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: BJP’s spectacular success in Northeast; in 1995 RSS and affiliates had 650 units, in 2017 over 6000

The Indian Express

Behind the BJP’s spectacular success in Northeast, years of silent work by Sangh
Back in 1995, the RSS and its affiliated organisations had about 650 such units in the Northeast; today there are over 6,000.

Written by Samudra Gupta Kashyap | Updated: March 27, 2017 8:15 am

To form N Biren Singh’s government in Manipur, the BJP has risen meteorically to win 21 seats. (Source: Express Archive)

What do T Thangzalam Haokip of Henglep, Vungzagin Valte of Thanlon, V Hangkhanlian of Churachandpur, Samuel Jendai Kamei of Tamenglong and Nemcha Kipgen of Kanpokpi have been common? They are all tribals, members of the new Manipur Assembly, elected on BJP tickets. More significantly, they are all Christians, and have been elected from constituencies where almost 99% voters are Christian. The elections in Manipur have dismantled the myth that the BJP is a party that belongs to and works only for Hindus.

In Manipur, the BJP has risen meteorically to 21 seats; less than a year ago, it had swept the Assam elections, increasing its strength from 5 to 60 in the Assembly. While credit for the success in Manipur is due to a team led by Northeast Democratic Alliance (NEDA) convener and Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav, the young strategist Rajat Sethi, party secretary in charge of Manipur Prahlad Patel, and Assam BJP secretary Jagadish Bhuyan among others — the party also owes is remarkable showing to the work carried out silently by a number of organisations of the Sangh Parivar, some of whom have been working in 100% Christian areas in the Manipur hills.

“It is a fact that the BJP worked hard. But one must also remember that various Sangh wings have been working very hard for years, both in the Imphal Valley as well as the surrounding hill districts,” Jagdamba Mall, a veteran RSS organiser who has spent 40 years in Nagaland and was deputed to Manipur for the elections, said. “Tribal people, irrespective of their religious faith, particularly trust and respect our welfare programmes. This trust was definitely converted to votes,” Mall said. As many as 15 organisations affiliated to the Sangh have been active in Manipur, some for over three decades. “All the good work these wings have done have paid dividends,” said Shankar Das, prachar pramukh of the RSS’s Uttar Assam prant, which covers most of Assam, and the whole of Nagaland and Meghalaya. Instead of openly campaigning for the BJP, the RSS wings focused on getting people out on polling day. “When you go from door to door, house to house and village to village asking voters to come out early, the message not only becomes clear, it also gets translated,” Das said.

Organisations like Sewashram, Ekal Vidyalaya, Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, Sewa Bharati, Kisan Sangha, ABVP, Vidya Bharati, Friends of Tribal Society or Van Bandhu Parishad, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bharatiya Jan Seva Sansthan, Bharat Kalyan Pratishthan, Bal Sanskar Kendra, and the Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh have been running formal and informal education units across Manipur, and have had some impact, especially on the parents of children attending these centres. “You should not be surprised if you find children of some so-called extremist leaders of Nagaland attending English-medium schools run by a Sangh wing,” said one RSS worker who belongs to Maharashtra but has spent over 20 years in the Northeast.

Back in 1995, the RSS and its affiliated organisations had about 650 such units in the Northeast; today there are over 6,000. The number of Ekal Vidyalayas is said to have crossed the 3,000 mark. The RSS has over 120 shakhas and mandalis in Manipur alone, and its Ekal Vidyalayas — though restricted to the Imphal Valley — have touched a large number of families. “We have not only promoted Indian culture, but have also successfully driven home the point that Manipuri culture is an inseparable part of it,” said Kedar Kulkarni, who has recently moved to Manipur after having served for several years in Nagaland. And while the illegal influx of Bangladeshis resonates across the region, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had, during a recent visit to Manipur, declared that the problems of the state were the problems of the entire nation.

The BJP’s alliance with the Naga People’s Front (NPF) in neighbouring Nagaland — which had not gone down well with the Meiteis because the NSCN (IM) includes parts of Manipur in its Nagalim map — too contributed to the BJP’s victory. Although the Congress initially gained some ground among Meitei and non-Naga voters of Manipur underlining the central government’s signing of the Framework Agreement with the NSCN (IM), a sizeable section of Meiteis later changed mind, with the RSS playing a role in persuading them. “We have been focusing for long on the patriotism and nationalism of the Manipuri people,” Mall said. The membership of the RSS has been increasing in the Hindu-majority areas of Assam. In the Imphal Valley, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura, the Sangh’s organisational structure has grown from 2 divisions until 2013 to 4 now.

Veterans in the RSS strongly believe that Manipur is just the beginning of the realisation of their potential in the hill states, and more is in store. The number of workers in Tripura has doubled in just a year, and with Assembly elections likely in February 2018, the BJP could give the ruling Left Front a run for its money. The RSS is also working to prepare the ground for the BJP in Meghalaya, another Christian-majority state that goes to polls early next year. Various Sangh wings are fast adding units, and last year, over 300 RSS cadres — mostly from the Khasi and Jaintia communities — paraded through Shillong in khaki shorts and white shirts, holding sticks. The BJP already has an ally in Conrad Sangma’s National People’s Party, which has a strong base in western Meghalaya — what it needs now is the help of the RSS’s wings to reach out rapidly in the eastern region of the state.

India: Sowing saffron in the north east (Furquan Ameen Siddiqui, Hindustan Times, Dec 13, 2014)

Hindustan Times

Sowing saffron in the north east

Furquan Ameen Siddiqui, Hindustan Times  New Delhi, December 13, 2014

Historically, the north eastern states have been cut off geographically and culturally from the rest of India. Largely populated by tribes- many of whom continue to follow their ancient animist religions- the Seven Sisters of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh have always attracted proselytizers, whether it was the Vaishnavites who influenced Manipur in the late medieval period or the Christian missionaries of the colonial period.

RSS-styled assemblies and shakha activities is part of the physical activities assigned for the children. The daily routine includes morning and evening prayers which include singing RSS prescribed patriotic songs and devotional songs praising Hindu gods and goddesses (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)

related story

Aims to propagate ideology

Now, the battle for the hearts and minds of the north east seems set to intensify with the growing presence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates in the region, who are working to further the Hindutva agenda there. Indeed, the saffron bodies seem to have learnt a good deal from the Christian missionaries they so deride and their message is being successfully propagated through education.
This could have been unremarkable, perhaps even welcome in the absence of a robust secular educational system provided by the state, except that the work of right wing Hindu organisations and the government's deep interest in north east raises several questions; questions about the erasure of indigenous cultures through the indoctrination of children and the propagation of the idea that the
area's animist cultures are actually a strand of the ur-Vedic religion that's also the precursor of modern mainstream Hinduism.
The eventual hope seems to be to reap political dividends. 
Last week, RSS affiliates in north India caused controversy by conducting public 'reconversions'. Another bigger event is planned for Christmas in Aligarh. Under attack, the government mooted an anti-conversion law to be followed by all states and the Centre. During a debate in Parliament on the same topic, union minister Venkaiah Naidu, while quoting Sardar Patel, said: "It is well known that in this country there are mass conversions by force, conversions by coercion and influence. And, we cannot deny the fact that children have also been converted."
"We consider every tribe to be a part of Hindu or Sanatan Dharma. We consider all Vanvasis a part of this larger Dharma," says Rajesh Das, Sangathan Mantri (organisation secretary) of Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, which runs a growing network of schools, hostels and temples in the north east. Das, who supervises the ashram's projects in Tripura and Mizoram, believes the tribals of the region are being guided to the right path through a holistic and nationalistic approach. Das, just like other karyakartas in north east, is not in a hurry either. "We'll see what happens to them [tribal identity] after 100 or 200 years."
In February this year, the long-standing conflict between the Mizo and the Bru (Reangs in Tripura) tribes took me to that corner of the country. In 1998, thousands of Bru tribals had fled Mizoram following ethnic clashes with Mizos. They had taken refuge in the bordering areas of Tripura. Today, some 35,000 refugees remain stranded in the camps scattered around the remote reaches of Kanchanpur, a sleepy hamlet in Tripura.
In 1998, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), an RSS affiliate in tribal areas that provided relief at the camps, had stirred trouble by claiming that the Brus were Hindus. 17 years later, in February 2014, there was no overt sign of the VKA's relief work at the camps. Instead, there were religious mandalis or groups. At the Santipara camp, I met Manikya Reang, a Bru tribal who had fled Mizoram at 14 and sought refuge in one of the seven camps in Tripura.
When I first met Manikya as a Hindustan Times reporter, he didn't care about my name but was insistent about finding out my religion. I gave him a fictitious Hindu name, Sanjay, which stuck as my chain of contacts expanded through him.
The Brus, like many northeasterners, were originally animists - many still are- and believed in the spiritual essence that inhabit inanimate. The concept of worshipping idols or symbols is completely alien to them. Many were initially converted by Christian missionaries. Some of those who escaped Mizoram after the troubles continued to follow animism.

Lighting up of incense, diyas and praying to symbols and images have replaced some traditional Apatani rituals blurring the lines between indigenous practices and north Indian Hindu rituals (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
After the VKA reached the camps, a large number have turned toward Hindu deities. A Bru priest of the Shiva mandali recalls that his people accepted Hindu gods, and eventually formed Ram or Shiva mandalis or groups. Manikya didn't just turn toward these mandalis, he became a purna kaaleen pracharak (full time worker) of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
Since 2006, Manikya has been preaching to displaced tribals about the Hindu way of life and about Bhartiya sanskaar (Indian values), and has been involved in opening schools in remote areas. Soft-spoken, short and lean, Manikya, who is in his thirties, spoke in the fluent Hindi that he had picked up during his stay at a VHP-affiliated hostel in Banswara, Rajasthan, which he also credits with his 'return' to Hindu dharma.
"The daily routine involved learning about our motherland, patriotic songs and our history," he says. When asked why he was converting animists to Hinduism, he insisted that his people had always been Hindu. "It's just because of the lack of education and awareness that we call ourselves different," says Manikya who claims to have opened, in the last six years, more than 340 Ekal Vidyalayas or one-teacher schools in Tripura, Assam and Manipur. More than 12,000 children now attend these schools.
A concept introduced by the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of India (EVFI), which is involved in setting up non-formal schools in remote areas, the Ekal Vidyalays have one trained local teacher and about 40 students, who are taught for three hours. The emphasis is on imparting 'holistic education', which includes Hindu prayers, 'Indian values' and promoting nationalism.
Posters of Swami Vivekananda and Goddess Saraswati look down from the walls of one thatch-roofed, makeshift Ekal Vidyalaya on the banks of a small stream at a refugee camp. Here, about 15 students of different ages are listening to a local 'Guruji'. On being urged by Manikya, the students recited a few prayers in Sanskrit.
Ekal Vidyalaya is just one of the many initiatives run by RSS affiliates in the region. Others like Sewa Bharati, Vidya Bharati, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Friends of Tribal Society (FTS) or Van Bandhu Parishad (VBP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bharat Kalyan Prathisthan (a unit of the VHP), Bharatiya Jan Seva Sansthan (BJSS) and the Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh have also been running both formal and informal education units including balwadis (pre-schools), Bal Sanskar Kendras, hostels, residential schools, night schools, coaching centres and primary, secondary and senior secondary schools across the north eastern states.
Much has been written about the growth and spread of the saffron influence in the tribal pockets of western and central India. However, the campaign to saffronise the tribal belts of the north east has gone almost unnoticed. According to Seva Disha, a five-yearly RSS report on the activities of the Sangh Parivar, its presence has grown at a steady pace.

Students in a hostel run by Vidya Bharati affiliated Abotani Vidya Niketa in Old Ziro. Children, as young as six or seven, are brought in from remote border parts of the state to this residential school (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
In 1995, the RSS and its subordinate associates had only 656 units in the north east, which is divided into two prants or regions- Uttar Assam and Dakshin Assam. According to the last available report, the figure had reached 5,198 units by 2009.
Looking for clean slatesSince its inception in 1925, the RSS has recognised the centrality of education in any project to gain prominence and power. Towards this end, it has focused its energy primarily on propagating its ideology through education. Going by their own figures and claims in Seva Disha reports from 1995 to 2009, nearly 50% of all their sewa karyas is dedicated to educational activities.
In the book Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right, Tapan Basu, Pradip Datta, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar and Sambuddha Sen wrote: 'It is not surprising that Hedgewar (RSS founder Dr KB Hedgewar) began with boys of 12 to 15, and that RSS has always tried to catch its recruits at a very tender and impressionable age. "Leave aside the minds already crammed with well-formed opinions," RSS workers are told, "and concentrate on clean slates."
The utter failure of the secular Indian state to provide even primary education in large swathes of the north east has left a void there. Despite registers showing growing numbers of schools opened and teachers, the truth is that the scene is grim. For many decades, the only major private educational enterprise in far-flung parts of the country was the Catholic church with its schools and colleges.
Christian missionaries of different denominations have been working in the area since colonial times. Today, more than 70% of the population of Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya are Christian and the numbers are growing in Manipur and Arunachal too.
"It is a fact that the whole north east owes a great deal to the Christian missionaries," says Bishop John Thomas Kattrukudiyil of St Joseph Cathedral, Itanagar, referring to the large percentage of the educated population of these states who attended Christian schools. The RSS and its sister organisations, however, beg to differ.
 
Manikya Reang, a VHP karyakarta working in the Bru refugee camps near Kanchanpur, Tripura claims to have opened, in the last six years, more than 340 Ekal schools in Tripura, Assam and Manipur with more than 12,000 children attending (Photo: Burhaan Kinu/HT)
"In the garb of providing them with a good education, the Christians have converted the uneducated tribals. We are just trying to bring them back," says Srikrishna Bhide, sangathan mantri or organising secretary of VKA in the north east.
The latent animosity among some tribals towards Christian proselytisation and their own fears about losing their cultural identity has, in a convoluted way, helped the spread of Hindu nationalist organisations.
From Guwahati in Assam, to Agartala in Tripura, to the small towns of Pasighat and Ziro in Arunachal Pradesh, every worker of the RSS, VKA or VHP that I met repeated the same words when asked why they considered the area's tribals to be Hindu- "Sanatan Dharma". A term of antiquity, it became popular in the 19th century as a 'native' name for Hinduism during the Vedic period and was liberally used during the Hindu revivalist movement of the period.
Of brainwashing and indoctrination
In its January 16, 2005 edition, RSS mouthpiece, Organiser quoted the-then VHP general secretary Pravin Togadia as saying, at a gathering in Rohtak, Haryana: "With a view to create awareness among the villagers, the VHP has decided to start Ekal Vidyalayas and other service projects in 25,000 villages of the country".
He added that "the VHP wanted to expand its work in such a way that the Hindus, whenever the need arose, could foil any conspiracy in the society".
The anti-Christian sub-text is strong in all the branches that I visit in Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. Nibaran Mahato, a full-time member of Arunachal Vikas Parishad (AVP), an offshoot of VKA, whom I met in Itanagar in April this year, puts the organisation's fear bluntly: "We work with the community and prevent them from becoming Bharat Vidrohi (anti-India)".
Mahato claims that the focus of the Christian missionaries has always been to target tribes that are relatively richer and occupy a higher rank in the hierarchy.
"This way, they can convert the weaker ones easily," he says. "We work with all the communities and help them develop without any discrimination."

A Christian dominated neighbourhood in Itanagar. Throughout Arunachal Pradesh religious allegiance is evident with these symbolic assertions. A white triangular flag with a red sun is symbolizes that the house follows Donyi-Polois and helps in warding off Christian missionaries (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
Mahato, who is from West Bengal, is a product of VKA's education programme and is in charge of a balwadi where his wife teaches. Like many other karyakartas working in the north east, Mahato believes that once a tribal community adopts a 'foreign' religion like Christianity or Islam their nationalism starts to diminish.
Khawang Lowang, principal of the Abotani Vidya Niketan school (a branch of Vidya Bharati schools, an educational front of the Sangh with several branches in the north east) in Ziro has been a part of the RSS since the 1990s when the organisation first entered the region.
Located in picturesque Old Ziro, where most people belong to the Apatani tribe, the school runs a hostel for children from remote border villages that are not even connected by road. Its students belong to tribes that follow different forms of animism including Donyi Polo, Intay and Rangfra, apart from Christianity and Buddhism.
Lowang, a Nocte tribal from Changlang district says young people are being seduced by the Western influences that the Christian missionaries bring. "It's the lure of an English education and western culture that attracts young ones to the Church and their schools," said Lowang. "When we started there was a lot of opposition against opening a 'Hindu school'; now we get students from all the tribes."
A day in the hostel starts with pratah vandana (morning prayers) that involves reciting Sanskrit slokas. The evening assembly complete with the RSS salute is held in front of a saffron flag. This is followed by sandhya vandana (evening prayers). The vandana session involves singing devotional songs or bhajans before pictures of Hindu gods followed by patriotic songs prescribed by the RSS.
The prayer room is adorned with portraits of Swami Vivekananda, Sangh leaders like KB Hedgewar and MS Golwalkar, and of Bharat Mata holding a saffron flag instead of the tricolor! Students are required to recite the Ekatmata Stotr in praise of Bharat Mata at the start of the day. The stotr names places associated with Hindu saints, poets, kings and queens, Hindu sacred geography, myth, and the sacred books of the Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs, and finally praises RSS leaders Hedgewar and Golwalkar.
The curriculum makes it clear that the Bharatiya sanskriti followed in these schools is actually mainstream north Indian Hindu sanskriti. Following on the RSS ideology of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan, Hindi is part of the 'core curriculum' and extra effort is expended to promote it.
While inaugurating a Vidya Bharati school in a village in Gujarat's Bharuch district, in June this year, RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat said, "Five years ago, we started a Vidya Bharati school in Nagaland. Today, the children studying there speak Hindi. We are glad that we have been able to spread the spirit of nationalism there."

A Donyi-Polo Gangging in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh. Ganggings are temple-like congregational halls constructed during the Donyi-Polo movement to revive and promote indigenous practices. The Ganggings stand heavily influenced by Hindu rituals (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
He added that it was unfortunate that people see Vidya Bharati as a violent organisation when it was just educating tribals to make them aware of what is happening around them. "It is untrue. The aim is to educate through the tenets of the Hindu way of life," he said.
In 1996, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) evaluated school textbooks in Vidya Bharati run schools and pointed out that 'the Vidya Bharati schools are being clearly used for the dissemination of blatantly communal ideas' and that their Sanskrit Jnan series (taught in every Vidya Bharati school) is 'designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture'.
School of thought
According to the statistics on their website, Vidya Bharati has more than 13,000 formal schools and nearly 10,000 Sanskar Kendras and one-teacher schools (run primarily in rural and Vanvasi areas) with a combined strength of over 33.5 lakh students all over the country. In Assam alone, Vidya Bharati affiliated Shishu Shiksha Samiti- that runs Sankardev Shishu and Vidya Niketans- claims to operate 470 schools with around 1.19 lakh students.
Formal schools affiliated to Vidya Bharati functions within the parameters of an organised, formal education system, where the school follows the syllabus and books prescribed by state or central examination boards- usually deviating in a few respects: the inclusion of yoga, Sanskrit and moral and spiritual education.
Similar to Vidya Bharti, the Vivekananda Kendra Vidyalayas (VKV) of the Kanyakumari-based Vivekananda Kendra operates a number of schools in the north east, primarily in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The Vivekananda Kendra is another beneficiary of the foreign funding that the Sangh receives. In July 2014, a report (Hindu Nationalism in the United States: A Report on Nonprofit Groups) on non-profit groups in the US affiliated with the Sangh Parivar mentions Vivekananda Kendra International as one of those that receive funding.
In Arunachal alone, under the aegis of the Vivekananda Kendra Shiksha Prasar Vibhag (VKSPV), the VKV is administering 33 schools, whereas in Assam, the number stands at 18 schools. VKVs too promise 'value-based education' and patriotic upbringing of 16,000 students that go to these schools.
What makes the Ekal Vidyalayas - run by VHP, VKA, Vidya and Sewa Bharati in tribal pockets of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura, and VBP or FTS in the tea estates of Upper Assam - different from these formal schools is the apparent lack of interest in professionally running the schools or training teachers, and the lack of a concrete curriculum. The spread of Ekal Vidyalayas in the north east has been exponential. The current count of such non-formal schools stands at 3923 with more than 1.13 lakh tribal students.

Children in one of the villages inside a tea estate in Dibrugarh recite a prayer from the notebook distributed by RSS affiliated Van Bandhu Parishad that runs several Ekal schools in the tribal/rural villages across the country (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
A one-teacher school entirely depends on the acharya/guruji or the teacher. Gurujis are mostly local youth who are supposed to be selected by the gram samitis, but in reality, are selected by the regional pracharak. These gurujis are trained in steps: first through a five-day training shivir (camp), then a three month teaching probation and a final ten-day training shivir. These schools serve a medium of contact with the villagers and the teacher is the eyes and ears of the Sangh.
"They aren't just teachers," says Rajesh Das. "The teacher is also a karyakarta, and that karyakarta keeps the organisation updated of what is happening in the village."
In one bagani (estate) tribal colony buried deep in one of the tea estates of Dibrugarh, some 30 kms from the city, Van Bandhu Parishad or FTS runs a one-teacher school. In the district alone, the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation claims to operate 271 schools attended by more than 8000 children. Most of the baganis who live in these tea estates hardly knew about Ekal Vidyalayas.
All they had heard about was a school that functions for three hours soon after the government schools are over. Run in the government structure designated for aanganwadi, this Ekal school is overseen by a 22-year-old guruji, Mithuram.
When I asked Mithuram about the need for a school when there was already a government school nearby, he told me what every other karyakarta has been saying - the curriculum includes teaching good manners to the students and learning about Hindu Dharma, daily recitation of Saraswati and Guru Vandana and Deshbhakti and Omkar geet (devotional and patriotic songs) that are not taught in government schools.

Going by the text
A committee setup by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2005 headed by human rights activist Avdhash Kaushal submitted a report that found communalisation rampant in Ekal Vidyalayas and in their textual materials and curriculum. The committee surveyed Ekal schools in Jharkhand's Singhbhum district and in Assam's Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts.
These Ekal Vidyalayas run by FTS, as the committee found, were even funded by the then BJP-led NDA government. The funds sanctioned were not only from the HRD Ministry but also the Ministries of Rural Development, Tribal Welfare, Science and Technology and Women & Child Development. The funding was later stopped by the UPA government after the committee recommended that the grants given to FTS be frozen. As if communalisation wasn't bad enough, the students at the non-formal educational units are not even receiving a halfway decent education.

Take the case of the balwadis run by VKA in many parts of Arunachal. They work on similar lines to Ekal Vidyalayas that function as a pre-school of sorts. A visit to these balwadis in Itanagar, Ziro and Pasighat revealed a lack of interest in running such schools professionally. Many are run out of shacks or abandoned structures and basic amenities were absent.
The teachers hired quit quite often. But perhaps, as Mahato himself admits, the idea is not to run these 'institutions' professionally. "We don't want to run these schools as professionals. Schools, balwadis or health centres that we run are all set up to create a way into the community. Then we work with the community to counter Christian missionaries," he says.
Going local to go national
In Meghalaya, the model of the Sangh's educational network is markedly different. Several schools that operate in the villages do so as local Seng Khasi schools. Seng Khasi, an indigenous cultural and socio-religious organisation in Meghalaya started a school and a college in Shillong.
However, several independent Seng Khasi schools mushroomed in the remote reaches of the state and were named after the mother organisation.
VKA organising secretary of Meghalaya, Dr Vishwamitra Batra, said the Sangh funds and supports several independently running Seng Khasi schools in the state. Support ranges from helping set up a school, to providing books and stationery to hiring and paying teachers.
Another RSS supported organisation Lei Synshar Cultural Society (LSCS), hardly known outside the small town of Jowai in the Jaintia hills, has been sending scores of kids from Meghalaya to Karnataka. After the 2009 Tehelka story about the saffronisation of young minds and about children being sent to other states with the help of RSS volunteers, locals are wary of speaking about it, but continue to send their children to Karnataka.
In 2011, 165 children were reportedly sent by the society to southern states. The society claims to have sent more than 1000 children to various schools in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu run by Trusts, Sadhus and Mutts. According to Swear, a local businessman and a member of LSCS who supervises the running of one such school, the Sangh is spreading the spirit of nationalism and supports them in safeguarding their identity.
"People in the villages are too poor to afford even food for their children; then how are they going to bear the expenses of a decent education? This is where RSS and Lei Synshar steps in by helping kids to get education outside the state," he says.
In February this year, the Madras High Court took up an alleged trafficking case of 20 minor girls between the ages of 8 and 13 from Jowai and nearby Pynursla. The girls were rescued from a Trust that ran a hostel in Hosur, Tamil Nadu and were sent by LSCS. Batra denies an RSS role in sending children outside the state.
The VKA and VHP also run several hostels in different parts of the country. According to the VHP website, it runs 89 hostels, 34 orphanages and 15 residential schools across the country. The VKA operates 225 hostels with a strength of 7,774 children in various parts of the country.
North eastern children are primarily sent to hostels in the states of UP, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Kerala. With so many schools run by the Sangh and its affiliates in the region, why send the children to hostels outside the state?
According to Sewa Disha, the 'hostels for students belonging to north eastern states and other vanvasi areas [are run] to counter separatist mentality and convince the students that they are a part of the mainstream of our country.' The hostels also help the Parivar to propagate their Guruji's ideology and mould these children. Indeed, Manikya says it was his time at the VHP hostel in Banswara that made him realise that he has always been a Hindu.
Smells of social engineering      Speaking during the launch of his book Jyotipunj in Rajkot in 2008 - attended by RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat and VHP leader Sadhvi Rithambara- the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi had quoted an instance where political leader Jayaprakash Narayan had attended one of the Sangh meetings and found it surprising when every worker introduced himself with his Sangh aayu (sangh age) - a measure of how much one worker has spent his life as a Sangh worker.
He says that Narayan was surprised and wondered how anyone can give 30-40 years of his life for one work, one thought and one mission. The karyakartas or pracharaks that I met in the north east were no different. They were in different stages of their Sangh aayu, working towards one mission- to convince animist tribals that they have always been a part of the larger 'Hindu fold', a part of Sanatan Dharma.

An Apatani village just outside the small town of Ziro in Arunachal Pradesh. The traditional prayer rituals in Apatani has now been Hinduised after the Hindu organisations like RSS and AVP started working in the area (Photo: Subrata Biswas/HT)
Arunachal Pradesh holds a special place among the RSS cadre as the state shares a border with China. Both Chinese claims over the parts of the state and the spread of Christian missionaries is a major concern and their call for nationalism across the state is much louder.
"There was a conscious effort by the state to keep Christianity out of Arunachal. Hindi and Hinduism were promoted to make Arunachalis different, a buffer zone between Indians and Chinese," says John Dayal, civil rights activist and co-founder of the All India Christian Council.
About 30% of the state's population - Arunachal prohibited the use of bribery or coercion for conversion in 1978 - follows animistic traditions like Donyi-Polo.
In the late 1980s, the small town of Pasighat, home to the Adi tribe began to see a revival of the Donyi-Polo religion. Talom Rukbo emerged as the father of Donyi-Polo and suggested recovering and recording endangered rituals, prayers, and hymns on paper. Soon, other tribes of Tani and Apatani followed. In the decade that followed, Rukbo was heavily influenced by the RSS and its affiliate the Arunachal Vikas Parishad (AVP), a front that the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram took when objections were raised about starting the organisation in the state.
Rukbo was made the first president of AVP and received support for his movement. Twelve years after the death of Rukbo, the AVP seems to have gradually taken over the movement. As a result, the difference between local rituals and Hinduism as practiced in north India has blurred. Traditional practices have mingled with borrowed Hindu ones like the lighting of diyas and incense during prayer.
The Ganggings, the Donyi-Polo congregation-prayer halls, now have a bell like the one in a Hindu temple. Symbolism is prominent in the AVP's promotional work and Donyi-Polo followers are asked to put up a flag, a white triangular one with the image of the sun on it, to ward off Christian missionaries. Books and pamphlets on Donyi-Poloism are published and distributed by the AVP, along with lockets and an image designed by the AVP for the tribals to pray to.
Talum Rukbo's counterpart and a leader of the Donyi-Polo Mission, Kaling Borang, who is involved in the documentation of indigenous scriptures, thinks Rukbo had made a mistake by seeking the help of Hindu organisations like the AVP and the RSS who later hijacked the movement. Borang, however, believes their influence has faded out after Rukbo's death.
So smooth, they can't tell
However, the Parishad and RSS pracharaks in the Apatani and Adi belt are very influential and their success lies in how their ideas have been absorbed and internalised by tribal people like Yabor Tagbo and Taga Borang, who belong to the Adi community. Tagbo and Borang, who are teachers, are convinced that their local beliefs overlapped with that of Hindus.
"We tribals didn't have any religion; we just had different tribal practices. Even though they look different, they have come from the same source," they say.
Tapan Basu, one of the authors of Khaki Shorts Saffron Flags believes a kind of colonisation is underway in many parts of central and eastern India. "There are little traditions or indigenous practices present in these [tribal] regions that can't be in any way be called or associated with Hindu traditions or practices," he says.
The extent of the internalisation of north Indian Hindu belief can be seen in the subtle shift in dietary habits. Traditionally, meat forms a major part of the diet of the Adis. Both Tagbo and Borang said that once they became part of the AVP, they started going to Hindu temples and tried not to eat meat when they went.

One of them had even taken a dip in the Ganga at Haridwar and had brought back Gangajal for the local temples. Earlier, the holy river revered by mainstream Hindus had no religious significance in the tribal belts of the north east.
The Sangh's social engineering project also continues in Ziro valley's seven villages, home to the Apatanis. Gyati Pada, a forest official, is a member of the local AVP and looks after the balwadis. While many in the Adi tribe are convinced that their faith is part of the Hindu fold, most Apatanis disagree. Pada said he joined the AVP because it offered to support their struggle to preserve their faith, but maintains that their faith and Hinduism are very different.
Pada, who has been to several religious places of northern and southern India on a trip sponsored by the AVP, is unhappy that many native practices have started to resemble those of the Hindus. The Hindu influence has seeped into the local temples too. People living in Ziro now know the Shiva temple as the Donyi-Polo Shiva temple, a name that's engraved on the entrance. Similar to the concept of Donyi-Polo Ganggings built in Adi areas, a Meder Nello (the newly-adopted Apatani place of worship) was started with the support of the AVP in one of the seven villages occupied by the tribe near Old Ziro.
In eastern Changlang district, a separate project has developed a version of idol worship which was absent in the traditional Rangfraaism followed by the Tangsa, Tutsa and Nocte tribes. Earlier, the supreme spirit Rangfra revered by these tribes wasn't bound to temples, idols or any form earlier.
Political dividends
While the Sangh Parivar tries to bring the tribes of the north east into the Sanatana Dharma fold, it can be assumed that the political fruits of these efforts will be reaped by its political face, the ruling  Bharatiya Janata Party. Although these projects are yet to lead to any political gains for the BJP, the election results in Assam this time might shed some light on the future benefits of the RSS' massive social engineering project.
For the first time, the BJP won seven out of the 14 parliamentary seats in Assam. More remarkably, it made inroads into a traditional Congress stronghold - the tea garden workers and Adivasi communities in upper and northern Assam, in Dibrugarh, Lakhimpur, Jorhat and Tezpur.
Political outcomes in the central part of the country might shed some light on how the RSS's political arm is sweeping across the tribal regions. BJP won 32 of the 39 tribal reserved seats it contested during the Lok Sabha elections - clinching proof of the party's popularity among tribals. It also won 10 of 11 seats, controlling two of the four tribal reserved seats in Chhattisgarh. 
"It's a long-term investment. The RSS continues to try and build an opinion in civil societies, through education, for example. Once they do so, it is very easy for them to capture power because when people go to vote, they'll think of voting for a Hindu party," says Tapan Basu.
The changing dynamics in the tribal areas of Chhattisgarh has led to some communal unrest. The VHP along with a BJP MP from Bastar conducted a 'ghar wapasi' (Home returning) ceremony claiming to 'reconvert' 35 tribals to Hinduism. The event prompted attacks on church goers. Several such incidents have been reported from nearby Jhabua and Dhar, and from states like Odisha, Gujarat and Jharkhand. The north east seems to be headed for a similar fate.
Opium of the masses?
However, the Hindu nationalist RSS has always claimed to be a cultural organisation with no interest in politics but with one thought, one mission - the dream of achieving a Hindu Rashtra. To achieve that objective, the RSS and its affiliates run projects that recognise the part that education plays in moulding young minds.
"The school is embedded within a tight and comprehensive range of institutions that would, in calibration, coordinate the child's leisure, education, ideological growth and religious understanding', writes Tanika Sarkar in a paper on the Historical pedagogy of the Sangh Parivar.
Patriotic songs, disciplinary drills, sports and special curricula that favours a surrendering of individuality is as much a part of the educational experience at these schools as it is at any neighbourhood shakha. This method of combining both physical and psychological tools to propagate ideology among children can be gleaned from a story that Golwalkar loved to relate: A rich man who saw a beautiful peacock in his garden gave it food mixed with opium. The peacock started coming every day. Eventually, it got so habituated that it came regularly at the appointed hour even without the opium.

Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/sowing-saffron-in-the-north-east/article1-1296264.aspx

India: Sangh Parivar’s diversity in unity (Christophe Jaffrelot)

Indian Express

Parivar’s diversity in unity

Sangh Union Rail Minister Suresh Prabhu in conversation with Mohan Bhagwat during the recently concluded World Hindu Congress. (Source: Express photo)
Written by Christophe Jaffrelot | Posted: December 1, 2014 12:55 am

The meeting of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and some of his ministers at the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, scheduled for December 2, has attracted the attention of the media. But it is, in fact, standard practice. Sangh Parivar leaders have already met Union ministers in order to put in place a mechanism for “better coordination” between them and the government. The RSS was not the only non-BJP organisation taking part in this meeting, which took place in late October.

The meeting with five ministers and a minister of state, who collectively were in charge of the agriculture, labour, power, and information and broadcasting portfolios, was also attended by representatives of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM), Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS), Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Laghu Udyog Bharati and Sahakar Bharati.

Such a meeting was intended to harmonise the positions of the BJP-led government and other members of the parivar. Like any “family”, this one also harbours a certain diversity, resulting from the very scope of its embrace: each and every sector of society is now represented in the Sangh Parivar and their perspectives may not necessarily converge with the government’s policies. Economic liberalisation and globalisation are cases in point. The BKS has, for instance, not unreservedly supported the decision of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee to approve field testing of genetically modified food crops. The BMS has expressed some reservations about the Factories (Amendment) Bill, 2014, and the Apprentices (Amendment) Bill, 2014. Moreover, it has asked the government to regularise contract workers. The SJM objected to the opening of defence and railways to foreign investors, and to other initiatives, too, as evident from the Swadeshi Sangam that it held last month in Jaipur, about which The Organiser, the RSS weekly, wrote: “The swadeshi thinkers assembled at the sangam termed foreign direct investment (FDI) as dangerous for the nation and appealed to the government to specifically refrain [from allowing] FDI in agriculture, trade, commerce, insurance, defence and the service sectors. They stressed on the need for cultural, technological and economic nationalism to protect the country from all such dangers. Convener of the sangam, Prof Bhagwati Prakash Sharma, said the grip of multinational companies is getting stronger on our commerce, business, industries, agriculture.”

Another domain the Sangh Parivar has traditionally invested in is education. It has set up a consultative body, the Bharatiya Shiksha Niti Ayog (BSNA), brainchild of the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, to suggest steps to “Indianise” the education system. Among the most prominent members of the BSNA is Dina Nath Batra. The HRD minister, Smriti Irani, had also met representatives of the Sangh Parivar to discuss the reform of education in October.

Besides its interactions with chief ministers and ministers, in order to evolve the correct public policies, the RSS is guiding the BJP directly. Ram Madhav, former member of the RSS executive committee, who had been its spokesman since 2003, has been appointed BJP general secretary. Shiv Prakash, also a former pracharak, has been deputed to the BJP. These nominations are nothing new and are part of a pattern — as is evident from the fact that the BJP’s organisation secretaries are usually RSS cadres. But what is new is the decision of the RSS kendriya karyakari mandal (central executive committee) to form committees from the district level upwards, consisting of RSS office bearers and representatives of other branches of the Sangh Parivar, to ensure that the activities of these various wings “remain in conformity with the larger objectives of the Sangh”.

Among the Sangh Parivar components guided by the RSS, the BJP occupies a particularly important position, now that it is in power. The Sangh has traditionally seen itself as the “raj guru”, as in K.R. Malkani’s formulation, vis-a-vis the BJP and before that the Jana Sangh as well as the Janata Party. Balasaheb Deoras mentioned this architecture of power when the RSS tried to advise Morarji Desai’s government, but the “dual membership” controversy (during which Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani were accused by the socialists and Charan Singh of owing allegiance as much to the RSS as to the Janata Party) quickly undermined this possibility. Then, the Vajpayee government abstained from fully implementing the RSS agenda because it depended on NDA partners who were not in favour of building the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, abolishing Article 370 or creating a uniform civil code. In the present context, with the BJP having a majority in the Lok Sabha, these articles of faith may not be bones of contention any more. Amit Shah, the newly elected BJP president, who visited the RSS headquarters in Nagpur even before his appointment was ratified by the BJP’s national executive, agreed in October with the sah sarkaryawah of the RSS, Dattatreya Hosabale, who, in reference to the construction of the Ram Temple, declared that the Central government had time until 2019. The Article 370 question may also be revisited after the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections — if the results prove conducive to the reopening of this debate.

Besides chief ministers, ministers and the BJP apparatus, the RSS would naturally like to work in tandem with the prime minister’s office. Relations between the Sangh and Modi were not always easy when he was chief minister of Gujarat. According to Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay’s biography of Modi, at one point, the prant pracharak resented the fact that the chief minister did not report to him (to clear the list of election candidates, for instance). Other components of the Parivar, including the VHP and the BKS, objected to some of his policies, including the power-tariff hikes, which were seen as penalising peasants. But, for the RSS, these past tensions may not have a bearing on relations with the new dispensation if it has access not only to the power centres mentioned above but also to the bureaucracy, including the security apparatus. (Last month, the BSF explained “the present security system”to RSS sarkaryavah Bhaiyaji Joshi when he visited the Tin Bigha corridor in Cooch Behar.) Ideologically, too, the RSS and Modi are on the same page, not just because of their shared Hindu nationalism, but also because Modi puts stronger emphasis on the socio-psychological transformation of India. His Red Fort speech, where he described Independence Day as an opportunity “to resolve ourselves to lead a life where our character is refined further”, was in tune with the RSS’s investment in samskar-based “character-building”. In this speech, Modi also asked parents to bring their children back to the right path if they had embraced Naxalism and advised “mothers and sisters not to sacrifice daughters in the hope of a son”. The state was not named in any public policy, but only via references to the work culture of the bureaucracy. In contrast, the private sector was requested to help the state’s work by using funds from their corporate social responsibility budget. The cleaning of India by its citizens is also a societal move that echoes the RSS modus operandi — which has affinities with Gandhism in that domain — at the expense of state-sponsored action. Politics, more than policies, is the order of the day, and that may continue to please the RSS so long as it is in tune with its agenda.

The writer is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/ CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian politics and sociology at King’s India Institute, London, Princeton Global Scholar and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
express@expressindia.com

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