RSS, India’s Menace: A Book Review
Mukulika Radhakrishnan
If Hindu Raj does become a fact,
it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country…
Hindu Raj must be prevented at any cost.
– Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
Thus begins the latest and a very timely addition to important works written on the history of modern Indian politics.
The RSS: A Menace to India (2019), written by lawyer-historian Abdul Gafoor Abdul Majeed Noorani or A.G. Noorani and published by Leftword Books is a masterly work on the history of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh from its formation in 1925 to its role and profound influence on India’s contemporary, daily politics. This major meditation on the RSS comes after the thin volume The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour (Leftword, 2000), this intensely researched work is 25 comprehensive chapters that delve into various aspects of the organization as well as the crucial junctures that shaped its character throughout Indian political history.
The work has come to us at such a juncture in India where it’s important to both rejuvenate and introspect our struggles, for we have an RSS-led government at the helm of affairs for the second time. It’s not a season of despair, but a season to learn and unlearn with greater dynamism and understanding. An extensive, deeply investigative work with a labyrinth of significant data and analysis on the largest, richest, most influential right wing political organization in the country is nothing but a necessary start to this.
We must remember that it was Noorani who through his pivotal work on Hindutva’s own V. D. Savarkar (Savarkar and Hindutva: The Godse Connection; Leftword Books, 2002), exposed a particular side of his history and a strong case against this figure, which pierced right through the Mahasabha and RSS’s aggressive and fraudulent claims to nationalism as well as his projection into a supreme nationalist figure. It was Noorani who dug up Savarkar’s letters of desperate apology sent to British officials as part of his tenure as a political prison – revelations that shattered the attempts of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha to deconstruct the projection of ‘Veer’ Savarkar that’s beyond truth, and that continue to question the prefix attached to his name.
The book is divided into 25 crisp and comprehensive chapters that deal with the formation, their role (or no role) in the national movement, the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Emergency and the Janata Party, the 2002 pogrom and how it contributed to the image-building of the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, Hindu Mahasabha, ABVP & VHP, etc. All these tell us the history of RSS, unlike any before, through meticulous legal research, in classic Noorani style.
Let’s turn to some of the most striking contributions of the book.
The Multiple Identities of RSS
One of the most interesting chapters in here deals with the contradictions in the RSS’s claim to being a ‘cultural’ as well as a philanthropic or ‘charity’ organization. With the keen investigative skills of a lawyer, Noorani digs out intricate details about the RSS’s income tax and other financial documents to weave the case that the RSS’s very existence is based on falsehood. At the very outset, he shatters this organization’s own construction of itself as a pious, dutiful bunch – on the other hand, their activities seem nothing but downright “anti-national, subversive and violent” as Nehru wrote in his 1948 letter to its then chief M. S. Golwalkar (1906-1973), the second Sarsanghchalak of the RSS.
Noorani says in the Preface:
“To evade income tax it claimed to be a charitable organization before the Income Tax Officer. It said the opposite to the Charity Commissioner to escape registration as a charitable trust.” (pp. 11)
We have entered a post-truth society, argues most scholars – and it’s the right wing that is almost always linked to post truth politics. The RSS too has in the past and continues to be involved in politics of post truth or constructed truth, twisting facts and meanings according to their whims. Here we see that its very identity is based on such a premise. To this string Noorani adds,
“More, it claimed a right to attribute to well-known terms meanings which it chose to assign to them, rather like Humpty Dumpty’s scornful retort to Alice in Through the Looking Glass: ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less’. In one breath the RSS says that all Indians are Hindus, only to assert, in the next breath, that Hindus constitute the majority. Reasoned debate is impossible”. (pp. 11)
He goes deeper into the issue in the last chapter titled, ‘RSS’s Self-Revelation to Tax and Charity Authorities’ (pp. 416-424). Typical of most of Noorani’s works, he delves into it with the expertise of a legal specialist and brings to us documents that might otherwise be overlooked. He argues his case with the help of some crucial legal proceedings and litigations including some applications initiated as early as 70s, by Dr. Manoharkant Dayalji Kamdar, a member of RSS since 1942 at Nagpur. As per Dr. Kamdar, and quoted by Noorani, the RSS amended its Constitution, which existed since 1933, many years later in 1972, to accord legal status to ‘Guru Dakshina’ (donations to the Guru*).
The book is especially useful for the host of case laws it cites, a very efficient archival source in itself. About RSS’s multiple identities, all carefully constructed through deceptive legal action across a long drawn out period, he says,
“It (RSS) claimed before the Bombay High Court that it was a ‘charitable institution under Section 10(2) of the Income Tax Act, 1961’ and before the Charity Commissioner that the ‘RSS is not a charitable trust but a political institution under Section 12(13) of the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950’. To the public at large it pretended to be a ‘cultural’ body. While the tax proceedings were on, it amended its constitution in order to avoid tax liability. But it suppressed the fact from the Charity Commissioner and was less than candid to the tax authorities” (pp. 416).
He then, in the same chapter, goes on to cite a number of legal documents and dissects the organization’s constitution and the multiple amendments it has been subjected to over the years. It’s concluded by arguing that the RSS today stands as the richest organization in the country, its donations (Guru Dakshina), worth lakhs, forming the lion’s share of its funds. This too functions in deep ambiguity. The donations are not contributed to a particular person, for the Guru is not an individual* but the “symbol of purity, sacrifice and valor” (From Organiser, 11 December 2016; as quoted by Noorani; pp. 424)
The 2002 Pogrom and Modi’s Image
A study of RSS without the mention of its latest poster boy and the country’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, would be incomplete. Noorani seems to recognize this too, for one of the concluding chapters, interestingly enough, highlights how the 2002 Gujarat Pogrom has had a defining influence on Modi’s career as well as his general image as a dutiful RSS karyavahak (worker). The chapter numbered 17 and titled ‘How Modi Profited by a Pogrom’, through thorough archival research as well as active ground work through persona interviews, lays down in fine detail those significant aspects of the massacre that prove his case, that the state, with Modi as Chief Minister, was not only allowed it to happen, but in fact had participated actively in it – with the help of all its machinery, including the police and bureaucracy.
Rather than affect their political lives negatively, the pogrom, according to Noorani, encouraged leaders like Advani or Vajpayee to push the RSS’s agenda more aggressively than before, as also helped Modi emerge a ‘mightier’ figure in Indian politics. The carnage episode was a license to RSS’s followers to spew communal politics as well as defend Modi more openly unlike in 1992 post the Babri Masjid attack, argues Noorani.
“Far from repenting, the RSS and its front the VHP became aggressive in Modi’s defence. There were at least formal regrets after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. The pogrom of 2002, a decade later encouraged the Nero to shower insults at Muslims, L. K. Advani to defend him ardently, Vajpayee to denounce Muslims, and the RSS and VHP to hurl warnings at Muslims”.
It’s noteworthy that this 547-pages long lucidly written masterpiece ends with 16 elaborate sections of appendices (pp. 430-534), providing more crucial archival and legal evidence enabling further scrutiny on the subject. The work therefore, is also a must for all those interested in modern Indian politics in general as well as the history of communalism in India in particular.
RSS: A Menace to India is written by AG Noorani and published by LeftWord Books. A. G. Noorani is a lawyer, historian and author. He has practised as an advocate in the Supreme Court of India and in the Bombay High Court. He is the author of a number of books, including ‘The Kashmir Dispute’, ‘The Destruction of Hyderabad’, ‘The Babri Masjid Question’, and more.
Mukulika Radhakrishnan works with the Indian Cultural Forum in New Delhi. She finished her Masters in Modern Indian History from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She is also an Editorial Board member at Student Struggle.
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