On 27 January this year, the Hindu reformist organisation Arya Samaj held its regional Arya mahasammelan, or conference, at the Dayanand Math in Haryana’s Rohtak district. Ministers from the BJP-led state government, the Haryana governor Satyadev Narayan Aryaandthe Himachal Pradesh governor Acharya Dev Vrat, attended the annual convention. Dev Vrat Arya, a leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and Manish Grover, the BJP’s member of legislative assembly from Rohtak, also shared the dais with them. The stage had a huge flex board of the Hindu deity Ram—a stark contradiction to the Arya Samaj’s opposition to idol and avatar worship.
The RSS has tried to ally with the Arya Samaj for decades now, but the two organisations have different visions for the country. The RSS aims to establish a Hindu Rashtra and the Arya Samaj’s objective is to convert all citizens of the country into Arya Samajis and propagate the Vedas through its mission, Aryavrat. Despite these differences, it has now become common for members of RSS and Arya Samaj to share a stage. According to Agnivesh, a senior Arya Samaji swami who was formerly a minister in the Haryana state government, “The RSS wants to hijack the Arya Samaj and its institutions.”
In sharp contrast to the Sangh, the Arya Samaj has emphasised the importance of spirituality rather than rituals since its inception. It reposed faith in the concept of Om, a scared mantra. The Arya Samaj has protested against certain ills of Hinduism such as the ritual of sati and supported progressive ideas such as widow remarriage. In 1987, Agnivesh, along with 101 sanyasis, mostly from the Arya Samaj, had conducted an 18-day padayatra, against sati. For the Sangh, the practice of sati and the proscription against widow remarriage are essential parts of Hinduism. In 1999, Giriraj Kishore, then the international vice president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an affiliate of the RSS, had defended the practice of sati saying, “If any woman wants to burn to death on the pyre of her dead husband, there is no problem with that.”
The RSS has been trying to attract Arya Samajis in north India since before independence. In 1937, Devdutt Khullar Batala, an Arya Samaji, was the first to establish an RSS shakha in a temple of the Arya Samaj in Punjab. Satish Tyagi, and a senior journalist based in Haryana, said, “The Arya Samajis in rural areas were mainly engaged in farming-cultivation activities. Because of this, problems related to farming and labourers”—the RSS did not fight for these issues at the time—“and their opposition to idol worship, they could not ally with the RSS.”
The RSS failed in its initial attempts to attract Arya Samajis. To forge an alliance with the Arya Samajis in rural areas, shortly after independence, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the second sarsanghchalak, or supreme leader, of the RSS, conducted a meeting with leading Arya Samajis based in rural areas at a gurukul, a residential school, in Haryana’s Jhajjar district, which teaches the values of the Arya Samaj. Manoj Kumar, a Haryana-based journalist, told me that, later, Bhagwan Dev, a teacher in the gurukul, revealed in an interview to him that the meeting was conducted to discuss partition and the massacre of Muslims. But Dev said that this meeting did not yield any results. He also told Kumar that Golwalkar had promised to send weapons to the Arya Samajis in the meeting but did not deliver. At the time, the Sangh could not bring the Arya Samaj into its fold.
In October 1951, the same month that the Sangh created the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the forerunner to the BJP, it made a formal attempt to ally with the Arya Samaj. Tyagi told me that Gowalkar as well as senior leaders of the RSS held a series of meetings at the Arya Samaj’s office on Hanuman Road in Delhi. An RSS pracharak, Balraj Madhok, who called himself an Arya Samaji, and had influence in the organisation, “held multiple meetings with the senior Arya Samaj leaders,” Tyagi said. His meetings were also unsuccessful. But the Jana Sangh made some inroads—it succeeded in attracting upper-caste Arya Samajis based in urban regions, from the Baniya, Brahmin and the Arora-Khatri communities.
Before 2014, in Haryana, the influence of the Jan Sangha and then the BJP was restricted to its cities. Nonica Datta, a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University who has researched on the Arya Samaj, said, “Those from the Brahmin-Baniya community in the urban area have been educated in DAV schools and the Jats and Gujjars of the rural areas have studied in Gurukuls. This why both these groups are different.” Tyagi said, “RSS always tried to gain a foothold in Haryana. Many urban Brahmin, Baniya, Arora and Khatri leaders [of Haryana], such as Mauli Chandra Sharma and Shreechand Goyal, were the founding members of the Jan Sangh.” Tyagi added that after the central government banned the RSS in 1948 on account of exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, Sharma fixed a meeting between the deputy prime minister Vallabhbhai Patel and Golwalkar. Sharma later became the head of the Jan Sangh as well.
Agnivesh said that the Arya Samaj is the only organisation that can challenge the RSS. “In 1967, when Swami Indravesh and I entered politics on the plank of the social and economic issues of farmers and labourers, we had to face the opposition of Deoras”—Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras, who was appointed as the third sarsanghchalak of the RSS in 1973—“from the Sangh headquarters in Nagpur,” Agnivesh said. He attributed Deoras’s disapproval to their “progressive Arya Samaj” and “propogation of Vedic socialism.” He added, “At that time, Swami Indravesh and I independently developed the Arya Samaj and the RSS had to pull back from north India.”
Sant Kumar, a senior Arya Samaji in Haryana, also said that the Arya Samaj can challenge the RSS’s religious fanaticism and the blind faith that they demand from its followers. He said that before the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, he worked in Dadri Toye, a village near Jhajjar, which comprised a majority of Hindus, and a few Muslim families. “We worked there for many years and made idol worship and Hindu-Muslim issues disappear from the village … Because of our efforts, there were marriages between people from the two religions as well. But after the temple agitation, Hindu-Muslim marriages stopped and people from both the religions again came under the grip of religious blind-faith,” Kumar said.
According to Agnivesh, because of the Arya Samaj’s activism, the RSS could not secure a strong base in Haryana, and its surrounding areas, till 1995. Datta, the professor, said that the Arya Samaj never advocated for the creation of a Ram temple. It is because of this, she said, that the residents of this region expressed little interest in the movement.
But Tyagi said, “Arya Samajis were pro-gau raksha, or cow protection, and against Muslims and Christians from the beginning. The RSS exploited their sentiments and subjugated them.” He added that “this escalated when Modi was appointed” as the BJP’s in-charge of Haryana in 1996. Sant Kumar, the Arya Samaji, said, “After coming to Haryana, Modi met the Kurukshetra Gurukul’s principal and the current Himachal Pradesh governor Acharya Dev Vrat.” Modi strategically inducted Dev Vrat, an Arya Samaji, into the RSS, according to Sant Kumar. He said that Modi stayed with Dev Vrat for three months in the Kurukshetra Gurukul and appointed him as the president of the Bhartiya Kisan Sangh, the farmer’s wing of the RSS. “Dev Vrat’s appointment as the governor of Himachal Pradesh shortly after the BJP came to power in the centre was a reward for his friendship with Modi,” Sant Kumar added.
After the BJP’s landslide victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Arya Samaj witnessed drastic changes in Haryana. Datta said that a section of the Arya Samaj’s population, which resides in the rural area was outside the RSS’s grip until 2014. After that, with the support of the rural Arya Samajis, the BJP was able to gain a foothold in Haryana and its surrounding regions.
Now, Arya Samajis are increasingly drawn towards the RSS’s ideology. They incessantly share posts on social media related to issues regarding the Ram temple and the concept of Hindutva. Moreover, in the past few years, they have vocalised their hate for reservations for minorities, same-sex relations, Muslims, Sufis and Christians, while supporting militant nationalism. In North India, cow protection is the biggest issue for the RSS and a huge concern for the Arya Samaj as well. Most heads of Haryana’s gaushalas, or cow shelters, are currently people associated with the RSS and the BJP, such as Shravan Garg, Satyavaan, Sanjay Sharma, Devilal Sharma. “Once upon a time, the heads of these gaushalas were apolitical Arya Samajis,” Sant Kumar said.
The RSS’s influence on Arya Samaj has been systemic, he told me. “The RSS systematically brought the Arya Samaj under its fold and drew people towards itself … After becoming the heads of the Arya Samaj’s institutions, they used to hold the RSS and the BJP’s events. Because of their influence, the Arya Samajis now spread their vision,” Sant Kumar said.
The RSS’s inroads into the Arya Samaj are the most visible in the latter’s public events. Most chief guests for the functions of Arya Veer Dal, the Arya Samaj’s youth wing, which trains students to use weapons and fight, are members of the BJP and the RSS. Indresh Kumar, the RSS’s in charge for north India, often attends events of the Arya Samaj. For instance, in the October 2018, Kumar and the incumbent defence minister Rajnath Singh attended the International Arya Mahasammelan.
Sarvadman Sangwan, a senior journalist, also said that the RSS is taking over the Arya Samaj. For example, he said, Pratibha Suman, the chairperson of the Harayana’s commission for women, who claims to be an Arya Samaji “carries out work for the BJP and the RSS.” Sangwan said that Suman runs the Arya Printing Press in the Dayanand Math. “Her office was also creating controversy as it had taken over the Arya Samaj’s land for a long time. But after the BJP came to power, no one is opposing it,” he said. “The RSS is eyeing Arya Samaj properties for ease of running their organisations and so that they have well-trained workers as well.”
When asked about the RSS’s takeover of the Arya Samaj, Agnivesh said, “Yes, it is true. That is why they carry out attacks against anyone who speaks out against their politics of hatred.” On 17 July 2018, and in the month after, Agnivesh was attacked by mobs. He said that the RSS was responsible for these attacks, before adding, “The opposition cannot compete with their hardcore Hindutva with soft Hindutva. Only we can challenge them on an ideological level.”
People have varied opinions of the Arya Samaj, but everyone I spoke to during my reporting agreed that in the past few years, the BJP has succeeded in making Arya Samajis a part of its vote bank. But Datta said, “This alliance is not practical because Arya Samajis in the rural areas, working the farming sectors, have to face issues related to the agricultural sector. That is why there is clear possibility of a rebellion against the ruling BJP.” The veterans of Arya Samaj, Sant Kumar and Agnivesh, still see the RSS as a threat—they said that if the Arya Samaj does not stand independently in Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi and Punjab, there is a possibility of the RSS absorbing it. Referring to this threat, Agnivesh mentioned, “Like the RSS, we should have created a political arm of the Arya Samaj in 1951 itself.”
This news report first appeared in Karwan, The Caravan’s Hindi website. It has been translated and edited.