Tag RSS

When the RSS is indifferent to its media image – Koenraad Elst

VOI

RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat

This article was first published in Pragyata in 2017 and some of its observations are dated. However, the subject matter is still of interest to Hindus and the article is reposted here – Editor

On Friday  Nov. 3, 2017, the Flemish broadcaster VRT Canvas, in its programme Terzake (“To the point”), presented a Dutch documentary from the series De Westerlingen (“The Westerners”), in which young Dutchmen meet youngsters in countries across the world to explore the differences in culture. In the past, the impression was that all cultural differences were on the way out because the non-Westerners were simply westernising. Now, it has become clear that some differences are here to stay, and that even in non-Muslim countries, there is a tough resistance against too much westernisation.

This time around, we were taken to India where a Dutch youngster called Nicolaas was meeting young Hindu nationalists. According to the announcement on the TV station’s website: “In India extremist associations acquire ever more influence. Nicolaas Veul meets activist young Hindu nationalists in the holy city of Allahabad. He goes around with Divya, Ritesh and Vikrant. They fight for a Hindu India, and against influences from outside.”

Hindu-baiting

At the outset, in the car on the way to an event of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha (National Volunteer Corps, RSS), he was quickly briefed by an Indian secularist about the Hindu nationalists. These were said to be “increasingly powerful”, to be issuing for use in schools “textbooks rewritten in a pro-Hindu sense”, and to be “openly linked with the Nazis”.

This was a nice summary of the power equation in the reporting on India worldwide and in all the different segments of the media: all press correspondents in and “experts” on India look at Indian society and especially the communal conflict through the glasses that a handful of secularists have put on their noses, reproducing the latter’s anti-Hindu bias and disinformation. For the average viewer, every topic in the ensuing meetings came under the cloud of these initial “revelations”, even though nothing in the RSS performance, effectively filmed, confirmed or illustrated any of them.

Since the 1980s, I have never heard the term “Hindu nationalists” without the addition that they are “emerging” or “increasingly powerful”. They should have been all-powerful by now. The only (partial) exception was the few years after the 2009 elections when the BJP had been defeated even worse than in 2004, so that supporters of the socialist-casteist parties, including partisan experts like Christophe Jaffrelot, concluded that Hindu nationalism was on the way out. However, instead of building on the existing power equation to push Hindutva deeper into oblivion, the secularist Congress wasted its chance because it got too wrapped up in driving corruption to unprecedented levels, too much for the electorate to stomach. Once the next electoral campaign got underway, even the secularists soon conceded that a BJP victory was becoming inevitable.

However, contrary to what the observers all think or say, the present BJP government under Narendra Modi, while numerically strong, is ideologically extremely weak. It is not in any way Hinduising or “saffronising” the polity or the education system. It is continuing the Congressite-Leftist anti-Hindu policies mandated by the Constitution, or at best looking the other way but not changing the Constitution to put a definitive stop to such policies. Thus, subsidised schools can be Christian or Muslim, but not Hindu: in the latter case, either they get taken over by the state and secularised, or at best, they have to do without subsidies. Temples are nationalised and their income channelled to non-Hindu purposes, a treatment against which the law protects churches and mosques. And this is no less the case in BJP-ruled states, where the Government could have chosen not to avail of the opportunities given to it by the Constitution.

Nowhere in this documentary would you pick up any hint to the main communal reality in India: the anti-majority discrimination. It is admittedly hard to explain to outsiders, and therefore easy to conceal or deny, but Hindus are indeed second-class citizens in their native country. I am aware that right now, many non-Indian readers will refuse to believe me, but it is really like that. Anywhere is the world you can download the text of the Indian Constitution, so please verify for yourself, starting with Article 25-30.

So, what did you get to see? Many people in the city were on the streets converging on an open ground where a meeting of a local RSS unit (shakha, branch) with physical and ideological training was about to take place. They were wearing (or in the case of newcomers, buying) the RSS outfit with white shirt and black cap and brown trousers. It was the new uniform, for till recently the brown trousers would have been khaki shorts, even more a colonial style. Their military style was highlighted, though everyone could see for himself that all the “weapons training” they did was with sticks, rather harmless in the age of the Kalashnikov. Naturally, there was no hint that an endless series of murders of RSS men has been committed by Kerala Communists, Khalistanis in Panjab, and others. The RSS youngsters also did not bring it up, or if they did, that part was not shown. The persistent suggestion was that they were the perpetrators of violence, not its victims, though no such violence was actually shown.

When interviewing these RSS activists, Nicolaas repeatedly remarked that this or that guy was actually impeccably friendly and quite nice. Not at all how we would picture the fascists announced initially by the secularist. Then what was wrong with them?

St. Valentine’s Day

The real topic of this documentary series was the culture clash and the native resistance against westernization. And indeed, these young people refused to absorb the flood of westernising influences. One example of a pernicious influence was Valentine’s Day, taken straight from the existing western commercial pop culture. More ideologised people denounce it also as a “Christian” holiday. Valentine was a Roman Catholic priest who performed tabooed weddings, and when martyred and sainted, the Church gave him a day in the Saints’ Calendar, 14 February, coinciding with the pre-Christian fertility feast presided over by the goddess Juno Februata (“clean, purifying”) of 13-15 February. It took a thousand years, to the age of the troubadours and courtly love, before he graduated to patron-saint of romanticism.

As such, commerce catapulted him to the fore, and made the saint’s day into an occasion pious Christians would frown upon: the feast of sentimentalism and getting carried away with infatuation. Since the late 18th century, there is a whole literature, and later movies, about youngsters following their hearts and overcoming the resistance of their unfeeling narrow-minded parents. This is now re-enacted in India, where commerce and the secularist-promoted fondness of all things western is spreading the highly artificial celebration of Valentine’s Day. This has become the symbol of western decadence, in which the pursuit of emotional kicks takes precedence over long-term institution building, marriage, and the resulting children’s well-being. Nicolaas’s Indian interlocutor wants to spare his country the breakdown of family life that has come to characterise the modern West.

But in the documentary, in the interview with the RSS activist, we only see a humourless spoil-sport’s jaundiced rant against a day of innocent fun. The Dutch lad just doesn’t see that there is another side to it, and that the Hindu critique of Valentine has its legitimacy. This RSS fellow was voicing a very positive viewpoint, one in favour of the precious fabric of traditional social values, of the time-tested mos maiorum (ancestral custom), which is being undermined by modernist influences symbolised by Valentine’s Day. Possibly it is not good enough to overrule modernisation, but that remains to be seen, and the traditionalist view deserves a proper hearing.

In the streets, the Dutch newcomer to India saw westernisation all over the place. Western fashion, neon lights, shopping malls, Kentucky Fried Chicken, young couples kissing in public. Even an RSS spokesman admitted he sometimes goes to the McDonald’s. So, the final impression that the viewers will take home is that, in India at least, westernisation is unstoppable. It is not uncontested, true, but the nativists, though not convincingly put down as “fascists” anymore, are not very competent and are at any rate unable to stop it.

Communication

But then, come to think of it, the RSS fellow didn’t have the required communication skills to overturn an anti-Hindu bias instilled in the western public for decades. And by “anti-Hindu”, I do not mean the kind of grim animus seen in the missionaries or the secularists, but a background conditioning: Nicolaas has no quarrel with the Hindus as such, and he is probably not even aware of his implicit anti-Hindu bias, but like most Westerners with an interest in India, he has innocently absorbed the partisan view of India fostered by the really hostile people.

It is unrealistic to expect this one fleeting television conversation to change a bias built up over decades. Still, the RSS spokesman could have defended his position better. On the other hand, his peaceful and civilised but weak argumentation was a logical illustration of a deliberate policy pursued since the 1920s. It was in line with the old RSS’s boy-scout mentality of disdain for all communication (“do well and don’t look back”). Founder K.B. Hedgewar, who had started out as a member of a revolutionary wing of the Freedom Movement, with secretive and purely oral communication to avoid discovery by the police, installed in his new organisation a hostility to any concern for outside approval, and to the media and their narrative. A consequence today is that RSS spokesmen are gravely lacking in communication skills. On average, they have a far better case than their clumsy performance in interviews and TV debates would suggest.

Twice the RSS refused a media presence. I was somewhat surprised to see this. In the early nineties, when I went around to RSS/BJP centres to interview Hindu nationalist leaders, there was still plenty of distrust for outsiders, and communication was largely excluded. I knew then that I was exceptionally privileged to be allowed access, as a result of my lone pro-Hindu conclusions in my book on the Ayodhya temple/mosque conflict. But then private TV stations conquered India, gaining entry in the remotest villages, and finally the internet made communication unavoidable, even for the RSS. I had thought that this seclusion had by now become a thing of the past, but the RSS appears to have retained some of it.

The result is that RSS spokesmen, while not at all the “fascists” of secularist mythology, come across as village bumpkins. In this case, an interviewed RSS man suffered from a lack of serious historical knowledge, or of a chauvinist type of gullibility. He explained that India has invented plastic surgery and, as proven by the Ramayana, the air plane. This story has two related drawbacks: as far as evidence can tell, it is not true; and it is bad publicity, for while it may make a handful of gullible folk admire Hindu culture, it turns Hinduism into a superstitious laughing-stock for many more. When the Dutchman brought up homosexuality, the RSS man said: “That doesn’t exist in our country.” Just like it didn’t exist in the Soviet Union—“a symptom of bourgeois decadence”—nor in Africa according to Robert Mugabe—“they may be gay in America, but they will be sad people in Zimbabwe”. Again, even those Westerners who condemn odd sexual behaviour will laugh at these clumsy attempts to make it stop at your country’s border. This way the RSS tendency is particularly weak in the prime precondition for communication, viz. seeing things also through the eyes of your interlocutor.

Grim

Today, the image of Hinduism is less grim than when Hindu Nationalism realistically coveted power or for the first time came to power in the 1990s. One reason is reality: all the grim doomsday predictions about the Hindu nationalists “throwing all Muslims into the Indian Ocean” and “turning the clock back regarding Dalit emancipation”, failed to come true. Recently, Narendra Modi has conducted a very successful foreign policy, and the Western powers can only dream of the economic growth figures India takes for granted. Less importantly but tellingly, the Hindu parents are making progress in the California textbook affair, where some negative portrayals of Hindu culture will be amended, contrasting with the total defeat inflicted on the Hindus in 2006. The anti-Hindu lobby in American academe, largely consisting of NRIs and Indologists, has lost considerable steam.

Postscript

The same impression could be had from Sona Datta‘s documentary about Hindu art and temple architecture, broadcast a few days later. Over-all quite informative as well as full of awe for Hindu brilliance, it nonetheless started out with familiar secularist lies about pluralist Moghuls who “built their magnificent mosques next to Hindu temples” and presided over a peaceful and tolerant empire “when Europe was ravaged by wars of religion”. But unlike in the recent past, this propaganda was not that obtrusive. – Pragyata, 15 November 2017

› Dr. Koenraad Elst is a Belgium author, linguist and historian.

Hindus protest celebration of St. Valentines's Day.

The RSS Century – Makarand R. Paranjape

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Mohan Bhagwat and Narendra Modi with Hedgewar memorial at RSS headquarters in Nagpur.

The RSS set its sights on nation-building through cultural and political mobilisation. Its ideology emphasises a unified Hindu identity as the bedrock of Indian nationhood, a stance that has both inspired millions and provoked fierce opposition. – Prof. Makarand R. Paranjape

In the brouhaha over the ‘impossible’ retirement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the somewhat more probable demission of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) head Mohan Bhagwat, might we be forgetting an even more important milestone?

True that both Modi and Bhagwat will turn 75 in a few weeks, September 17 and September 11, respectively. Seventy-five, we needn’t remind ourselves, is the age at which leaders of the Sangh Parivar are expected to retreat gracefully both from public office and active duty, giving way to younger, even if not more capable, talent.

The prospects of Modi hanging up his boots, so to speak, seem not just unlikely, but remote. Despite his much-vaunted ‘almost sannyasi’ image as India’s most powerful renouncer. From all reports, not only does the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) need him, but he, too, has sent several signals to the effect that his work is far from done.

What about Bhagwat? Less implausible than Modi, but who can tell? RSS sarsanghchalaks lead by example. They are not politicians, though, almost as an occupational hazard, so embroiled in politics. Instead, a sarsanghchalak is supposed to embody the highest values, not only of the Sangh but of Sanatana Dharma itself.

My own contact with Mohan Bhagwat has convinced me that both his company and his conversation are spiritually elevating. At a crucial moment in my career, he suggested, quite simply and softly, that sticking to one’s own highest intention and integrity were far more valuable, in the long run, than ”playing the game”. A true intellectual, he remarked in passing, should never seek position or preferment: “Vat rahat nahi,” he said in Marathi. Which means, you lose respect.

Yes, we, in India, tend to revere individuals more than organisations. The personality cult comes naturally to us. But built into the Sangh’s DNA is the idea that the organisation is more important than the individual, society more important than the organisation, and the nation the most important of all.

As one pracharak or full-time worker, shifted out of what most would consider a very high-profile post to one of relative ano­nymity told me, “We are good to go wherever we are sent at very short notice.” He smiled when he said this and did not look at all unhappy or disappointed: “Apna jhola tham liya aur bus chal diye.” Get hold of one’s rucksack and just move on.

Such an attitude of egoless idealism and absence of attachment may not be universal among the cadres, but in the core group of those who actually make the Sangh what it is, it is less rare than common.

No wonder, rather than focusing on any individual, however great, the more significant jubilee that I am alluding to, of course, is the 100th anniversary of RSS.

Let us not forget that RSS has produced not only prime ministers like Narendra Modi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee but dozens of cabinet ministers, chief ministers, and governors. At least two vice presidents, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and M. Venkaiah Naidu, and one president of India, Ram Nath Kovind, have come from its ranks. Not to mention luminaries in every branch of society.

With an estimated membership running into millions and over 75,000 active branches (shakhas) that are supposed to congregate daily, RSS is the world’s largest and most important voluntary socio-cultural organisation.

One would have to be blind or utterly prejudiced to disregard its unique and prodigious achievements. The RSS journey over the last 100 years has been nothing short of phenomenal. Its contributions to nation-building have, in my estimation, no parallel anywhere in the world.

On Vijayadashami 2025, the tenth victory day marking the culmination of In­dia’s autumn Navaratri festival, RSS completes 100 years of its existence. Celebrated all over the subcontinent and elsewhere as the triumph of good over evil, it coincides this year, quite ironically for critics, with the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2.

Unlike our political leaders, RSS shuns self-praise, avoids blowing its own trumpet. Of its six sarsanghchalaks, only its found­er, Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar or Doctorji and, his anointed successor, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar or Guruji, have a specially consecrated joint memorial in Nagpur. No one else. There is no active personality cult around these two either.

I would not be surprised if, at least from the RSS side, its centenary celebrations might end up being relatively quiet. Closer to the date, however, the world, especially the Indian media, is bound to take notice.

Let us just say that I am starting a bit early.

Does the RSS centennial signify a spectacular and momentous accomplishment?

The answer is an unambiguous yes. Because, in the minds of many, RSS has done more in the service of Hindu society and the Indian nation than any other organisation or association.

Founded in Nagpur in 1925 by Hedgewar, RSS emerged at a time when India was grappling with colonial subjugation and internal divi­sions. Hedgewar, an ardent nationalist and physician trained at the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, envi­sioned an organisation that would unify Hindus and foster a sense of cultural and national pride. RSS was not merely a response to British colonialism but also to the fragmentation of Hindu society, weakened by centuries of invasions, social stagnation, and religious disunity.

In addition to the threat of Muslim separatism, which was casting its long and sinister shadow over the motherland.

Hedgewar adopted a grassroots approach, establishing shakhas, daily gatherings where volunteers engaged in physical exercises, ideological discussions, and community service. This disciplined, decentralised model allowed RSS to penetrate deep into Indian society, from urban centres to remote villages. From its modest beginnings, RSS, as I have already shown, has become a mighty and, I dare to invoke a Gandhian phrase, a “beautiful tree”.

The RSS journey is marked by its unapologetic, at times aggressive, commitment to Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, a term popularised by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Unlike other reform movements like the Arya Samaj or the Ramakrishna Mission, which focused primarily on religious or social reform, RSS set its sights on nation-build­ing through cultural and political mobilisation. Its ideology emphasises a unified Hindu identity as the bedrock of Indian nationhood, a stance that has both inspired millions and provoked fierce opposition.

Why is RSS is so feared, to the extent of being deliberately slandered and demonised? Because it alone, of all of India’s great Hindu reform movements, has dared to dedicate itself to nation formation. Also because its enemies want Hindus to remain divided and India to remain weak?

When Hindu society was at a parlous and precarious juncture, as during the bloody Partition of India in 1947, RSS played a critical role in saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children. RSS, since Independence, has also selflessly served the nation, whether during flood, famine, or, worse—the dreaded Emergency of 1975-77, often at great cost to itself and immense sacrifice of its members.

What is more, all this service has been rendered silently, with hardly any publicity or fanfare. Even if its fully dedicated cadre of workers, numbering not over an estimated 3,500, are called pracharaks or publicists—a better English rendering, were it not for the negative connotations, would actually be “super spreaders”.

This goal has embroiled it in the rough and tumble of politics. RSS not only inspired, seeded, and nurtured the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951, but its successor, the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980. The latter has been India’s ruling party at the Centre for over 11 years and is in power in 14 out of India’s 28 states.

Besides BJP and the Jana Sangh, RSS has also spawned over 100 important organisations from student to trade unions, schools, colleges, and ashrams, to cultural, social, and religious organisations.

It was RSS that founded the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in 1949 and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) in 1964. As also the Bajrang Dal in 1984.

The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, the Bharatiya Kisan Dal, and Seva Bharati have been inspired and founded by RSS too. Its work is not confined, unlike a popular misconception, solely to men. Major women’s organisations such as the Rash­tra Sevika Samiti, Durga Vahini, and Matru Shakti have also been birthed by the Sangh. As dozens devoted to tribal and minority welfare have also been. These and a variety of other institutions have endeavoured to strengthen Hindu society and the Indian nation.

RSS is feared, reviled, and hated precisely because it has not shied away from seeking and wielding power, through its progenies and affiliates, in the interests of Hindus and India. This is the one simple reason why several groups, forces, and bodies from the extreme left to the farther right, not to mention India’s former ruling party Congress, all sought to ban, suppress, malign, denigrate, and delegitimise RSS.

But while its antagonists have failed and weakened over the decades, RSS has succeeded dramatically, even incredibly. That is why the last 100 years can justly be termed the RSS century.

And millions more may join its summons to national service in consonance with its beautifully moving and inspiring anthem. Inspired by Doctorji and composed by Narhari Narayan Bhide, let me invoke its opening line: Namaste Sada Vatsale Matrubhume (To Thee, ever-affectionate Motherland, my obeisance). – Open Magazine, 1 August 2025

› Prof. Makarand R. Paranjape is an author, columnist, former teacher at JNU and former director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study.

RSS flag march in Tamil Nadu.

How the Nehruvian Congress manipulated Gandhi’s assassination to emasculate Hindu nationalism – Koenraad Elst

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Had Nathuram Godse foreseen the consequences of the act he contemplated, he might have thought twice about going through with it – Dr. Koenraad Elst

There are some historical events that are momentous in nature but have not received the kind of attention and examination they deserved. The topic of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of Nathuram Godse on 30 January 1948 is one such incident. Though it comes up regularly for discussion, it is wantonly distorted to embarrass the RSS and the party associated with it, the BJP, which was actually founded in 1980, that too as a reincarnation of the Jan Sangh, which had equally been founded after the murder, in 1951. This then is the best-known long-term effect: The unrelenting allegation that anything smelling of Hindu nationalism, and certainly the RSS, necessarily leads to such crimes. But are we missing something?

Chitpavan massacre

The first consequence of the murder was immediate: Nathuram Godse’s own community, the Chitpavan Brahmins, was targeted for mass murder. The comparison with the mass killing of Sikhs by Congress secularists after Indira Gandhi’s murder is fairly exact, except that the 1984 massacre is well-known (even eclipsing the memory of the larger number of Punjabi Hindus murdered by Sikh separatists in the preceding years), whereas this one has been hushed up. The New York Times first drew attention to it, reporting 15 killings for the first day and only for the city of Mumbai (then Bombay). In fact, the killing went on for a week and all over Maharashtra, with V.D. Savarkar’s younger brother as best-known victim.

Arti Agarwal, who leads the research in “Hindu genocide”, estimates the death toll at about 8,000. On mass murders, estimates are often over-dramatised, but here we must count with a countervailing factor: The government’s active suppression of these data, as they would throw a negative light on Gandhism. But research on this painful episode has now started in earnest, and those presently trying to get at the real figures include Savarkar biographer Vikram Sampath.

Crackdown

The second consequence came right after: The government’s crackdown on the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS. Their offices were closed down, their office-bearers imprisoned for a year or so, their stocks of literature impounded. It clipped their wings for years to come. The Hindu Mahasabha lost its president Syama Prasad Mukherjee, who went on to found the Jana Sangh. The Hindu Mahasabha would never recover from this blow. Its last MP was Mahant Avaidyanath, best known as a leader of the Rama Janmabhoomi movement and the guru of present UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, defected to the BJP in 1991.

By contrast, the RSS did survive quite well, and even generated a whole “family” of like-minded organisations, including a new political party. In a numerical sense, it was to thrive; but in two other senses, it paid a high price.

The third consequence was a drastic change in the political landscape. After Partition, the Hindutva movement had the wind in the sails. All Congress’ assurances that warnings against Islamic separatism were mere British-engineered paranoia, had been refuted by reality. Gandhi’s promise that Partition would only come over his dead body, had proven false. The new-fangled ideology of secularism stood discredited at its birth. And yet, overnight, the Hindutva current was marginalised and Nehruvian secularism started its triumphant march. By his murder, Godse had smashed the window of opportunity of his own political movement.

Amputated backbone

Finally, the fourth consequence would only materialise over the long term: The Hindu movement began to lose its defining convictions. Rather than continuing to see India as an essentially Hindu nation, it bought into the secularist notion of a mere “Hindu community” juxtaposed to “minority communities” that were endowed with equal rights and increasingly with privileges vis-à-vis the Hindus.

When Jawaharlal Nehru was widely criticised for having facilitated the Chinese invasion, the RSS halted the publication of a Nehru-critical article by Sita Ram Goel in Organiser: Rather than clamouring that its guest author’s judgement of Nehru stood vindicated, it feared that if anything were to happen to Nehru, the RSS would again get the blame. As the Gandhi murder had shown, it wasn’t necessary to be actually guilty to still incur the punishment, viz, by “having created the atmosphere” for the crime. The RSS bought into the secularist narrative that the Hindu ideology had caused the murder and started amputating its own ideological backbone.

If Godse had foreseen these consequences of the act he contemplated, he might have thought twice about going through with it. – Firstpost, 27 July 2022

› Dr. Koenraad Elst is a well-known Indologist from Belgium.

Gandhi's death reported in the NYT.

The Modi government as an exponent of BJP secularism – Koenraad Elst

VOI

Narendra Modi

Like the previous BJP Government, the present one fails to live up to the oft-heard predictions of strident pro-Hindu and anti-minority policies. This is due to a phenomenon insufficiently realized by most India-watchers: a desire to live up to the norms upheld by the secularists and an interiorization of the disinterest in “outdated” Hindu concerns, not just among the numerous opportunists who have flocked to the new party in power, but even in the loyal core of the BJP’s personnel. Based on insider sources, this paper enumerates the data establishing the reality of “BJP secularism” and analyses the reasons for this emerging phenomenon. – Dr Koenraad Elst

A.B. VajpayeeA. B. Vajpayee’s NDA Government (1998-2004) heavily disappointed the experts who had predicted “all Moslims into the Indian Ocean” or similar doomsday scenarios—or rather, it put them squarely in the wrong. Hindu “fascism” as a threat to democracy? When Vajpayee narrowly lost a confidence vote, he meekly stepped down. War against Pakistan? Though Pakistan unilaterally invaded India (Kargil 1999), Vajpayee forbade the Army to strike at the invaders’ base across the border, and later opened a peace process, making symbolic concessions which Congress had always refused. Isolationism? He threw the Indian media market open to foreign media ownership, a move opposed by India’s entire political spectrum. The only “Hindutva” thing the NDA ever did was HRD Minister M. M. Joshi‘s clumsy overhaul of the recommended history schoolbooks, changing nothing dramatic and easily reversed. When the Government created a Chair for Indic Studies in Oxford (“saffronization!”), it selected an outspoken opponent for the job, in the vain hope of receiving a pat on the back from its declared enemies.

With the hindsight knowledge of historical reality, it would be embarrassing to reproduce the predictions by Indian and foreign experts. Today, anti-BJP discourse is less shrill, but still confidently classifies the BJP among the “Hindu Right”. This implies a prediction that once in power, the BJP would pursue distinctly pro-Hindu policies. However, in the light of our experience with the Vajpayee Government, it is no surprise that the present Government led by Narendra Modi fails to live up to this learned prediction, at least for now. (Of course, this paper will be updated by November as new developments take place.)

In spite of having a more homogeneous majority, it is reluctant to do anything pro-Hindu or perceivable as anti-minority. On the contrary, one of its first acts was to decree a new subsidy to Islamic schools. The stray Hindutva statements by loose cannon (Sakshi Maharaj, Niranjan Jyoti) were followed by retractions, condemnations by Government spokesmen, and indignant innuendos by Modi-friendly journalists (Tavleen Singh, Swapan Dasgupta). Public reconversions by the allied VHP, heavily publicized and demonized by the media, were promptly discouraged by the Government. Having learned from Vajpayee’s 2004 defeat, though, Modi does “keep the pot boiling”, does regularly throw crumbs of inconsequential Hindu symbolism to his support base, all while not formally changing anything.

However, if many BJP workers are disappointed with this Government, is not for what it does but mainly for what it persistently fails to do. Thus, it inducted no figures with a strongly ideological profile (Arun Shourie, Subramanian Swamy). Likewise, some public figures who had crossed the floor (e.g. Madhu Kishwar) were conspicuously not rewarded—a fact not considered here for disgruntled ego reasons but for illustrating the BJP’s lack of strategy: it doesn’t put people who have actually sacrificed for the BJP to any use, while awarding positions of influence to unreliable newcomers motivated by sheer opportunism. While some things on the Hindu agenda are either useless to Hinduism (e.g. declaring a “Hindu Rashtra”) and others would arouse violent protests for which the media are sure to blame Modi (e.g. a Common Civil Code, though “secular” par excellence), others are perfectly feasible and, moreover, turn out to be the most consequential for the flourishing of Hinduism.

In particular, the amending of Constitutional Articles 28 and 30, which (de facto c.q. formally) discriminate against Hinduism in education, does not take away any rights from the minorities, yet lifts an enormous burden from Hindu organizations investing in education and eliminates a major reason for Hindu sects (Arya Samaj, RK Mission, Lingayats, Jains) to have themselves judicially declared non-Hindu minorities. Similarly, eliminating the legal basis of the discrimination against Hinduism in temple management, with rich temples (but not mosques or churches) nationalized and their income pocketed by politicians or diverted to non-Hindu purposes, would give an enormous boost to Hindu religious and cultural life, without impinging upon the rights of the minorities. It has to be noted, however, and it buttresses my case for “BJP secularism”, that temple management is partly a competence of the States, and that BJP State Governments have not made the difference. At any rate, there are meaningful things a BJP Government could do specifically for Hinduism without endangering its non-religious agenda (development, cleaning India etc.) or its international standing, yet it chooses not to do them.

As for the Hindutva fits and starts of some BJP members, now considered extremists but in fact only representative of what the erstwhile Jan Sangh (1952-77, predecessor of the BJP) stood for, it should be easy to bring them in line around a more reasonable but still credibly pro-Hindu programme. It is here that the BJP is most conspicuously failing — conspicuous at least to insiders, for 99% of the outside literature about the BJP never mentions this phenomenon. Contrary to a consensus among academic and journalistic India-watchers, the supposed “Hindu extremist” party has no Hindu agenda. It relies on pro-Hindu workers to do the campaigning legwork, but once in power it cold-shoulders them, it publicizes and pursues an agenda of economic development only, and it tries to curry favour with the secularists.

The main reason is the long-standing deliberate lack of investment (pioneered by M. S. Golwalkar) in an intellectual and strategic vision of its own, the spurning of any analysis of the forces in the field and of the potential and limitations of the situation. It therefore also lacks competent personnel for the ideological struggle, e.g. for a textbook overhaul or, now, for nominating politically friendly new Vice-Chancellors. Consequently, most BJP leaders have an enormous inferiority complex vis-à-vis the secularists and, even when in office, try to live up to the norms laid down by their opponents.

This is hardly the impression created by most experts; but the primary data, the only source to which this paper pledges loyalty, tell a clear story: the present BJP is only termed a Hindu party in deference to the distant memory of its initial orientation. – Koenraad Elst Blog, 15 November 2016

» Dr Koenraad Elst is an indologist and historian from Belgium who publishes with Voice of India.