Manufacturing Legitimacy

THE RASHTRIYA SWAYAMSEVAK SANGH has been on a spree, celebrating a century of its existence. Over this period, it has demonstrated its ability to patiently expand, mobilise and grow. Thousands of people, including the former president Ram Nath Kovind, attended the hundredth anniversary celebrations in Nagpur, on 2 October. But the most intriguing guests were not Indian. Among other international attendees was a small contingent of US journalists, showcased prominently as trophies of foreign validation. It included Jim Geraghty, a senior political correspondent at National Review and, since 2022, a contributing columnist for the Washington Post; Megan McArdle and Jason Willick, columnists at the Washington Post; Nicholas Clairmont, an editor at the Washington Examiner; and Lena Bell, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page.

All of them were proudly paraded on stage. The RSS has, for years, invested in cultivating its image abroad, particularly in the United States. A recent investigation by the US-based outlet Prism revealed that the lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs had been engaged by another consultancy, One+ Strategies, to push Sangh interests in Washington. In June this year, Bob Shuster, a co-founder of One+ Strategies, visited the RSS headquarters with his brother Bill, a former Republican legislator, and the Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead.

The presence of the US journalists at the Nagpur event conferred international legitimacy on an organisation known for its fascist moorings and violent past. “They all seemed happy sitting on the stage,” a reporter covering the event for an international news agency told me. “When their names were announced, they appeared more than willing to stand up and get introduced.” The Sangh’s PR seems to have worked, with some of them carrying forward many of the RSS’s oft-repeated lies. “To my American ears,” Geraghty wrote in a Washington Post article published on 14 October, “it sounds a little odd to hear the group regularly referred to as a paramilitary organisation when its members march around with long sticks instead of firearms.” The article depicted the RSS in exactly the manner the Hindutva militia would have desired.

Does the absence of visible firearms disqualify an organisation from being considered paramilitary? What constitutes a paramilitary force? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “a force formed on a military pattern especially as a potential auxiliary military force.” Collins describes it as a group, “organised like an army,” that performs civil or military functions. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, drawing from the history of European fascism, notes that such organisations adopt military values—discipline, obedience, physical rigour—and the outward symbols of military culture, including uniforms and salutes.