RSS-BJP is based on demonization of Muslims through distortions of the medieval period of history in particular and glorification of the past where caste and gender hierarchy prevailed. When it comes to elections, RSS progeny has resorted to various themes from time to time. The first major theme was destruction of Hindu temples by Muslim kings which was the hidden message of the Ram Temple campaign. In due course security (Pakistan as the enemy) was also brought in. Prior to the demolition of Babri, they used to talk of Indianization of Muslims among other anti Muslim themes.

In recent times, in 2014 it was Acche Din (Good Days) to take advantage of the anti Incumbency and the Jumlas (Mere phrases) like women’s security, 15 Lakhs per person, 2 Crore jobs every year along with the projection of Congress as a corrupt party. Thanks to the Anna movement promoted and supported by RSS wings, Congress is a corrupt party that was made to stick in people's minds for a long time. In 2019, National security, Pulwama-Balakot became the major propaganda for winning the elections. All through, anti-Muslim rhetoric formed the backdrop. Truth has been a major casualty in most of its propaganda.

This time euphoria around Ram Temple was anticipated to be the major fulcrum of its propaganda. Gyanwapi issue has also been racked up but with marginal effect. Its seems now there is sort of ‘fatigue’ around this issue and due to the dwindling social-economic conditions of the people, the grand Ram Temple-Gyanwapi may not give the results which they were expecting. That leaves it to fall back on its time tested divisive communal issue, the anti Muslim propaganda. This time around Mr. Modi has set the tone around anti Muslim dog whistles and linked it up with the Congress manifesto centered around Justice for weaker sections of society,( adivasis, dalits and religious minorities), women’s empowerment, and justice for youth (employment- internship) and students (Paper leaks).

So far justice for weaker sections of society has been the major point of opposition for RSS and its progeny. Its very foundation in 1925 was in the backdrop of dalits asserting their rights and women beginning to articulate their social presence. To dilute the caste based reservations they brought in reservations for economically backwards. In practice wherever possible they have been undermining affirmative action for dalit and OBC. Faced with the great appeal of Rahul Gandhi’s emphasis on reservation and affirmative action, BJP had to counter it without sounding that it is inherently opposed to reservations. In this direction the first step was falsehood from BJP patriarch Mohan Bhagwat that RSS has never been against reservations!

Modi in a clever and fake concoction has been saying that, “…they [Congress] wanted to grant reservation to one section of the society (i.e. Muslims, added) by cutting into the quotas meant for Dalits and backward classes, which is completely against the Constitution. The reservation rights that Dr Babasaheb gave to Dalits, backward classes, and tribals, the Congress and the INDI Alliance wanted to give them to specific minorities based on religion," 

Congress manifesto’s emphasis on caste census and giving the analogy of X Ray was picked up by Mr. Modi and linked with his anti Muslim narrative. Connecting the two, he peaked in the falsehood that Congress will do the X-Ray to find gold, money etc. and give it to those who have more children or who are infiltrators (Meaning Muslims as usual in their fake narrative). And to frighten the Hindus, Hindu women in particular, he stated “My mothers and sisters, they won't even leave your mangalsutras(Sacred necklace worn by married Hindu women)  . The Congress manifesto says that if they form a government, then a survey of property belonging to every person will be done. It will be checked how much gold our sisters own and how much money government employees have…They also said that gold owned by our sisters would be equally distributed. Does the government have the right to take your property? ' He cited Mangalsutra' as something which will be taken away and given to Muslims.

This is like killing many birds in one stone. One is, to criticize Congress Manifesto, two to target Muslims and three to frighten Hindu women. The limit of falsehood concocted by him is so obvious here. The arrogance that such falsehoods can be believed by a large number of people comes from the solid understanding that the committed volunteers of ‘RSS combine’ the IT cell and the corporate controlled TV channels and media will ensure that this falsehood will be taken seriously by large sections of people. The peak point of this exercise was to bring in poor buffalo, which had been left out so far in the ‘Cow as mother’ elaborations. ‘If you have two buffaloes one will be taken away by Congress!’ Post truth lies at its best!

How can Pakistan not be made part of the campaign by BJP-Modi? Modi brought in the P factor by stating that Pakistan wants a weak Government in India. One Fawad Chaudhary, an ex-minister of Pakistan, had stated that Rahul Gandhi has Socialism within him. Modi’s claim is that Pakistan is scared of Balakot type reaction so they want Rahul as PM. Modi must have forgotten that it was Congress-Indira Gandhi, which took the bold decision to help in liberation of BanglaDesh, and divide Pakistan into two countries, against the wishes of mighty Western powers!

To bring in Mughals, Modi used the tweet from Tejasvi Yadav, when he was having fish a day before Navratra (Hindu sacred period, when many Hindu do not consume non vegetarian food). Modi propagated that Tejeswai Yadav is consuming ‘non vegetarian’ food in Holy Navratra to insult the feelings of Hindus, the way Mughal kings used to humiliate Hindus by destroying Hindu temples. Connecting the opposition leader’s innocuous act with Mughals thereby reflecting on to present Muslims, showed that the BJP’s current ‘propaganda in chief’ can stretch any simple and harmless thing into a tool to demonize the Muslims and along with the political opposition to his power.

Remarkable is the prowess of Mr. Modi to concoct things to generate ‘Hate for Muslims’ and opposition parties for his electoral gains and social hegemony.   

 

India: Amit Shah's ‘Muslim quota’ Speech during Karnataka Assembly Elections Campaign - Supreme Court Objects since the matter is sub judice

SC takes exception to Shah’s Karnataka ‘Muslim quota’ speech: ‘Why make such statements about sub judice matter?’

Statements should not be made by anyone on subject which is sub judice, top court says. Solicitor General says he opposes any religion-based reservation, adds it is unconstitutional.

Bhadra Sinha

9 May, 2023 02:34 pm IST

 

 

https://t.co/M2bAE1hebf

India: The Hijab row in Karnataka Colleges will polarise and the BJP will make gains probably during the 2022 assembly elections in UP ?

Hijab controversy: More to do with UP than Karnataka? Is it entirely a coincidence that Owaisi has brought the hijab issue to the UP elections? by Bharat Bhushan (Deccan Herald, Feb 10, 2022) Udupi is a long way from Lucknow, but the hijab controversy is just the kind of emotive issue that could help the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) polarise voters in the UP election. https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/hijab-controversy-more-to-do-with-up-than-karnataka-1079976.html o o How Hindutva Group Mobilised the Saffron-Clad Students at Udupi College (The Quint) [Two days before students protested against their hijab-wearing classmates at MGM college, a message was circulated] https://www.thequint.com/news/india/how-the-hindutva-group-mobilised-the-saffron-clad-students-at-udupi-college

India: Bengal is in the throes of unalloyed bigotry | Sankarshan Thakur (The Telegraph, 07 April 2021)

 The Telegraph

07 April 2021      E-paper

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The air’s changing

STATE OF PLAY | Bengal is in the throes of unalloyed bigotry

Representational image.

File picture

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Sankarshan Thakur   |     |   Published 07.04.21, 12:11 AM

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One afternoon three or so years ago, I stepped out of our Calcutta offices for a smoke and a shot of bhaanr (earthen cup) coffee. Within earshot from where I stood is a small shrine to Hanuman that hugs the corpulent trunk of a banyan. The neighbourhood is a busy wholesale warren, scores pay obeisance to the deity as they pass by. That afternoon, a quite unusual devotee had arrived below the banyan. He wore a saffron shirt and a tilak emblazoned across his temple. There was a swagger to his manner. He hadn’t arrived to pray, he was hectoring the mahant of the shrine, a quiet, wizened man always turned out in dhoti and kurta. He sat there, in his implacable little space, hearing out what sounded more and more like a burst of bluster. Paraphrased, this is what the mahant was being told: the colour of the shrine is all wrong, it needs to be saffron, not white; it needs ornate lighting and it needs a loudspeaker which can drown out the azaan call that routinely rings out from a nearby mosque; it needs activity, bhajan and kirtan, some action. This was no way to run the affairs of a temple, help was required to assert its presence and help was at hand; “Panditji, kaho to log bhijwaaben? (Should I send men, Panditji?)” At this point, the elder could take it no more. He shed his calm and barked back: “Yeh Bangaal hai, aur yeh pracheen mandir aisehi rahega jaise rahaa hai, yahan tumahara hukmarani nahin chalega! Prasad lo aur badho aage!” (This is Bengal, and this is an old temple, it will run as it has run in the past. Your diktat will not work here, receive your prasad and carry on!) The visitor, most likely a sangh apparatchik out to push his authority, hovered a moment on the dare, then turned and picked his way.

Three weeks ago, I was in central Calcutta again, in the vicinity of the Hanuman shrine, in a similarly busy lane opening on Dharmatala. I saw a febrile chant stampede across the streets: ‘Jai Shri Ram! Jai Shri Ram!’ There was nothing like a prayer to the intonation of it; it was the bellicose outcry of assertion and arrival. It reminded me instantly of that afternoon three years ago, and it made me wonder if the mahant under the banyan would still be able to bark back in the face of the new refrain strutting the streets: “Yeh Bangaal hai!” If at all iterated, his riposte would sooner be drowned than heard in today’s Bengal.

Bengal is changing, or it already has; it isn’t the Bangaal the old mahant was invoking. We shouldn’t have to wait for the outcome of the assembly elections to acknowledge or understand that change. If Dharmatala is ready to echo the sectarian rabble-rousing of the northern heartland, something has changed, and it is not a fleeting change that will arrive and depart with election season. There is an unspoken, but probably well and widely understood, code to the ‘asol poribartan’ being promised — ‘real change’. It’s akin to the promise of ‘achchhe din’ whose distillation we all now know is unalloyed bigotry. Bengal is in the throes of it. It is a change that will leave much more than merely the banyan tree mahant censored.

I hope Bengal understands the meaning of it; I fear that it may not. I fear, even more deeply and despairingly, that it actually does. That a securely buried demon seed from the past has been watered, and coaxed to sprout. And that such sprouting has become, tragically, a vociferously celebrated thing. Do more Partitions await Bengal? Or, to put it more bluntly, are Bengalis happy to build welcome arches to another one? And if so, where do they intend to sow the walls? And how many?

I am not a Bengali, and I must seek pardon for affecting familiarity. I belong to a benighted neighbourhood called Bihar. Biharis have bestowed upon themselves the extreme poverty of pride, we are perhaps to Bengal what Sudama was to Krishna. But one of the things I did for the longest time take pride in was that Biharis were not sectarian about the daily conduct of their lives. There were flaming hiccups of infamy, of course — Bihar Sharif, Nawada, Bhagalpur. It cannot be said faith does not turn Biharis to bigotry; it often does, but the bouts came, most often, with a post-script of shame and apology. I come from a north Bihar village called Singhwara, which is twin to Paigambarpur. My grandfather’s most fulfilled afternoons were the afternoons on which he and Bachcha Mian from Paigambarpur would share a sip of tea and savories. Our rides home from the nearest railhead would always be on Wajib Mian’s open Willys. Singhwara households, even to this day, fetch their mutton from Daroga Mian and Ghafoor and Saddam, who have succeeded their father in the trade. But none of that is to suggest that cracks haven’t opened on either side of which we whisper unspeakable things and bear dark mistrusts. There were always walls, but there existed conversation across them. They shuddered when bricks began to be prised away for a project of ‘nationalist sentiment’. A few years down the line, all came asunder, but because it was patently a thing of sectarian pathology and hatred, it was no thing of pride.

When I arrived in Calcutta to work more than a quarter of a century ago, I discovered my world, shattered and shaken by what had befallen Bhagalpur in 1989, suddenly rejuvenated. The Calcutta street was the reconjuring of home. I discovered a city willing to embrace beyond distinction of class, creed, and tongue. Perhaps I was wrong even then, perhaps what I perceived was a delusional invention of desire. But it was real and tactile too, make no mistake. The lordly rested in their mansions, north and south of Park Street, but the lungi-clad daily wager looked no less lordly snoozing away a sweltering afternoon on the back of his cart, or bathing with abandon on the many hydrants that gurgle along the city’s streets. They earned a half a penny worth but they were afforded to believe themselves no less worthy. I hope I don’t sound like I am patronizing poverty; I merely wish to say pelf isn’t a precondition to pride, and Calcutta breathed that almost surreal egalitarianism. Perhaps it still does, but it is no longer possible to be sure. Can it be said for certain that the impulse convulsing across Bengal is an impulse that answers to humanity? Is it an impulse that sings the song Bengal’s great sons have bequeathed mankind? Is it not an impulse amplifying the chasm between shei samay and ei samay? Can anybody be certain that in the run-up to these elections the humanity that was Calcutta has remained a living thing, or not come under assault?

I wonder, and I have spoken from the heart; I am told that requires, in New India, an apology.

sankarshan.thakur@abp.in

India: The RSS men fostering BJP’s Bengal parivar | Shyamlal Yadav | New Delhi | Updated: (Indian Express, March 13, 2021)

The RSS men fostering BJP’s Bengal parivar

In the high-stakes battle for Bengal, Shiv Prakash, an RSS pracharak, has been practically permanently stationed in Bengal. “After coming to the BJP I have spent more than 60% time in the state,” Prakash told The Indian Express.

 by Shyamlal Yadav | New Delhi | Updated: (Indian Express, March 13, 2021)

The BJP’s West Bengal campaign is composed of many parts. A crucial one is the little-known Shiv Prakash, an RSS pracharak deputed to the party in 2014 soon after he had overseen its sweep of Western Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. With former ABVP leader Arvind Menon, Prakash has set the framework for the BJP in the state, working behind the scenes.

In December, Prakash, 53, was asked by BJP president J P Nadda to move his headquarters from Delhi, and give “special attention” to Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, besides West Bengal. However, in the high-stakes battle for Bengal, he has been practically permanently stationed in Bengal. “After coming to the BJP I have spent more than 60% time in the state,” Prakash told The Indian Express.

Daily briefing | The stories you need to start your day with 

In the past more than four months, he has come to Delhi just to attend party meetings. Originally from UP, Prakash is now fluent in Bangla, and knows statistics across the state like the back of his hand.

Hailing from a Thakur family of Moradabad, Prakash became an RSS pracharak in 1986. In 2000, he was appointed prant pracharak of Uttarakhand, and then kshetra pracharak of Western UP (including Uttarakhand). After he proved his organisational skills in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, he was moved to the BJP as the joint general secretary (organisation). He was first given charge of Odisha, before the party decided it needed him more for West Bengal. A few months later, Prakash was made in-charge of the BJP’s organisational affairs in West Bengal.

Also Read |BJP conspiracy to kill Mamata Banerjee: TMC to EC

If national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, the BJP Bengal in-charge, is its public face in the state, Prakash is credited with building the party grassroots up. A BJP national secretary, Arvind Menon is one of the two co-incharges in West Bengal of the party.

Since 2015, when Prakash first came to Bengal, the BJP has set up committees at most of the 78,000 original booths in the state (the number has since been increased to enforce Covid norms). Prakash claims to have inducted as many as 17,500 short-time booth workers alone, with the booths split into over 12,000 “Shakti Kendras (power centres)”, a unit devised by him.

“Like the Lok Sabha polls, this time too we have vistaraks in every Assembly segment… Initially people were scared of joining the BJP… Now we have no scarcity of workers,” Prakash says.

His RSS links have also helped Prakash coordinate better with other Sangh organisations working in the state. Pracharaks of other states have pitched in for the West Bengal polls, for example Sunil Bansal from UP and Ratnakar Pandey from Bihar.

Prakash says keeping a low profile has helped him carry on working in Bengal’s violence-ridden politics, and that he has travelled the whole state many times without security.

When in Delhi, he lives in an accommodation in the backyard of 11-A, Ashoka Road, the official residence of BJP Rajya Sabha MP from Bihar Gopal Narayan Singh.

Menon, a Malayali Nair from Varanasi, also speaks Bangla fluently. He started out in the Sangh Parivar as an ABVP worker in Indore, later moving to the BJP Yuva Morcha. It was as part of the BJP Yuva Morcha that he first came to Bengal, touring the state extensively.

Close to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, he was first shifted to Delhi in 2016 following some controversy. But he has long put this behind him.

Menon is said to have played a crucial role in the 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections.

In 2018, he was named national secretary and assigned to West Bengal. Menon’s main role has been bridging the gap between the BJP’s old guard and new in the state.

 

 https://indianexpress.com/elections/the-rss-men-fostering-bjps-bengal-parivar-7226005/

India: 'BJP ke ektio vote noy' [in English: Dont vote BJP] report on Calcutta Campaign Telling People Not To Vote BJP in 2021 Bengal Assembly Elections

 Around 10,000 people bound by the common objective of not voting for the BJP walked together in a rally in Calcutta on Wednesday, asking everyone to follow their policy to save Bengal.

https://www.telegraphindia.com/west-bengal/calcutta/west-bengal-assembly-elections-2021-vote-for-anyone-but-bjp/cid/1809172

India: How RSS Turned the Wind in Favour of BJP Four Months After Losing MP Assembly Polls | Kashif Kakvi

The Wire
25/May/2019

How RSS Turned the Wind in Favour of BJP Four Months After Losing MP Assembly Polls

The RSS leadership drew up a strategy that was independent of BJP’s campaign – it made a list of seats where BJP seemed on a weak footing and concentrated all energies there.

by Kashif Kakvi

Bhopal: When V.D. Sharma, a little-known BJP leader in Bundelkhand, made a belated entry in the electoral fray, party leaders of the region were surprised. His candidature was opposed widely in Khajuraho, effigies were burnt, and BJP leaders and workers shouted “V.D. Sharma vapas jao”.

In neighbouring Tikamgarh, Virendra Khatik’s candidature was also opposed by local leaders, including all MLAs. Former MLA R.D. Prajapati even resigned and contested as a Samajwadi Party candidate.

In tribal dominated Balaghat, the BJP replaced the sitting MP Bhodh Singh Bhagat with little known Dhal Singh Bisen. Annoyed with the denial, Bhagat contested as an independent candidate.

In Bhopal, though no one openly opposed Pragya Thakur’s candidature, local BJP leaders campaigned rather halfheartedly. The absence of many the BJP leaders from her campaign trail was conspicuous. [ . . . ] https://thewire.in/politics/rss-bjp-madhya-pradesh-win

India 2019 Elections: Arent Religious Symbols, Slogans at Amit Shah’s Roadshow in Calcutta A Violation of Election Code of Conduct ?

via sabrangindia


Religious Symbolism, Slogans at Amit Shah’s Roadshow Election Code of Conduct Violation?

[ . . . ]

video uploaded on BJP's own Youtube channel which clearly shows that people at the rally were repeatedly chanting "Jai Shree Ram" and also many participants were dressed as deities like Hanuman and Ram.



https://sabrangindia.in/article/religious-symbolism-slogans-amit-shahs-roadshow-election-code-conduct-violation

India: Modi’s Appeal In the Name of Voters’ Religion A Clear Violation of Representation of People Act

Modi’s Appeal In the Name of Voters’ Religion Makes Wardha Speech a Corrupt Practice

His charge that Rahul Gandhi chose Wayanad because Hindus are in a minority there and urging Hindu voters to punish the Congress for speaking of ‘Hindu terror’ violate the Representation of People Act.

https://thewire.in/law/modi-appeal-religion-wardha-speech-corrupt-practice

India: RSS Indoctrination of adivasi young boys and adults in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh - Report by Neha Dixit on newslaundry.com

Reproduced from: https://www.newslaundry.com | May 9, 2019

Meet the boys, young adults and old men of RSS preparing for 2019 elections in Jhabua

Battling Christianity and Islam is a top priority.

By Neha Dixit


In January 2018, Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, said all are “children of Adivasis”. Addressing a rally in Raipur, Bhagwat said: “When we say Adivasi, then that is our core identity. We are their children. Even though we see different pictures, our forefathers were the same … from 40,000 years ago."
According to the 2011 census, 21 per cent of the total population of Madhya Pradesh is Scheduled Tribe, known as Adivasi. The Malwa-Nimar region comprising the districts of Jhabua, Dhar, Badwani, Khargone, Khandwa, Dewas, and Ratlam has 22 out of the 47 seats reserved for STs in Madhya Pradesh. The area, of extreme political consequence, has been part of the RSS's pet project to draw the tribals into a pan-Hindu world through RSS-affiliated outfits like the Sewa Bharti, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and Vidya Bharti, among others.
Despite that, since the first Lok Sabha elections in 1952 up till 2015—a span of 17 elections—the RSS's political body, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has only won this seat once, in 2014.
The Ratlam-Jhabua parliamentary seat is set for polls in the last phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections on May 19. Newslaundry meets members of different age groups and outfits of the RSS to find out about their work, areas of focus, and preparations for the upcoming elections.

The RSS: old men and 'ghar wapsi'
“As of now, religious conversions of tribals by Christians is at an all-time high in Jhabua. Thirty-five per cent of the district is now Christian," says Ashok Verma, sitting in the verandah of his house in Antervelia village. Verma is in charge of the RSS unit of Antervelia in Meghnagar town in Jhabua district. A small-built man in his mid-50s, he runs a tent house and a local grocery shop, even as he’s otherwise employed in “spreading Hindutva”.
Verma attended a “Hindu Sangam” in 2008 in Jhabua and joined the RSS soon after. The Hindu Sangam is a platform to bring members, supporters of the RSS and its affiliate organisations—over 40 of them—together to exchange thoughts on building a Hindu nation. The RSS has been holding these Sangams, a congregation of Hindus in the tribal-dominated areas of Jhabua, for over three decades.

Ashok Verma, who is in charge of the RSS unit in Antervelia.

Verma's anti-conversion Hindutva rhetoric against Christians in Jhabua dates back to the 1990s. It first started when Sister Rani, a nun at a local church, was killed in the neighbouring district of Indore in 1995.  When Uma Bharti, the hardline BJP leader who came into prominence for her role in the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, was appointed as the Madhya Pradesh chief minister from 2003 to 2004, slogans like “Pehle Kasai, Phir Isai (First the Muslims, then Christians)” became commonplace in this tribal belt. These are the two communities that are perceived enemies in the Hindutva project of RSS.
In 2005, there was a spate of attacks on churches in Jhabua when a minor girl was raped inside a Christian missionary school. Since then, almost every year, anti-Christian violence picks up during the month of December. As a result, NDTV reports, in 2017, in parts of Madhya Pradesh, Christians chose to “forego Sunday prayers, carol singing and displaying crosses and rosaries through the year, fearing they will be accused of converting locals and persecuted”. In January 2018, two boys performing a "Christmas dance" in a primary school in Meghnagar were stopped by RSS members.
According to Verma, there are 400 “illegal” churches in Jhabua built to convert tribals to Christianity and to occupy government land. He estimates that at least 7,000 people have converted to Christianity in the last three years in the district. This year, on February 3, a statue of the Virgin Mary was set on fire in Ishgar village in Jhabua. He says: “They lure them with biscuits, cakes, money, non-vegetarian food. First, they get them to start lighting incense sticks in front of a picture of Jesus Christ on a weekly basis, and then get them to baptize. Are we going to be mute spectators?"
He says his local RSS unit has managed to do “ghar wapsi” of over 100 families over the past year in Jhabua.
“Ghar wapsi” is a series of “reconversion” activities initiated by the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the RSS to “facilitate” the conversion of non-Hindus to Hinduism. In December 2014, VHP leader Pravin Togadia had said the world was once inhabited only by Hindus, and that the VHP would ensure the Hindu population in India increased from its current 82 per cent to 100 per cent.
The reconversion process involves a hawan, a Hindu ritual of burning offerings to “purge” the converts, and a pledge to follow the tenets of Hinduism.
Verma believes there is a larger conspiracy behind the religious conversions done by the local churches. "The Indian Constitution guarantees reservation to STs in the government sector. By converting tribals to Christianity, they want to take over positions of power in the Indian administration and rule the Hindus."
His son Rohendra Verma, 24, nods at his father's statement. Currently unemployed, Rohendra believes that only “kattar” or “staunch” Hindus can save India. When asked if he knows of any cases of tribals converting to Christianity, he replies, "I have heard of them but don't know any in my own circles. They are taking away our jobs. We either save Hindus now or get rid of Muslims and Christians later. There are only two choices." He is yet to officially join the RSS.  
The 2011 census data negates the paranoia peddled by the RSS. According to these figures, 0.3 per cent of Madhya Pradesh's population of 77 million were registered as Christians and around 90 per cent were Hindus. The same census figures state that the Christian population in Jhabua is 3.75 per cent, 10 times less than the RSS’s figures. In fact, instead of an increase, the overall population of Christians in India has been on a decline in the past five decades: 2.60 per cent in 1971, 2.44 per cent in 1981, 2.34 per cent in 1991, 2.30 per cent in 2001 and 2.30 per cent in 2011.
Verma says the census data is “flawed”.
Apart from “saving” the tribal population from Christians, Verma also actively works towards propagating the Hindu religion among them. This includes distributing statues of Hanuman to all households, teaching them how to celebrate Raksha Bandhan, and how to conduct Hindu weddings. He says, “They didn't even know how to take seven rounds around the fire. We had to teach them."
In her book In The Belly Of The River, sociologist Amita Baviskar had written: “Adivasi religious life is built around animism and ancestor worship and evolved quite distinctly from the Hindu tradition. Their myths and rituals are located in their closeness to and reverence for nature.” Verma’s task is to appropriate these practices as Hinduism. “The kind of round stone the Bhil community worships as Bada Dev is actually like Shiv. Similarly, the foliage and the trees are part of the 'Mata Ka Van (Forest of the Goddess)’. We tell them their practices are all Hindu. They just don't know that.”
Another task is to repudiate local tribal practices and replace them with “upper-caste” Hindu rituals. The RSS started a drive here to stop the sacrifice of kadaknath—a rare breed of fowl available only in this belt—among tribals on Diwali and replaced it with the ritual worship of Ganapati and Goddess Lakshmi. Similarly, the tribal communities participate in a pre-Holi celebration called Bhagoria: a “festival of love” called pranayapurva where young women choose their life partners by applying gulal on the faces of the young men. Verma says this behaviour is a “blot on the character” of Indian women. “We have worked to stop this perversion.”
In this area, the RSS has a comprehensive network that follows a five-tiered structure of villages, mandals, khands, sankuls and jilas (divisions, segments, complexes and districts) parallel to the two-tiered government model. When asked what is the larger goal of Hindutva, Verma says, "I didn't think about it ever. I just want to see a society purged of Christianity. I hope Modiji will help us in his second term."
In the upcoming 2019 elections in the state, the BJP has fielded their local MLA Guman Singh Damor. Verma says, “We worked very hard to get Damor elected from the Jhabua Assembly seat. For the upcoming elections, our booth agents have been shortlisted. The booth tolis with 20 RSS members each are ready. Our slogan will be 'Hindu Jago, Kristi bhago (Hindus wake up, Christians go away)'."
The young men: battling Muslims and ‘deviant’ Hindu girls
Meanwhile, the Bajrang Dal is also hard at work to save Hinduism in the area.
"We try very hard to work for Hindu unity. Our special focus is on ‘love jihad’ cases," says Devraj Singh Rathore, a 21-year-old member of the outfit. Tall, lean and well-built, he wears a freshly-applied red tilak on his forehead. Rathore is an undergraduate student of commerce at a local college. His area of concern, "love jihad", is a Hindu Right-wing theory that Muslim men “lure” Hindu women to marry them and convert them to Islam. Many police investigations have conceded in court that there is no evidence to prove the existence of this practice.
The Bajrang Dal is the youth wing of the VHP, formed in 1984 in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, when the VHP was organising a “Ram-Janki rath yatra” in the town. Ayodhya is believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram and the tense communal atmosphere at the time led the government to refuse the VHP permission to carry out the procession, citing security reasons. As a result, senior leaders of the VHP had called upon the Hindu youth to protect the procession—and Hinduism—from its enemies, resulting in the formation of the Bajrang Dal.
The group organises akhadas, training camps to teach martial arts, wrestling and Hindutva ideology. Like a lot of young men, Rathore was interested in bodybuilding and wrestling, and hence started attending the local akhada in the area three years ago. “I was initially just having fun. I really got interested in Bajrang Dal activities when Deepak Makwana, the RSS pracharak from Thandla tehsil, addressed us. He said that we should think of how Muslims are united all over the world. Then why not Hindus? That really struck a chord with me."

Devraj Singh Rathore and Gaurav Vikram, both members of the Bajrang Dal.

Rathore’s friend, 22-year-old Gaurav Vikram, sits next to him. He’s also a member of the Bajrang Dal. “There are one crore Bangladeshi Muslims and 11 lakh Rohingya Muslims in India,” Vikram says. “They run terrorist training camps inside madrassas. There’s an organisation by the name of Jaish even in Jhabua. This needs to stop or they will take over.”
However, he is unable to explain how an organisation called “Jaish” is necessarily a terrorist outfit. He says, "I will find out and tell you."
Vikram has been running a mobile shop for the last three years. He was unable to enroll for higher education because of financial constraints at home. “They are taking over jobs, our country and our women. For the last three years, I have actively done the Hindu religion's promotion to fight the Islamic threat," he says.  
On May 19, Rathore and Vikram will vote for the first time in a Lok Sabha election. Rathore says, “We want a government at the Centre that listens to us. The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh under Shivraj Singh was here for 15 years. Even their administration rarely listened to us when we protested against Muslims taking out Muharram processions and against 'love jihad' cases. Now, with the Congress government in power, there is even less scope.”
Both young men firmly believe that they “show the direction to those who get lost or deviate from the Hindu way of life”. They regularly conduct vigils in Meghnagar town, especially on Fridays and during Ramzan because that is the time “Muslim shop owners in town get together to plan anti-Hindu activities”, according to them. This has often led to many reported skirmishes between the two communities.
Rathore says, "Two years back, we had a major breakthrough. We managed to separate at least five Hindu women from their Muslim husbands in town. It was a big achievement for us. But now, our Hindu girls are deviating from our traditions at a lightning fast speed."
To prevent “love jihad”, the local Bajrang Dal unit actively collaborates with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS, to keep tabs on every single girl in college to track whom they’re interacting with. “If we see them talking to boys, especially Muslim boys, we inform their families,” Vikram says. The girls are then stopped from coming to college regularly and only come to sit for the exams. That is one way of saving girls from ‘love jihad’ kind of situations.”
However, this tactic hasn’t been as effective as they’d hoped over the last year. When Rathore spotted the daughter of a well-known Hindu family in Meghnagar roaming around with her Muslim boyfriend, her family was informed. However, they paid no heed. When nothing worked, they tried to “explain” to the young woman that she should end the relationship immediately. Rathore says: “She was my college senior. She said, 'there is nothing illegal in having a Muslim boyfriend'. She even threatened us with a police complaint. Imagine! We want the central government to change this law in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections."
The boys: protecting the Hindu way of life
A few kilometres inside Khacchartodi village of Meghnagar in Jhabua, in the backdrop of hillocks, stands a building under construction in a huge compound. The plaque on the building identifies it as the  “Vanvasi Sashaktikaran Kendra/Forest Dwellers' Empowerment Centre” run by the Padma Keshav Trust.

The Sewa Bharti building.

The centre currently serves as a hostel for 26 boys in the age group of 5-17 monitored by Sewa Bharti, the welfare organisation of the RSS. "We have children from many tribal communities including Damoh, Bhil, Bhilala, and Katara. It takes up to three years to make a Bhil-speaking child learn Hindi. How will they learn Indian values and build a Hindu Rashtra if they don't learn Hindi?" asks Kailash Ameliya, the hostel’s coordinator. He is lean and wears a pigtail on his head—a tradition observed by upper caste Brahmins—and a pointy moustache. Ameliya has been associated with the organisation for the last 15 years.
Most of the boys are students of Class 2 to Class 11 in several local government-run (shasakiya) schools, Ameliya says. They are selected on the basis of a test that involves IQ, general knowledge and course-related questions. "Most of their parents are migrant labourers in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, so we get them here. The children of single parents are given priority."
Once they complete their school education, the students are made to stay at the hostel for four more years to, as Ameliya says, integrate them into the “mainstream” way of life and “serve Bharat Mata”.
At the hostel, the students wake up at 5 am. The shakha, an RSS assembly ritual, commences at 6 am. Mango Singh Katariya, the manager of this Sewa Bharti branch, says, “We teach them how to play Indian games like kabaddi and kho-kho. We have also come up with a game called Tank War to instill feelings of nationalism in the young boys so that they can protect Bharat Mata.” Tank War is a game where each group tries to make a chain and encircle the other group to capture it. The groups are often named “India” and “Pakistan”.

Mango Singh Katariya, the manager of this Sewa Bharti branch, and Verma.

As we talk, Satyanarayan Chakradhari, a member of Vidya Bharti, the educational wing of the RSS, steps in. He announces that he was just passing by. On his arrival, both Ameliya and Katariya stop answering further questions from this reporter. Instead, Chakradhari intervenes in the conversation.
“Our aim is to protect Indian culture and values, and we can only do that by catching the children young,” he says. According to him, there are 16 Christian schools in Jhabua which convert tribal children to Christianity. Chakradhari echoes what Ashok Verma had said earlier: “5,000 people were converted to Christianity last year.”
He laments, “Can’t you see the Christian influence? Children want to celebrate birthdays by cutting cake instead of going to temples. They want to study in an English medium school. And the girls! The Western clothes, such forthrightness instead of being docile. We believe in teaching them Indian values and culture from childhood itself so that they don’t lose their way when they grow up.”
When I ask to take a photograph, Chakradhari refuses. “We don’t engage with the media. You can take pictures of the boys.”

The boys who stay in this hostel.

The 26 boys are lined up in a huge hall in the backdrop of a large Bharat Mata poster. They’re all dressed in half-sleeved shirts and pants. I’m not allowed to speak to them. They greet me in chaste Hindi and begin with a war song followed by a hymn in praise of Bharat Mata.
In the upcoming elections, this Sewa Bharti branch plans to carry out a mass drive among the hostel children to “write pamphlets on Bharat Mata and the Hindu way of life” for distribution among the local population. "So that they vote for the sons of Bharat Mata and not the Kristis," adds Chakradhari.

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India 2019 Elections: Misogynist, casteist & communal leaflet & Video by supporters of a cricketer & now BJP parliamentary candidate Gambhir in East Delhi

Here is the mysoginist, communalist leaflet [in Delhi's Parliamentary elections of 2019] from supporters of a BJP parliamentary candidate, that reached thousands of people in their mail boxes and insented into the pages of their morning news papers targetting a woman candidate fighting the elections

o o o

SEE ALSO

Hello @GautamGambhir, irrespective of whether you are behind the pamphlet targeting @AtishiAAP
or not, the least you could've done was tweeted a condemnation. Or at least condemn your party colleagues for this video which doesn't need any verification. No?pic.twitter.com/LkkJWOeets

— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) May 9, 2019

India 2019 National Elections: BJP leadership gave the RSS its nod to take over the poll strategy in Chhattisgarh state

BJP lets RSS take charge in Chhattisgarh

From choosing candidates to running BJP’s voter-contact events, the Sangh has taken over

Firstpost print Edition

By Debobrat Ghose

Every evening for over a month, Dr S Krishnan, a paediatrician in Bilaspur, has been rushing from his clinic to the Railway Colony on a crucial mission. So does lawyer Atul Saxena, who makes a beeline for Shankar Nagar after work. The two professionals want to see Prime Minister Narendra Modi win the Lok Sabha elections, and they are willing to go from door to door to make it happen.
Both Krishnan and Saxena volunteer for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and have a background in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). They are part of a grass-roots effort to revive the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Chhattisgarh. Indeed, the RSS has picked up the reins of the elections here.
A few months ago, the scene was quite different. In December 2018, Chhattisgarh was swept by the Congress in the Assembly elections, ousting the 15-year-old BJP-led government. At that time, a distance had grown between the RSS and BJP. A section of the Sangh had decided not to support “corrupt and arrogant” BJP leaders. There was also disgruntlement at the BJP’s dismissal of the RSS’s suggestion to replace some sitting MLAs.
Things changed post-February, when the top BJP leadership gave the Sangh its nod to take over the poll strategy. The objective: to divert the common person’s anger against the previous BJP-led Chhattisgarh government, and create a narrative around Modi and nationalism. One of the first moves was choosing fresh candidates for all 11 Lok Sabha constituencies. Ten of these candidates came from a Sangh background, and were trained in shakhas. The decision was arrived at during a closed-door Atma Manthan (introspection) meeting at Jagriti Mandal in Raipur, and presided over by the organisation’s prant pracharak (state head).

The primary focus of the Sangh, especially from the second phase of polling, was to reassert the slogan “Desh-hit mein Modi ko jitaana hai (Make Modi win for the good of the nation)”. This gained momentum after Modi’s visit to Korba and Bhatapara districts on 16 April, where party cadres were out in full force.
A key part of the RSS’ strategy has been the implementation of a contact programme which has been conducted with surgical precision from the district to booth level. The Sangh’s sampark vibhag (public relations department) asked its foot soldiers—comprising professionals, traders and students—to contact (sampark) voters; build a strong bond (sambandh) and communicate with them (samvad) on issues of national interest; this, it is hoped, will bolster pro-Modi sentiments. In this enterprise, RSS shakhas acted as nodal agencies. Lists of households were handed to groups of volunteers who were tasked with making repeated contact with their targets. Different groups were formed with specific duties and areas assigned to them. The RSS through monthly meetings of senior functionaries in Raipur and weekly meetings at local levels monitored the progress.

While the RSS has not openly asked people to vote for the BJP, all stops have been pulled out from closed-door meetings of RSS functionaries to chai pe charcha’with local BJP leaders and senior citizens, to rousing cries of Jai Shri Ram at BJP roadshows and rallies. [ . . . ]

Full Text here: https://www.firstpost.com/politics/bjp-lets-rss-take-charge-in-chhattisgarh-6523551.html

India: On BJP & PM Narendra Modi's Vigorous Defence of Pragya Singh Thakur as a Lok Sabha candidate in 2019 - Editorial in The Telegraph

The Telegraph

A stretch to imagine Pragya Singh Thakur as part of civilized life, let alone a civilization

Sadhvis and yogis now form a phalanx in a no-holds-barred political battle, defying ethics, decorum, reason, truth and the law
By The Editorial Board

Published 22.04.19, 9:06 AM


Pragya Singh Thakur arrives at the Madhya Pradesh BJP headquarters in Bhopal on Wednesday, April 17. That the BJP inducted her just before announcing her candidacy indicates its wish to employ a full-on Hindutva strategy with its unmistakable undertone of threat and violence


The concept of holiness has changed somewhat in India. Sadhvis and yogis now form an aggressive phalanx in a no-holds-barred political battle, defying ethics and decorum, reason, truth and the law. From the inspiring call for one more ‘dhakka’ to bring down the Babri Masjid in 1992 through marking out the ‘haramzades’ from the ‘Ramzades’ in a meeting to being nominated as a candidate while facing trial for a terrorist attack, the sadhvis match their saffron-clad male peers in growing earthly power. Pragya Singh Thakur’s candidacy in Bhopal in the Lok Sabha elections suggests that the Bharatiya Janata Party is thumbing its nose at the need to clean politics of criminality. Ms Thakur, out on bail, is expected to face trial under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for planning and helping to execute the 2008 Malegaon blast. She was acquitted for this charge under the Maharashtra terror law; the National Investigation Agency has been rather sparse with evidence in this and other similar cases, the Samjhauta Express blast case being an example. It seems that Hindu terror is a nasty story told by ‘anti-nationals’, including members of the Opposition. Perhaps Ms Thakur and her vicious remarks — she apologized for the latest one probably because the BJP did not back her — are less important than what she is meant to represent. That the BJP inducted her into the party just before announcing her candidacy indicates its wish to employ a full-on Hindutva strategy with its unmistakable undertone of threat and violence.

Even more telling is the prime minister’s defence of the party’s newest recruit. Narendra Modi has chosen Ms Thakur for, according to him, the Opposition will have to pay dearly for having accused the Hindu civilization of terror. This is a frightening inversion. Accusing an individual is not accusing a civilization; besides, Ms Thakur’s case is being processed under the law. Is the law Opposition? By flaunting her as a Lok Sabha candidate, the prime minister and his party are indirectly proclaiming her innocence — still unproven in court — and suggestively glorifying her for what she allegedly has not done. What else qualifies her as a BJP candidate? But even for the BJP, it is a bit of a stretch to imagine Ms Thakur as part of any civilized life, let alone a whole civilization.

India: What’s Under The Modi Masks | Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi

huffingtonpost.in

4/04/2019 3:58 PM IST

What’s Behind The Modi Masks That Are Everywhere This Election Season

PM Modi's supporters never seem to want to take their masks off while cameras are rolling, writes Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi in a new book

• By Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi

Hindustan Times via Getty Images

A supporter of Bhartiya Janata Party takes selfie with a face mask of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during BJP's political rally, at Asansol Polo ground, on April 23, 2019 in Kolkata, West Bengal. 

During fieldwork in 2011–14 and again in 2016, I began to see political supporters of Chief Minister Narendra Modi engaging in the curious practice of collective masquerade. In various public venues at the time, still visible today on countless photographs and in video recordings, large groups of people gather in which every single individual makes the same face. They all wear a Modi mask. The photos seem eerie for what they lack: individual facial expressions. The mask, one of which I purchased, is a rubber contraption that depicts the face of the Indian politician not as parody but in typifying detail. The practice started around 2007 when Modi had not yet entirely overcome major legal and political hurdles linking his administration to the Gujarat pogrom. It had, for Modi, a brilliant effect: the sea of masks made every photograph of a crowd gathering in his name a permanent visual advertisement for his face. Crowds of every kind are ubiquitous in India. In linking name and face via the crowd, Modi’s face became iconic beyond Gujarat. With his mass appeal and popularity steadily increasing, the Modi mask soon became an item en vogue.
Several types of masks circulated in various periods of electoral and public agitation leading up to the general election in 2014. Street workers, Modi supporters, and sometimes accidental bystanders, wore these masks during mass events. Some were made of stiff plastic, others of colored paper, but the most popular one was made of a soft, pliable rubber—the type one finds in Halloween stores in the US. It reminded me of the masks worn in the famous British comedy series Spitting Image. The soft rubber is produced by an India-based company and when worn causes heavy perspiration. It also smells strongly of the petrol chemicals with which synthetic rubbers are made. This most popular version of the Modi mask, covering only the front part of wearer’s face, depicts the politician’s facial features most accurately. During his national campaign in 2013–14, it far outnumbered the others. It faithfully depicts Modi’s distinctive features: smoothened white hair, high forehead, light skin tone, small ears, rimless eyeglasses, thick, full lips framed by a white mustache that blends seamlessly into the edges of his beard. The soft rubber material is of a kind that allows adjustment to any head size or shape while also minimising distortion of facial features. For an Indian today, it is impossible to doubt who this mask presents.
These masks acquired an unintended humorous quality at times by transferring the politician’s increasingly familiar features into strange social televisual contexts: dark-skinned tribal women as Modi-versions in interviews espoused economic development in their own unique tongues and voices; dusty rickshaw-drivers looked like Modi clones as they stuttered awed excitement about the prospects of a decent living wage into a reporter’s microphone; an athletic muscle-man in a T-shirt stretched his pecks into the TV camera, impersonating the somewhat plump and more humble politician while speculating about the future of health in the nation. And then there were countless children hidden behind a single overlarge adult face with white hair—all of them sweating profusely under the soft plastic in the incredible heat. In the mask their voices resounded hollowly through its orifices articulating their hopes for a better India, all hiding behind the rubber contraption.

The Modi mask is the plastic symbol of a new political formation that the BJP came to dominate. By presenting a single face and focusing all attention on only one man’s features, some degree of definite clarity in appearance was achieved which in the election attracted many voters.

The popularity of Modi masks can be contrasted with the popular disenchantment with the Congress system. There is no face in the Congress Party today that could do the work that Modi’s face does for the BJP. It’s former leader, the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, represents a cosmopolitanism that is popularly disparaged as ‘Western’. Rahul Gandhi, its current leader, after winning his father Rajiv’s old seat in Amethi, UP, in 2009, did very badly in 2014 by bestowing on Congress one of its worst defeats. Congress has other problems relevant to representation and delegation: a very complicated mechanism of segmented representation; and the internal layering of dynastic rank, primogeniture, and traditional power as against the promise, however naive, of a singular strong authority. While Modi was able to oust his immediate predecessors, Rahul can ill afford to show disrespect to his mother. The Congress umbrella doesn’t open properly any longer. Such a decisive identification with a political leader like Modi is a phenomenon that has not taken place at a national scale in India at least since the days of Indira Gandhi. The Modi mask is the plastic symbol of a new political formation that the BJP came to dominate. By presenting a single face and focusing all attention on only one man’s features, some degree of definite clarity in appearance was achieved which in the election attracted many voters.
A crowd is usually understood to be a faceless phenomenon, but these political crowds found their face in Narendra Modi’s. This identification through masking becomes more intelligible when placed alongside the context of how people used them for the ubiquitous Indian ritual of tilaka: putting a mark of red vermillion on the center of their foreheads in order to honour the receiver. By putting a tilak on the rubber mask instead of one’s actual face, it suddenly became unclear, who was being honoured by this habitual act. Is it the anonymous individual wearing the mask or is it the important persona depicted by the mask’s surface features? The convergence of the anonymous member of the crowd with their designated leader was now complete: the politician as the representative face of the group and the group as the embodiment of the man.

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A mask is an object that depicts and conceals at the same time. While the facial features depicted in and through the mask are shown, the face beneath it remains hidden. There is something strange happening when someone puts on a mask. Something breaks in the air. There enters a new presence, a supplementary address by a third, and this address becomes interrupted once it is taken off again. Masked supporters of Modi never seem to want to take off their masks while cameras are rolling or while photos are being shot. This, despite the fact that it was highly unlikely they would ever again be on live TV. I found the insistence on remaining concealed surprising, because I assumed that one way to emphasise the authenticity of one’s opinion is to add one’s individual features to it—i.e. to take off the mask. It reminded me of veiled Muslim women in Gujarat, who will often tie a niqab tightly when cameras are rolling for the duration of what they have to say, only to relax the practice a moment later, when they hail their rickshaw and drive home. The women want to become visible to an anonymous public only as pious and veiled and without their individual facial features. The Modi supporters similarly did not want to add something that might disturb the smooth surface of their leader’s rubber replica. Instead of becoming visible as who they were, they made themselves invisible as members of his crowd.
And yet, it is insufficient to understand this practice, the wearing of a mask of the leader by political supporters, as a unidirectional affair. The mirror works both ways. In India, politicians, too, wear the coverings of their potential voters. Election campaigns include elaborate tours through regions and the countryside, as well as cities in the Indian union during which candidates engage in spectacles of costuming that sometimes approximate a veritable carnival of sorts. Enveloped by playful accoutrements, such as coats and shawls, they pose bearing typifying swords, and especially colourful turbans or other headgear originating from various ethnic, regional, and caste communities. Sometimes the head coverings make them even look silly. Such productions are a remnant of a once much more elaborate ceremonial logic of honouring the stranger as a visiting guest.
For electoral candidates, sartorial styles, wearing garments and displaying other regalia, are symbolic strategies, especially while on the campaign trail.They offer token recognition to particular identities of which there are many in India. The practice of wrapping oneself in unfamiliar clothes is indexical of the inclusion and mutual consideration demanded in the world’s largest and by far the most diverse democracy. Nowhere can one find such a density of kitsch and superficial yet also endearing symbolism as when Indian politicians take on the garbs of their respective audiences, offering studied postures and making bland, complementary statements. Yet, the exchange always remains reciprocal: the attention the people give to the candidate (the guest) is reciprocated by the attention the candidate gives to the regional specificities and particularities of the hosts. Wearing the Modi mask marks a dramatic break with this customary reciprocity: under the mask, the people do not become present except in the leader’s image. 

Book Cover.

Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Rutgers University.
Excerpted with permission from ‘Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism Is Changing India’. Edited by Angana P Chatterji, Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot.
2019/537 Pages 537/Hardback: Rs 899

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Newsclick video: Hindu Terror - Fact or Fiction? journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay talks to historian Aditya Mukherjee and editor of Mainstream, Sumit Chakravartty

RSS's expanded influence across India - Fueling Modi’s Campaign

Bloomberg, April 12, 2019

The Secret Society of Hindu Foot Soldiers Fueling Modi’s Campaign

By

Bibhudatta Pradhan

and

Nc Bipindra

• RSS has expanded to have unprecedented influence across India
• Millions of volunteers are urging voters to back ruling party

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They’re known as the RSS -- a force of more than four million volunteers devoted to the re-election of India’s hardline Hindu prime minister.

But the power of the secretive, all-male Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh stretches way beyond dusty villages and sprawling urban centers. More members of the group, founded in 1925, are in the top ranks of government than ever before -- including India’s president and vice president, the head of the ruling party and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who joined its children’s unit when he was eight years old.

Volunteers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) gather for a large-scale congregation in Meerut on Feb. 25, 2018.

Photographer: Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images

With its affiliates, the RSS is recognized as one of the world’s largest non-government associations -- and it’s also the ideological mentor of Modi’s ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party. For three days last month, key RSS functionaries from all over the country gathered for their annual conclave in Gwalior in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh to discuss their core tenet: the protection of Hindu traditions and beliefs.

It set the tone of the agenda for the next BJP government. Priorities include the construction of a Hindu temple at the disputed site of Ayodhya, a uniform civil code for all religions and the abolition of special status for Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. All these were featured in the BJP’s election manifesto unveiled on Monday.
For Modi, the RSS also serves another function: It operates one of the country’s most effective get-out-the-vote operations. The group’s support, which hasn’t always been a guarantee for the BJP, could determine whether Modi stays on for another five-year term after votes are counted on May 23.
“Whatever we did in 2014 election, we will do this time also,” Alok Kumar, acting president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an affiliate organization of RSS, said at the Gwalior conclave. “We will try for one hundred percent polling to strengthen the Hindu forces.’’
Other key RSS members, some of whom asked not to be identified, confirmed the group would support the BJP in force as voters head to the polls in the weeks ahead.
“We will go door-to-door for maximum voting,’’ Om Prakash Sisodia, a full-time official from the RSS in Madhya Pradesh, said over breakfast on the sidelines of the meeting.

Members of the RSS during the Vijay Dashmi Utsav celebration in Nagpur, India, on Oct. 18, 2018.

Photographer: Sunny Shende/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

The RSS -- which is Hindi for National Volunteer Corps -- has only twice before put all its might behind the ruling party and mobilized cadres to campaign openly: in 1977 when the RSS was struggling for its survival, and in 2014 when it was blamed for propagating terrorism.
The group, banned three times in post-independent India, has been accused by opponents of fueling religious conflict that has claimed thousands of lives -- mostly Muslims. A closed society, it mostly communicates mostly verbally with its members, keeps no records of those it recruits and has few dealings with the media.
The organization now has unprecedented influence across India, according to Walter Andersen, a professor of South Asia studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, who has studied the right-wing group for over five decades and also co-authored two books on the RSS.
“On policy process, yes, it is much more active and outspoken than ever before and that is because the affiliates have grown rapidly and those affiliates have penetrated every aspect of Indian society,’’ Andersen said. Modi enjoys their support because they “have a measure of influence in a BJP government to achieve what they want.’’

Foot Soldiers

Like every BJP president before him, Amit Shah was among the 1,400 delegates who went to Gwalior. He sat humbly on a plastic seat with the rest of the attendees -- without the paramilitary commandos who accompany him everywhere -- and asked for their support to make Modi prime minister once again.
That approach has already paid off. RSS members have gone village-to-village, house-by-house to mobilize voters, highlighting Modi’s flagship welfare programs and calming the anger of citizens who still feel left behind in a country where a quarter of the population still live on less than $2 per day.

Volunteers of RSS offer prayers during the organization’s foundation day in Amritsar on Sept. 30, 2017.

Photographer: Narinder Nanu/AFP via Getty Images

“As a leader of a political party, it’s his duty to seek support from all,’’ Suresh ‘Bhaiyyaji’ Joshi, general secretary of the RSS, told reporters at the Gwalior conclave. “The role of the Sangh is to work for hundred percent voting in elections.’’
While the RSS officially says it’s apolitical, volunteers work in their “individual capacity” at polling booths to ensure maximum voter turnout for the ruling party. They coordinate with millions of members from its 40 affiliated organizations, including labor, student and education wings, as well as another 500 social groups that want Modi to win again.
No other political party in India has a similar organization behind it, said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a political analyst who has written a biography on Modi and the RSS. “The RSS has the biggest political network in the country, but they don’t say it’s a political network,” he said.

Political Pressure

For nearly a century, the RSS has sought to place itself at the center of the country’s policy-making process. During Modi’s regime it has grown exponentially, with a 32 percent rise in daily gatherings across the country, according to figures provided by the organization.
The RSS has its own political priorities. The organization advocates for Hindu culture and believes India belongs only to Hindus. It has made the protection of cows -- considered sacred to Hindus -- a top priority.
When its chief Mohan Bhagwat said in April last year India must have ownership and control of the debt-ridden state-run carrier, Air India Ltd., the minister in charge committed publicly to retain the airline in Indian hands. It has since changed direction after a failed sale attempt.
One of its affiliated organizations successfully pushed the government to cut royalties on genetically modified cotton seeds, despite a concerted lobbying effort from multinational Monsanto Co. And the RSS and its associated organizations have pressured the government on issues ranging from the goods and services tax, labor and education to healthcare, forcing policy and rule changes.

Still, the RSS does not align with the BJP on every issue. The group has come into conflict with successive BJP-led governments that didn’t give more favorable treatment to domestic industry over foreign investment, and they’ve opposed some aspects of Modi’s proposed labor reforms.

Spreading Wings

RSS thrives under Modi, rises 32% in five years

Source: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Annual Report

* Figures are number of `shakhas' or daily gatherings of volunteers of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

RSS volunteers are like any other citizens who like the ideology of Modi and support him, said Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, vice president of BJP. “We are inspired by the same ideology.”

Patriotic Songs

The RSS is famous for daily gatherings on sports fields and school grounds around the country. Volunteers including children as young as five exercise, march and sing patriotic songs while donning a distinctive uniform, which only in 2016 changed from khaki shorts to long brown trousers. During Modi’s time, the group said, its daily gatherings swelled to 59,266 from 44,982 in 2014.
“Modi is the most loved child of the RSS,’’ said Satish Misra, a political analyst at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “This time again RSS will back him to the hilt so that its ideological objectives are further progressed.’’
— With assistance by Archana Chaudhary