Type Caste

“Does the Sangh change its views with time? If yes, what are its unchanging thoughts?” This pre-submitted question was put to Mohan Bhagwat, the sarsanghchalak—supreme leader—of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, at Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan in late August. The occasion was a three-day lecture series attended by over fifty politicians, diplomats, former chief justices and former chiefs of the army and air force.

Seven years ago, from the same venue, Bhagwat had declared that the organisation had moved on from the incendiary writings of its second sarsanghchalak, MS Golwalkar, on Indian minorities. He suggested those ideas were products of their time. (The latest edition of Golwalkar’s collection of speeches, Bunch of Thoughts, excised the sections that branded Muslims, Christians and communists as “internal threats.”) Bhagwat defended the shift at the time: “RSS is not a closed organisation. Time changes, so do our thoughts.”

If that earlier lecture marked a departure from rigid positions, this year’s event—timed to coincide with the Sangh’s centenary—was about underlining what, in Bhagwat’s words, “will not change.” He listed three “eternal” ideas: that it was possible to change society by moulding the behaviour of men, that Hindu society had to be unified and that India is a Hindu Rashtra. The second has been one of Sangh’s stated missions since its inception, and the third is only its logical culmination. In an earlier piece for this magazine, I had argued that the Sangh’s vision of an organised Hindu society is one in which individuals, interchangeable and disposable, are meant to serve the greater interests of society, a principle that is at odds with Enlightenment ideals of society enabling the freedoms of an individual. In the RSS conception, the individual is bound by dharma, which assigns social rank according to the class into which one is born—essentially, a rigid caste society sanctified by scripture. And so, as Bhagwat said, for the RSS, apart from these unchanging ideas, “there is a flexibility on everything else.”

But the first concept—changing society’s behaviour by changing individuals—is what needs deeper attention, particularly considering what we know the RSS is capable of. Its fascist moorings are a documented fact. The organisation has been banned three times in the country since Independence, including for the assassination of MK Gandhi. The unregistered organisation works deeply, often secretively, with a wide set of communities. By one estimate, the RSS has at least six million active volunteers, although it is not required to keep formal membership rolls. In February 2018, Bhagwat boasted, “Sangh will prepare military personnel within three days which the army would do in six–seven months. This is our capability. Swayamsewaks will be ready to take on the front if the country faces such a situation.” The organisation conducts weapons training at over eighty thousand sites and controls a network of registered bodies in politics, education, trade, labour, agriculture and even the judiciary. The Bharatiya Janata Party is its most successful offspring.