Ahead of Pranab Mukherjee’s impending speech at Nagpur, here’s how the Sangh and its Pracharaks have Twisted Words of National Icons in the Past
India’s former President, Pranab Mukherjee will address Sangh workers on nationalism on June 7 and will also be the chief guest at the valedictory session of the ‘Tritiya Varsh Varg’ or the Third Year Course tomorrow. So, at Nagpur, the RSS is hosting former president Pranab Mukherjee in Nagpur for two days starting Wednesday.
All eyes are on the words that will be exchanged, concerns are palpable. Mukherjee has also been quoted saying that he will hold his own and say whatever he wants to say. RSS however, has a documented history of twisting statements of iconic figures, thereafter using them for legitimisation of their outfit. A fact check of how the RSS both pushes their agenda and propaganda is revealing. Now, as this nearly 100 year old organisation, that drew inspiration from Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, prepares to co-opt another political heavy-weight, it’s crucial to take a look at these false claims.
Far greater men than India’s former president, Pranab Mukherjee have been sought to be appropriated by the sangh. Gandhi and Jayprakash Narayan top the list while Madhu Limaye remained the RSS’ most trenchant critique. Ambedkar is however the most crucial for capturing votes, though ideologically to colour Babasaheb is the most difficult.
First it was Mahatma Gandhi Described a ‘Kattar Sanatani Hindu’ and ‘supporter’ (sic) of RSS
Ever since Mahatma Gandhi visited the RSS camp in the 1930’s, his observations and statements have been misused by RSS and others.Not just Mohan Bhagwat who has claimed that Gandhi was a ‘Kattar Sanatani Hindu’ but even Vice President Venkaiah Naidu recently said that Gandhi acknowledged RSS’ positive values.
Using only part of the truth is a time-tested technique of the Sangh. So, a keen adherent of the Shakha’s protocol, Naidu selectively quoted Gandhi in 1934, “When I visited the RSS camp, I was very much surprised by your discipline and absence of untouchability.” Naidu added his two bits to the narrative: he said Gandhi found that volunteers were living and eating together in the camp without bothering about each other’s caste.
Conveniently, Gandhi’s observations on the fascist overtones of the organisation were overlooked. It was the man close to Gandhiji, his personal secretary Pyarelal who gives us the complete picture. In his book, ‘Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase’, Pyarelal has documented how Gandhi he was not at all appreciative of the RSS ideology and activities as an organisation. Narrating an incident following partition of the country, Pyarelal said that many people came to Mahatma Gandhi praising the “efficiency, discipline, courage and capacity for hard work shown by RSS cadres at Wagah border, a major transit camp for Punjab refugees”. But, Mahatma Gandhi silenced them saying, “Don’t forget, even so had Hitler’s Nazis and Fascists under Mussolini,” a report stated.
It also reproduced a letter by Jawaharlal Nehru written to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on October 27, 1948. He wrote, “I remember Bapu telling me after his first meeting with MS Golwalkar (the then RSS chief) that he was partly impressed by him but at the same time did not trust him. After his second or third meeting he expressed a very strong opinion against Golwalkar and the RSS and said that it was impossible to rely upon their word.”
Gandhi has inadvertently become a name that can tossed around for public gains while conveniently letting his life’s work, values and philosophy be side-lined. People have gone so far as to claim the proverbial copyrights to his life as this report suggested.
Jayprakash Narayan on the RSS
JP is often ‘blamed’ for giving legitimacy to the sangh parivar and its then political outfit, the Jan Sangh during the Emergency and thereafter between 1975 and 1978.
Here’s a read from JP’s writings and speeches as also the work of AK Subbaiah from Karnataka, once a staunch RSS man, who left the organisation after he witnessed close hand, its degenerative politics.
“ The anti-emergency movement is often accused of giving legitimacy to the RSS. While RSS men (and some women) put behind bars definitely emerged as ‘heroes’, Lokanayak Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) had a clear position on majoritarian communalism. Both his address to a national conference against communalism in 1968, and when he addressed RSS workers at a camp in 1977 make his positions on majoritarian communalism and cow slaughter abundantly clear
Words of Jayaparaksh Narayan:
“Although almost every religious community had its own brand of communalism, Hindu communalism was more pernicious than the others because Hindu communalism can easily masquerade as Indian nationalism and denounce all opposition to it as being anti-national”.
On the RSS
“Some like the RSS might do it openly by identifying the Indian nation with Hindu Rashtra, others might do it more subtly,” he said. “But it every case, such identification is pregnant with national disintegration, because members of other communities can never accept the position of second class citizens. Such a situation, therefore, has in it the seeds of perpetual conflict and ultimate disruption.”
India is not Hindu : JP
“..those who attempt to equate India with Hindus and Indian history with Hindu history are only detracting from the greatness of India and the glory of Indian history and civilization. Such person, paradoxical though this may seem, are in reality the enemies of Hinduism itself and the Hindus. Not only do they degrade the noble religion and destroy its catholicity and spirit of tolerance and harmony, but they also weaken and sunder the fabric of the nation, of which Hindus form such a vast majority.”
On the Jana Sangh, JP said,
“The secular protestations of the Jana Sangh will never be taken seriously unless it cuts the bonds which tie it so firmly to the RSS machine. Nor can the RSS be treated as a cultural organization so long as it remains the mentor and effective manipulator of a political party.”
(Speech, originally delivered in Hindi at the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh Training Camp in Patna on November 3, 1977.)
Ambedkar as the ‘Hindu Nationalist’
Not just Gandhi, but Ambedkar is another leader and icon who is sought to be mis-quoted and misappropriated. Several times the Sangh Parivar has tried to appropriate Babasaheb’s legacy. The Sangh misinterprets history and tries to tell Dalits that even though Babasaheb converted to Buddhism, he was a still a true Hindu and believed in the values of Hinduism. To this end, it even publishes booklets regularly and has them distributed among scores of people.
Ambedkar’s profile is included not only in the pantheon of nationalist leaders honoured by the RSS in its leaflets and pamphlets, but also features prominently in a poster on Hinduism’s historic heroes that has been issued by the Sangh. Indeed, some Dalit scholars feel, sardonically of course, that the day is not far when Ambedkar will be anointed as the 11th avatar of Vishnu.
“There cannot be bigger contrast between the ideology of Ambedkar and RSS. Ambedkar was critical of Brahaminical Hinduism, was for Indian Nationalism, Secularism and social justice while the RSS ideology is based on two major pillars. One is the Brahmanic Hinduism and second is the concept of Hindu nationalism, Hindu Rashtra,” says Ram Punyani, however.
More succinctly, journalist and scholar Dilip Mandal says, “Why are Ambedkar himself and the Ambedkarite movement a Catch 22 for the RSS and the Sangh Parivar ? Because, it has always faltered in its dealings with the issue of Caste. The centrality of caste in the democratic discourse of Ambedkarite stream of thought is a stumbling block for the avowed objective of the RSS in establishing upper caste Brahamanic hegemony in the country. In the Anhilation of Caste, Ambedkar actually advocates the demolishing of certain Hindu religious texts to enable Hindus to be really free. His writings are therefore extremely problematic for any organisation that seeks to re-affirm or consolidate caste hegemony.
The Sangh parivar moves are part of the attempts to woo the Dalit vote bank ahead of the 2019 general elections.
Selective Amnesia
However keen and desperate these bids are to appropriate political icons however, critics of the Sangh have been many. Madhu Limaye, a renowned socialist leader, wrote this essay about the RSS, its philosophy and actions in the Hindi weekly, Ravivar, in 1979 which is relevant even today.
RSS consistently contradicts itself by propagating both derision and acceptance of the icons it supposedly co-opts. With its karyakarta’s denouncing Mahatma Gandhi as the father of the nation, completely missing or deliberately ignoring the points that Ambedkar’s literature makes, it’s obvious that their statements are laced with select statements that only promote their own hateful agenda. While secretly supporting Congress in the past to being secretly unhappy with PM Modi being the ‘be all end all’ of BJP’s politics in the present, it seems that RSS has just one aim: to be in the winning team.
Pranab Mukherjee will give a 30-minute speech during the concluding ceremony on June 7 at 6.30 p.m. It’ll be wise to observe how those words are mis-interpreted by RSS in the years to come.