Shiv Kumar Sharma, the face of the ongoing farmers’ agitation in Madhya Pradesh and a former leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, may have come from the same political stream as the Bharatiya Janata Party, but he firmly believes that farmers are worst affected in states where the party is in power.

“Farm distress is not unique to any particular state, but the situation is worst in BJP-ruled states,” Sharma, nicknamed Kakkaji, told Scroll.in on Monday. “In total, there are 16 states where the BJP has its government, and in almost all of them farmers are miserable.”

Sharma, who formed the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh after working for the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh for years, is believed to be the man behind the violent agitation by farmers that has rocked Madhya Pradesh this month. The state’s agrarian community is demanding farm loan waivers and better prices for their produce. The situation remains tense after five farmers were killed in police firing on June 6 in Mandsaur district.

On Saturday, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan started a fast in a bid to restore peace in the state, but broke it the very next day.

“He is a very weak person,” said Sharma. “He does not have the guts to go and ask directly from [Prime Minister] Narendra Modi any financial help for the state. He sat on fast to hide his weakness. Everyone knows that he is helpless because the Centre is not helping him out.”
 

Phase 2: Gujarat, Rajasthan

Sharma said the events of the past two weeks in Madhya Pradesh and in neighbouring Maharashtra, where also farmers were agitating for relief from debt and for fair prices, are just the first phase of a larger movement. In the second phase, the agitation will be much more widespread, engulfing states like Gujarat and Rajasthan, he added. Along with Maharashtra, these two states are also ruled by the BJP.

A nationwide block of national highways is planned on Friday as part of this next phase. “The decision for the second phase was taken in a meeting of 140 farm leaders belonging to 62 organisations from different parts of the country,” Sharma said. “The mega meeting, held on June 10, decided to organise a nationwide protest on June 16, when farmers will block all national highways from 12 noon to 3 pm.”

The date (June 16) is significant as it comes the day after the Modi government’s 21-day-long celebration of three years in office is scheduled to end.

“The next major protest is scheduled to be held on June 21, which is Yoga Day,” Sharma added. “For one hour, farmers across the country will do yoga with Modi. But unlike Modi, farmers will do only shavaasan [corpse pose], not in their homes or parks but on railway lines, stations, roads, junctions and bus stands and will thus bring the nation to a halt for the time Modi will do his yoga.”

According to Sharma, Gujarat is of special interest, not just for Modi and the BJP, but also for farmers of the country. “Gujarat cannot be insulated. The farmers have suffered for so many years in the state,” he said. “The agitation, once it builds up, is bound to be a fierce one. I could feel this in our June 10 meeting, which was attended by several farmer leaders from Gujarat.” He added, “No matter what the government does, Gujarat and Rajasthan are likely to take the agitational route sooner than later.”
 

Loan waiver or eyewash?

The farmer leader, however, appeared worried that a loan waiver announced by the Maharshtra government on Sunday might take the steam out of the agrarian unrest, without giving the state’s farmers anything substantial. Following the government’s announcement, Maharashtra’s farmers have reportedly called off their stir.

“This is similar to what happened in Uttar Pradesh, where the government after announcing a loan waiver has kept diluting its promises,” Sharma said. “First, the Uttar Pradesh government said loans of all farmers would be waived off, then it announced the relief only for medium and small farmers, and thereafter it climbed down further, saying benefits would be given only to very small farmers and only loans up to Rs 1 lakh would be waived off. Even this promise has not been implemented so far,” he pointed out.

Courtesy: Scroll.in

With Adityanath’s elevation as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh creating a climate of uncertainty among the state’s minorities, activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are finding greater success in their programme to persuade Muslims to convert to Hinduism.

Over the past month, at least two instances of Muslims being converted to Hinduism have been recorded in Faizabad. Hindutva organisations refer to the conversions of members of minority communities as “ghar wapasi” – home coming.

Nineteen Muslims were converted on April 23, while 24 more were converted on May 20. Both sets of conversions took place in a temple in Faizabad, even though all the converts were from Ambedkar Nagar, said Surendra Kumar, an RSS worker in Ambedkar Nagar district, who helped organise the ceremony.
 

Himanshu Tripathi, the manager of the Arya Samaj Mandir where the conversions took place, said that he was in contact with nearly 100 Muslims who would be converted to Hinduism “in due course”.

“We have successfully accomplished two events of ghar wapasi after Yogiji became the chief minister,” Tripathi said. “I am in touch with about 100 more Muslims who have shown inclination to get back to Hinduism. You will hear of more such cases in the time to come.”

Tripathi insisted that the conversions were voluntary. “Though Surendra Kumar brought these Muslims to the temple and I organised ghar wapasi ceremonies, there was no element of force in it,” he said. “We organised ghar wapasi because they expressed their desire to become Hindus.”
 

Said Kumar: “I had been working on them for several years, but once Yogiji became the chief minister, convincing them that they could live without fear…if they converted to Hinduism became easier for me.”

Kumar belongs to the Nat caste, which is listed as a scheduled caste in Uttar Pradesh. While one section of this caste follows Hinduism, another practises Islam. All new converts belonged to the Nat community. “As I myself belong to this caste, I could easily explain to Muslim members of the community about the risk of continuing to follow Islam,” Kumar said, “and the benefits they might get by becoming Hindus.”
 

The affable manner of forty-year-old Sharan Pampwell, the Mangalore-based leader of the Bajrang Dal in Karnataka, belies his exceptional business acumen. Like a good entrepreneur – obeying the laws of demand and supply – he has put to good use the anxiety felt by local businessmen as a direct result of the Bajrang Dal’s activities. He offers them protection by using the foot soldiers of the very same Hindutva outfit he represents.

“We strictly follow the rules of business,” Sharan tells me as I sit down with him to understand the economics of his politics. “Businessmen are prepared to work with us because we offer them security services at a very reasonable rate.” Politics may once have been the sole reason for the existence of the Bajrang Dal – an aggressive youth brigade of the VHP, in turn an offshoot of the RSS – but in Mangalore, where this organisation is very active today, it is a convincing profit motive that seems to drive its activities.
 

It works like this: first, the demand is created through the Bajrang Dal’s agitational activities, which range from vigilantism to hooliganism to vandalism.

This creates a sense of insecurity among owners of malls, shops and apartments. Then Eshwari Manpower Solutions Limited, a company owned by Sharan, offers security guards to the terrified businessmen so their fears are assuaged. The manpower for both these activities is drawn from the same pool. “All the supervisors and the majority of the security guards who work for the company are Bajrang Dal karyakartas,” says Sharan. “As the leader of the Bajrang Dal in this city, it is my duty to secure a livelihood for the karyakartas. But I don’t turn away anyone who comes to me for a job. There is enough demand for security guards in the city. Some of our guards are even Muslims.”

Sharan Pampwell has had a meteoric rise in the Bajrang Dal since joining the organisation in 2005. In 2011 he became the convener of the Mangalore division, and in 2014 was given the same designation in the south Karnataka region. In the Bajrang Dal’s organisational structure, the state of Karnataka is divided into two units, north and south, each with its own convener. While in northern Karnataka the Bajrang Dal is weak, in the south it is hyperactive, perhaps far more than in any other part of the country.

With Eshwari Manpower Solutions Limited requiring constant business opportunities, the Bajrang Dal considers its agitational activities crucial to its economic gains under Sharan’s leadership. “I started this business soon after I was made the convener of the Mangalore division. Now I have the security contracts of three malls – City Centre, Forum Fiza and Big Bazar – apart from several shops and apartments in the city,” he said. City Centre at KS Rao Road and Forum Fiza at Pandeshwar are among the largest malls in Mangalore. Big Bazar, located in the Lal Bagh area of the city, is another important shopping complex.

Interestingly, most of the shops in City Centre and Forum Fiza belong to Muslims, the community that is the main target of the Bajrang Dal’s attacks in Mangalore, as in other parts of the country. In Mangalore, however, the anti-Muslim basis of the Bajrang Dal’s politics gives way to communal harmony the moment the Hindutva outfit doubles up as a business firm with minorities as clients.
 

Sharan tacitly admits this as he demonstrates his entrepreneurial shrewdness.

“We are getting a lot of business from Muslim shopkeepers and mall owners. That is primarily because they have faith in us and in our company.” He maintains silence about the secret of his success among minorities – the fear factor that compels Muslim businessmen to opt for Eshwari Manpower’s security services. “Given the kind of activities they [Bajrang Dal members] indulge in, this is the best way to do your business peacefully,” says a Muslim shop owner in City Centre. “In a city like Mangalore, if you don’t outsource your security to them, you become extremely vulnerable. In the end, it is not a bad deal either. You do not just get security guards from them but also an assurance that you will be spared from any Hindutva activity. After all, one attack is enough to bring down your business.”

The transformation of the Bajrang Dal into a protection racket is not necessarily the natural progression of street-level Hindutva politics. It has been possible in Mangalore because of the widespread perception among businessmen and ordinary citizens that appealing to the police for protection is futile. When the state is unable to rein in troublemakers and the government’s law and order machinery appears overwhelmed by them, perhaps the only option is to cooperate with the perpetrators of criminal culture.
 

---

The Bajrang Dal’s approach to politics in Mangalore – small scale, local and business-oriented – makes obvious sense for any organisation which has as its main stock of activists unemployed youth from economically weaker sections of society. It is equally obvious why employment via the Bajrang Dal protection racket appeals to those who have struggled – and failed – to secure a livelihood in a highly competitive market.

However, when the Bajrang Dal was set up in 1984 by the VHP as its “militant youth wing”, its original objective was to increase Hindu mobilisation for the Ayodhya movement, which the VHP had adopted as its central campaign barely a few months earlier. The epithet “bajrang” (meaning strong and sturdy), which is associated with the name of Hanuman, the monkey god who led Rama’s armies into battle, was chosen to emphasise the muscle power of the members of this organisation.

Excerpted with permission from Shadow Armies: Fringe Organizations and Foot Soldiers of Hindutva, Dhirendra K Jha.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

Eighteen years ago, on February 10, 1999, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Yogi Adityanath and his armed supporters tried to capture a graveyard in Muslim-dominated Panchrukhiya village in Maharajganj district of Uttar Pradesh. But the police acted swiftly, and they had to flee.

On the way, however, they fired at a group of Samajwadi Party workers who had gathered on the main road close to the village for a routine demonstration against the then BJP government in the state. In the attack, at least four persons were injured. One of them, Head Constable Satyaprakash Yadav, who was the personal security guard of the Samajwadi Party leader leading the demonstration, Talat Aziz, later succumbed to bullet injuries.

A first information report filed by the police that same evening at the Kotwali thana in Maharajganj turned out to be the first in a series of such legal entries triggered by incidents involving Adityanath, directly or indirectly, in the years that followed. Many of these FIRs against Adityanath, now the chief minister of the recently formed BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, are still being investigated by the Crime Branch-Crime Investigation Department, the investigation and intelligence wing of the state police.

The FIR in the Panchrukhiya case names Adityanath and “24 other identified persons” for attempt to murder, rioting, carrying deadly weapons, defiling a place of worship, trespassing on a Muslim graveyard, and promoting enmity between two religious groups.
The case was significant partly because it was the first clear hint of the extent to which Adityanath was ready to go to manufacture a riot, and partly because the revelation came merely a year after he joined active politics, becoming a member of Parliament for the first time from the state’s Gorakhpur seat in 1998.
 

Riot record

For some time after he was named in the FIR, the Gorakhpur MP lay low. But once he formed his personal anti-minority outfit, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, in 2002, within weeks of the Godhra incident in Gujarat that year – when the death of 59 kar sevaks in a fire on the Sabarmati Express set off Hindu-Muslim riots that killed over 2,000 people in Gujarat – the outburst of communal riots became unusually frequent in Gorakhpur and its neighbourhood.

The region witnessed at least six major riots in the very first year since the group’s formation – at Mohan Mundera village in Kushinagar district, Nathua village in Gorakhpur district, and Turkmanpur locality in Gorakhpur city in June, at Narkataha village in Maharajganj in August, and at Bhedahi village in Maharajganj, and the Dhanghata locality of Sant Kabirnagar in September.

Most of these cases started off as criminal incidents that turned communal after Adityanath or other leaders of the Hindu Yuva Vahini jumped in. In all, between 2002 and 2007, when Adityanath was arrested and kept in lock-up, Gorakhpur and its neighbouring districts witnessed at least 22 major riots, most involving him or his henchmen.

These arrests, in fact, were the only time the police showed some spine in dealing with him and his outfit. The crackdown was in response to Hindu-Muslim riots that had erupted in and around Gorakhpur, caused primarily by a toxic campaign of communal politics by Adityanath and his group in the run-up to the Assembly elections in 2007. Two persons were killed, property worth crores was burnt, and the area remained under curfew for several days during that January-February period.

Adityanath and over a dozen leaders of the Hindu Yuva Vahini were arrested while they were marching towards the troubled areas of Gorakhpur on January 28, 2007, a day after he made an inflammatory speech aimed at turning a small criminal incident into a communal riot. The arrest was timed so as to prevent the group from carrying out its threat of burning the tazia – a replica of Imam Husain’s mausoleum in Iraq – that Muslim residents were to take out as part of a Muharram procession on January 29. Adityanath remained in lock-up till February 7, when he managed to get bail.

The arrest so unnerved Adityanath that on March 12, he broke down, his eyes welling up, on the floor of the Lok Sabha as he explained to Speaker Somnath Chatterjee what he called a “political conspiracy” to kill him.
 

Rabble rouser to chief minister

The shock apparently turned Adityanath wiser – or more political – as he refrained from personally leading mobs and participating in attacks on Muslims in the manner he used to earlier. He has since restricted himself to making inflammatory speeches and participating in token action, while letting his Hindu Yuva Vahini do the rest.

Most of the FIRs against him from that time are still alive, though their fate has become uncertain now that Adityanath has assumed power in the state. From the chief minister’s office, he can do a modest amount of good, and he can also do immense harm.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has quietly emerged to play a more public role in Uttar Pradesh, taking most major decisions for its political outfit, the Bharatiya Janata Party, as the state prepares for Assembly elections to be held in seven phases between February 11 and March 8.

RSS joint general secretary (Sah Sarkaryavah) Dattatreya Hosabale, who shifted base from Patna to Lucknow in March, has virtually become the central figure in the BJP’s state unit, said people familiar with the situation. His authority has outstripped that of the party’s office-bearers, led by the BJP’s Uttar Pradesh president, Keshav Prasad Maurya, these people say.

Hosabale’s core team consists of state general secretary in-charge of organisation, Sunil Bansal, and the party’s six regional organisation secretaries in Uttar Pradesh. In the BJP, just as in other affiliates of the RSS, organisation secretaries are key office-bearers who are laterally transferred from the parent body – the RSS.

The organisation secretaries in question are Om Prakash Shrivastav (Kanpur Kshetra), Chandrashekhar (Paschim Kshetra), Bhawani Singh (Brij Kshetra), Braj Bahadur (Avadh Kshetra), Shiv Kumar Pathak (Goraksha Kshetra) and Ratnakar (Kashi Kshetra).

Total control

Together with these officials, Hosabale is playing the main role in almost every aspect of election management – from identifying candidates to managing booths and from conducting ground-level surveys to preparing strategies to mobilise voters in the state, say people familiar with the situation.

“Except for Assembly constituencies in the Varanasi parliamentary seat, Hosabale and his team of pracharaks [RSS full-time workers] have played a key role in the selection of candidates in almost all other seats in UP,” said a senior BJP leader, who is a member in the party’s state election committee, which was constituted in the last week of December.

The list of candidates prepared by Hosabale and his team was discussed and finalised at a meeting of party’s state election committee on Tuesday. “The list has two to three candidates for each seat in UP barring those in the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency,” said the member of the BJP’s state election committee.

Varanasi, which is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency, has five Assembly seats. The BJP has MLAs in Varanasi North, Varanasi South and Varanasi Cantonment, while the Rohaniya and Sevapuri seats are represented by the Samajwadi Party.

BJP president Amit Shah has already told some senior leaders that the final list of candidates will be prepared from among the names suggested by the state election committee, said people familiar with the situation. However, candidates for the five Assembly seats in Varanasi will be chosen directly by the Prime Minister’s office.

Besides the Dattatreya-led core group, the RSS has asked several of its functionaries to assist with the party’s election management process.

To gear up the entire Sangh Parivar to work as a massive election machine, senior RSS functionaries, including Dattatreya, recently completed a series of regional coordination meetings with allied outfits such as the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Jagaran Manch and Seva Bharati (a conglomeration of NGOs).
 

Working in tandem

The RSS exercises considerable control over the BJP. Not only does it transfer pracharaks laterally to the party and secure key positions for them in the saffron outfit’s organisational structure, it also keeps the BJP overwhelmingly dependent on its cadres. Though leaders of the BJP and the RSS often insist that the latter provides suggestions rather than directives, the truth is that the saffron party does not have much leeway when it comes to taking major decisions on issues related to organisational matters and policies.

Even though the RSS is said to work in tandem with the BJP at the time of elections, the two bodies have existed separately. It is because of this separation that there have been occasions when the BJP has acted independently of the RSS.
However, the new initiative of the RSS in Uttar Pradesh is unusual because this is the first time that the RSS has come out to play not a supplementary but the central role. This, some observers say, has made meaningless the party recognised by the Election Commission of India.

Courtesy: Scroll.in

The initial groundswell of support in Uttar Pradesh for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to invalidate high-denomination notes seems to be on the wane, threatening the prospects of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state elections next year. This is the feedback that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the party’s ideological parent, has gathered through its meetings in the state.

Amid growing disquiet among members of the Sangh Parivar over the continuing distress caused by the withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, the RSS, in a massive exercise, is tapping into local units of the saffron body and its affiliates to gauge the situation on the ground.

Indications of the fading enthusiasm in Uttar Pradesh came in the very first meeting that RSS joint general secretaries Dattatreya Hosabale and Krishna Gopal held with leaders of the saffron outfit and its affiliates in eastern Uttar Pradesh, including the BJP and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The two-day discussion, which concluded on Tuesday, was held in Varanasi, Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency.

“The meeting was attended by leaders of Goraksha Prant and Kashi Prant of the Sangh [divisions of the organisation in eastern Uttar Pradesh],” said a senior RSS office bearer present at the discussions. “The objective of the meeting was as much to ensure active support of various wings of the RSS for the BJP in forthcoming Assembly election as to obtain feedback with regard to the popular mood on demonetisation.”

The RSS official said that most leaders who attended the Varanasi meeting were of the view that popular sentiment is fast turning against the demonetisation. “The participants also told Dattatreyaji and Krishna Gopalji that the miseries of common masses, if not addressed on urgent basis, would turn into anger against the BJP in the election,” he added.
 

Eye on polls

For local administrative purposes, the RSS has divided the country into various prants, or states, which do not necessarily correspond with India’s states. The state of Uttar Pradesh, for instance, is divided into six prants: Goraksha Prant, Kashi Prant, Braj Prant, Avadha Prant, Kanpur Prant and Meerut Prant. RSS officials said that similar meetings will be held over the next few days in the other prants.

The RSS will hold more discussions across the country over the next few days, but their focus will be on the states going to polls early next year – Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur and most crucially, Uttar Pradesh.

As reports of disruption and hardship continue more than a month after demonetisation was implemented, many RSS-linked organisations that had initially supported the move are now concerned.

For instance, Baij Nath Rai, the president of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, an RSS-affiliated trade union, told the Telegraph that the number of jobs lost were higher than those created since Modi became prime minister and that the demonetistion had worsened the situation.
“Under the new government, 1 lakh 35 thousand job opportunities have been created so far but 20 lakh people have lost their jobs,” he said. “We have reports of job losses in the unorganised sector because of demonetisation, but how deep the impact is has to be ascertained.”

The same article also quoted officials from the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, RSS’ economic wing and the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, a farmers’ body linked to the saffron outfit who said that going cashless – which the Modi government has been aggressively been pushing for since demonetisation – is not feasible in India yet.

There are also reports of growing disquiet among the BJP MPs over the distress of street vendors, migrant labourers and small traders as a result of the shortage of cash.

RSS officials said that the inputs gathered through such meetings with local units will form the basis of the BJP’s election strategy in poll-bound states.

Courtesy: Scroll.in
 

For a snapshot of how the all-male Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has kept its women’s wing relegated to a domestic role and away from all issues of gender justice, visit the three-day training camp of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, which was inaugurated by the organisation’s chief, Mohan Bhagwat, at Chhatarpur in Delhi on Friday.

In his speech, Bhagwat made no mention of gender justice or self-choice for women, instead stressing on “matri shakti”, or woman power, and “kutumb prabodhan”, or the awakening of family values – showing that the women’s group has not been allowed to change even a bit by its male counterpart since its formation eight decades ago in 1936.

“Till India’s matri shakti turns active and comes forward, India will not be able to achieve its potential and pristine glory and act as a guiding force to the world,” Bhagwat told hundreds of sevikas, as the members are called, from across the country.
In his hour-long speech, the RSS chief made authoritative pronouncements on the woman’s central role of imparting sanskar (values) to children and, thereby, strengthening society and the nation. “Our kutumb vyavastha [family system] has caught the attention of the world,” he said.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at the Rashtra Sevika Samiti training camp in Delhi on Friday.

This was the ideological position in 1936 too when Lakshmibai Kelkar set up the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, at the behest of RSS founder Dr KB Hedgewar. The group was, in fact, the first branch of the RSS, which now heads a parivar of members operating in different civil and political spheres.

Initially, Kelkar was not in favour of forming a separate front for women. She approached Hedgewar with a request to open the all-male RSS shakhas (branches) to women members. The RSS chief, however, was against this idea of joint shakhas, and as a compromise helped Kelkar set up the Rashtra Sevika Samiti.

But since the RSS has always focused on the mobilisation of chauvinistic Hindu men and hardly ever attached any importance to formal organisational work by women, the group led a low-priority existence and worked on the basis of its male counterpart’s ideology.
 

Patriarchal belief

This conformist character that the group has sought to deepen all these decades becomes obvious the moment one talks to its office-bearers.

On November 9, at a press conference called to announce the training camp, Rashtra Sevika Samiti general secretary Seetha Annadanam vociferously defended the exclusion of women from RSS shakhas. “Our culture does not permit joint shakhas for men and women,” she said. “That is why we have separate shakhas for them.”

Annadanam, in fact, appeared so tied to patriarchal family interests that, while replying to another question, she stood against allowing Hindu women a share in the ancestral property of their parents. “There should be a balance between women’s rights and our traditions, and this should be done on the basis of shastras,” she said. “Otherwise, it would split our families and pit brothers against sisters.”

She made an equally controversial statement in an interview to the Indian Express, published earlier in the day. “There is nothing called marital rape,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “Marriage is a sacred bond. Coexistence should lead to bliss. If we are able to understand the concept of this bliss, then everything runs smooth.”

It is, therefore, no surprise that the Rashtra Sevika Samiti within the RSS framework of sanskar, is largely restricted to the Sangh’s traditional base of Maharashtra and nearby areas. Eight decades after it was founded, it continues to hold to the formulations of former RSS leader MS Golwalkar, as mentioned in his book Bunch of Thoughts, that women are predominantly mothers who should rear their children.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

Not everyone in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet differs with Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s view that men associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh were responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

Like Rahul Gandhi, prominent Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar has also blamed men linked to the RSS, not once but at least twice, for the murder of the Mahatma.

In two of his books – India: The Siege Within (Penguin Books, 1985) and Nehru: The Making of India (Viking, 1988) – Akbar has taken a position that is no different from the one that has led the RSS, the BJP’s ideological parent, to file a case of criminal defamation against Rahul Gandhi.
 

Telling excerpts

On page 307 of India: The Siege Within, journalist-turned-politician Akbar explains Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel’s decision to ban the RSS in the aftermath of the murder of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948. He writes: “The RSS suffered a set-back in 1948; even Sardar Patel could not overlook a crime it had inspired – the assassination of the Mahatma.”

On the previous page, Akbar talks of the deep hatred the RSS had for Gandhi: “The RSS kept away from the Independence struggle because it had only contempt and hatred for the man leading it: Gandhi. In fact, some people have suspected the RSS of helping the British against Gandhi.”

In Nehru: The Making of India, Akbar refers to a secret meeting in Pune on January 12, 1948 – the day Gandhi announced he would sit on yet another fast unto death, the last of his exercises using moral force to make his point, this time to bring back sanity in a country brutalised by Partition and widespread communal riots. Akbar writes:

“That same day, four men met in Pune: Madanlal Pahwa, aged twenty, a refugee from Punjab whose horoscope said he would be famous one day throughout India; Vishnu Karkare, thirty-seven, owner of the run-down Deccan Guest House and leader of the local RSS; Narayan Apte, thirty-four, handsome, flashy, charming, the well-groomed chairman of Hindu Rashtra [a right-wing newspaper]; and Nathuram Godse, thirty-seven, homosexual, fanatic, ascetic (addicted only to coffee), follower of Veer Savarkar, editor of Hindu Rashtra and a tailor by craft. Their decision: to kill Gandhi.”
 

A headache for the RSS?

About a week later, on January 20, the first attempt to kill Gandhi was made. It failed, however, as Pahwa accidentally ignited the guncotton slab about 75 feet away from the spot where the Mahatma was addressing a prayer meeting. The second attempt was executed with precision 10 days later when Godse pumped bullets in Gandhi’s chest, killing him instantly.

After the trial, Godse and Apte were hanged on November 15, 1949.

Vishnu Karkare, whom Akbar describes as “leader of the local RSS” in Pune, turned out to be one of the key conspirators in the assassination. Together with Pahwa and Gopal Godse (the younger brother of Nathuram Godse), he was sentenced to life.

On its part, the RSS never owned up to Karkare, maintaining constantly that he as well as Godse, Apte and Pahwa were associated with the All India Hindu Mahasabha, which was headed by Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar.

The conspiracy to kill Gandhi could not remain hidden for long even though the trial, held immediately after the assassination, failed to uncover its extent. If Karkare – a key conspirator – was indeed a “leader of the local RSS”, as claimed by Akbar, the Sangh may well be in for a shock when the trial in its defamation case against Rahul Gandhi starts on November 16.

Below are the full excerpts from the books from the portions relating to Gandhi's assassination.
From India: The Siege Within, pages 306-7:

“The RSS anger was well-focused: the greatest danger to Hindu nationalism came from the ‘snakes’, Hedgewar’s terms for the Muslims. An official publication of the RSS, Sri Guruji, the Man and his Mission, explains: ‘It became evident that Hindus were the nation in Bharat and that Hindutva was Rashtriyatva [that is, ‘Hinduism’ was ‘nationalism’; incidentally, Jinnah agreed that Hindus were a separate nation]… The agony of the great soul [of Hedgewar] expressed itself in the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. With four friends he started the day-to-day programme of the RSS. The great day was the auspicious Vijay Dashami day of 1925.’

The five friends who started the RSS were Dr BS Moonje, DR LV Paranjpe, Dr Tholkar, Babarao Savarkar and Dr Hedgewar himself. There was an initial hitch about the name. In 1921 the Congress had begun an organisation by a similar name; it had become defunct, but the idea of any shadow of the hated Congress falling on this new, pure effort was anathema. ‘Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh’ was suggested as an alternative, but Hedgewar insisted on the concept of nationalism being included in the title, and so the RSS it was. Inevitably the RSS first acquired a public reputation as the ‘saviour’ of the Hindus after its role in the Hindu – Muslim riots in Nagpur, in September 1927.

The RSS kept away from the independence struggle because it had only contempt and hatred for the man leading it: Gandhi. In fact, some people have suspected the RSS of helping the British against Gandhi. But the RSS came into its own during the communal riots. By 1945 it had 10,000 cadres and was rich enough to build its headquarters, the Hedgewar Bhawawn, in less than a year. In the madness of the pre-partition phase there was even an RSS wing within the highest echelons of government, in the Imperial Civil Service, most of whose Indian recruits were Oxbridge graduates. The RSS actually believed that power was within its grasp, not through conventional democracy, but through its control of the ruling system. Levers, not numbers, were its target. And the RSS could not believe that the Brits would actually surrender power to the khadi-clad Congressmen. Des Raj Goyal, an ex-RSS man, recalls in his informative book RSS (Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi) that he was present at a cadre meeting addressed by Hedgewar’s successor, Guru Golwalkar. When asked what would be the RSS role after the British left India, Golwalkar replied with an ironic laugh. ‘Do you believe that the British will quit? The nincompoops into whose hands they are giving the reins of government will not be able to hold on even for two months.’

In 1939, the RSS formally introduced a Sanskrit prayer for its members:

O affectionate Motherland I bow to you eternally
O land of the Hindus you have reared in comfort
O sacred, good land, I dedicate my being to you
I bow before you again and again
Mighty God, we the integral members of the Hindu Rashtra salute you reverently
Before a member is admitted to the sacred fold of the RSS he must take this oath: ‘In the name of the omnipotent God and my forefathers I solemnly swear that I am becoming a member of the RSS to promote the Hindu religion, Hindu society and Hindu culture and thereby achieve the true greatness of the country of Bharat. I shall do the work of the Sangh honestly, without thought of gain, with my body, mind and soul, and never break this oath all my life. Glory to Mother Bharat.’
The RSS suffered a set-back in 1948; even Sardar Patel could not overlook a crime it had inspired – the assassination of the Mahatma. Home Minister Sardar Patel banned the RSS as ‘in practice members of the RSS have not adhered to their professed ideals. The objectionable and even harmful activities of the Sangh have however continued unabated and the cult of violence sponsored and inspired by the activities of the Sangh has claimed many victims. The latest and most precious to fall was Gandhiji himself.’ 

From Nehru: The Making of India, page 428:

"Nehru worked without pause, sleeping five or less hours each night. Indira bravely entered Muslim areas where no Hindus ventured, alone or with Dr Sushila Nayar, to organize relief. But outside Gandhi’s residence, each day RSS-inspired groups gathered to chant hostile slogans: ‘Gandhi murdabad’ (‘Death to Gandhi’). The weeks passed and other enormous problems seized the first government of free India. Gandhi concentrated on his one-point mission – to bring peace. But for once the Mahatma’s crusade did not seem to be working. The circulation of the Urdu edition of his paper, The Harijan, aimed at the Punjabi Hindu as much as the Urdu-speaking Muslim, had dwindled to a point where he wanted to stop it. On 12 January he told a friend [quoted in Tendulkar, Vol 8]: ‘We are steadily losing hold on Delhi. If it goes, India goes, and with that goes the last hope of world peace.’ He had made up his mind to resort once more to a saint’s blackmail: do or die. A few hours before his prayer-meeting on 12 January 1948 he met Nehru and Patel but gave them no inkling of what he wanted to do. He disclosed his intentions at his prayer-meeting that evening; as in Calcutta, he would fast, and to his death, unless brother stopped killing brother. ‘No man, if he is pure, has anything more precious to give than his life,’ he said. Today he had no answer to give to his Muslim friends. ‘My impotence is gnawing at me of late. It will go immediately if the fast is undertaken.’

That same day, four men met in Pune, Madanlal Pahwa, aged twenty, a refugee from Punjab whose horoscope said he would be famous one day throughout India; Vishnu Karkare, thirty-seven, owner of the run-down Deccan Guest House and leader of the local RSS; Narayan Apte, thirty-four, handsome flashy, charming, the well-groomed chairman of Hindu Rashtra; and Nathuram Godse, thirty-seven, homosexual, fanatic, ascetic (addicted only to coffee), follower of Veer Savarkar, editor of Hindu Rashtra and a tailor by craft. Their decision: to kill Gandhi.”

This article was first published on Scroll.in