Why even right-wing intellectuals should be concerned about the Sangh’s influence

An Ekal Vidyalaya teacher-training camp in progress at Akhnoor, Jammu, in March 2008. Courtesy ekal.org
21 July, 2014

A recent report on Hindu nationalism in the United States included information on the expansion of the Sangh Parivar’s Ekal Vidyalaya network of schools in India. The report generated the kind of activity that has become usual on Twitter, with many questioning its claim that the schools were indoctrinating children into the ways of Hindutva, and many insisting that there was little basis for alarm about their spread.

Similar arguments followed the appointment of Y Sudershan Rao as the new ICHR chief by the government. While some commenters raised concerns about Rao’s qualifications, and his emphasis on incorporating Hindu views into academia, others defended him, claiming that our understanding of history is shaped by the Left, and needs a course correction. The latter group failed to acknowledge that we can only begin that discussion after we satisfy ourselves that Rao has the credentials to lead it.

These arguments serve to remind us that the country has spent the last ten years under a non-BJP regime, and that thus, the memory of what the BJP is capable of in power has somewhat receded, even as the country as a whole has veered rightwards. This is perhaps why many of the young in this nation, such as those rushing to the defence of the Ekal Vidyalayas on Twitter, are reacting to the Sangh as if the organisation has no history, as if it is a body with impeccable credentials that has sprung up yesterday.

In 2004, I reported on the Vanbandhu Parishad, or the Friends of Tribals Society, which ran the Ekal Vidyalayas. Based on what the organisation itself revealed at a press conference in Bhopal, it was clear that it was closely associated with the Sangh, and that the schools were propagating a Hindu-centric education. I have pointed to these facts on Twitter and in an email interview I recently gave.

I was then the Madhya Pradesh state correspondent for the Indian Express, and I had spent the previous year covering one of the most interesting state elections in our electoral history, at the centre of which was the battle between Uma Bharti and Digvijaya Singh. The Uma Bharti-led BJP campaign was marked by a number of forays into Hindutva terrain, most famously when she organised a function in the full glare of the media at a well-known Hanuman temple in Jamsavli near Chhindwara (though the symbolic significance of that event was somewhat dampened by ensuing allegations that a birthday cake Bharti had offered to the deity contained egg, an issue over which she demanded a CBI enquiry to clear her name).

The need to focus on more substantial issues soon became evident. Digvijaya Singh was most vulnerable for his inability to provide electricity for more than few hours a day to anyone in the state, or to build roads that would last more than few days before disintegrating into potholes that could sink a Sumo. Eventually bijli (electricity) and sadak (roads) were the main focus of a campaign centred around development that saw Uma Bharti sweep into power with a mandate so overwhelming that the Congress has not come back to power in the state since.

The Vanbandhu Parishad press conference in Bhopal took place barely two months after her election victory. In the same week I travelled to Jhabua to report on violence against Christian Bhils. The local DIG implicated “Sewa Bharti, VHP and BJP men” in the attacks on churches and Christian homes. Predictably, this was before he had briefed the state government; once he had done so, the only people arrested for the violence were Christians. Two of Bharti’s ministers travelled to Jhabua, and, without meeting a single victim of the violence, suggested a high-level inquiry to probe whether the violence was a conspiracy to malign the BJP before the Lok Sabha polls, in May 2004. A week later, Bharti visited Jhabua, met some of the victims, managed to order a CID probe and simultaneously rendered it pointless by stating that Hindus had displayed patience and tolerance despite provocation.

In my travels in Jhabua before the elections, during this episode and later, I saw considerable evidence of the inextricable links between the Sewa Bharti—a Sangh-affiliated social service group—the cadre employed by the Ekal Vidyalayas, the VHP and the Sangh. The personnel were interchangeable—it was common to see someone representing one organisation at an event or press conference and show up as part of another organisation a few months later. The violence in Jhabua was the direct result of the growth of these organisations among the Bhils.

In the same week, on my way back from Jhabua, I stopped at Dhar, where another organisation, the Hindu Jagran Manch, again affiliated to the Sangh, was bent on proving that the Bhojshala-Kamaal Maula mosque was actually a Saraswati temple built by Raja Bhoj. A flame from a well-known devi temple in Maihar had been brought to Dhar and installed at the site. The attempt was aimed at suggesting that this purported shrine to Saraswati was connected to the large cult of the worship of the devi. It was only the latest in a series of moves aimed at keeping the long simmering issue alive in public memory.

These are only a small part of my experiences on reporting on the Sangh in Madhya Pradesh. So, to have to once again address questions about the Ekal Vidyalayas or debate the Sangh’s intentions forces me to resort to Santayana’s cliché—those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

The similarities between Narendra Modi today and Uma Bharti then are evident enough: both are charismatic OBC leaders in an organisation that till recently was dominated by upper-caste leaders; both are icons of Hindutva, one for her association with the Babri demolition, the other for his association with the 2002 violence in Gujarat; and both, against this background, have run highly successful electoral campaigns ostensibly focused on development.

But despite her campaign, the influence of the Sangh was soon visible in the Uma Bharti state government, and we are likely to witness much the same now in Delhi. To worry about whether Modi is willing to do the bidding of the RSS is meaningless. Like Uma Bharti, he embodies the Sangh’s worldview, and whether he puts it into practice at the RSS’s behest or on his own matters little.

The appointment of Y Sudershan Rao as ICHR chief by the Modi government is only the beginning. Romila Thapar, in her reasoned examination of Rao’s appointment, writes that “Professor Rao’s work is unfamiliar to most historians, with little visibility of research that he might have carried out.” Rao, in turn, has made no secrets of his intentions—he wants to promote an Indian way of looking at history, but for him, this is the same as the Sangh’s way of looking at history.

Today, while we keep saying the country has shifted rightwards, we do not make an important distinction. To turn rightwards and to turn Sangh-wards are not equivalent. A rightwards turn need not mean a shift away from intellectual rigour—certainly, moving to the right as an economist does not involve accepting the Sangh view on the economy. Nor should leaning to the right mean a denial of facts; a Sangh-wards turn, however, does.

Those who see themselves as belonging to the right today, in their defensiveness, are willing to deny even Romila Thapar her due. But even they cannot lightly dismiss Arun Shourie’s conclusion to the new edition of his book, Eminent Historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud, where he cautions:

… the influence of these [Left] eminences is on the wane. But their trajectory holds important lessons for those who lament what they have done over the decades to our self-perception and our discourse.

First, they believed in reflection, in reading and writing. True, as we have noticed, many of the icons of the Left poured scorn on ‘intellectuals.’ But many on the Right are not just anti-intellectual, they give the impression of being anti-intellect. Traditions cannot be rejuvenated, however, nations cannot be built, certainly ever-changing challenges cannot be met without ideas—without ideas worked out in detail.

Second, several of them were hardworking. That cannot always be said of those who would supplant them. …

Third, several of them were skilled in polemics. Many of those who would displace them have been talking only to the converted.

Fourth, one must at all costs, adhere to the truth. The falsehoods and fabrications of the Left have blown their case. Falsehood will fall apart just as certainly in the case of the Right, and invite the same consequence. …

Fifth, facts—not abuse. …

What holds for abuse, holds all the more for intimidation. The answer to a book is a better book, not working up a rage and demanding that it be banned or taken out of circulation.

I do not pretend to know Arun Shourie’s mind, but in the caution he holds out for the right, I see a worry about the dogmatism of the Sangh. This dogmatism is not a new danger—it has been a danger to the very premise of this republic from the time of its inception. This should not be a lesson that every generation needs to learn anew.