Rss Ideology Quotes

The RSS attitude of spurning the intellect and denouncing the intellectuals has worked as a self-fulfilling prophecy: since they left the intellectual field entirely to their enemies, the available intellectuals would not be “of any use to the nation”, meaning not sympathizing to the RSS programme. The political Hindu movement has paid a heavy price for this silly anti-intellectual prejudice.

The RSS was helpless because of the ideological power equation. Socialist secularism was the dominant ideology, while Hindu nationalism counted as politically incorrect. Those who swore by socialist secularism could afford to kick its alleged opponents around at will. The contrast with the Communists is striking. The Communists stood exposed as traitors in 1942-1947, when they informed the British government(a Soviet ally) about Quit India activists and served as a mercenary intellectual vanguard for the Muslim league by propagating economic and often secular-sounding arguments for Partition, once more in 1948-50, when they supported the separatist Razakar militia in Hyderabad and subsequently started an armed uprising of their own; and yet again in the run-up to the Chinese invasion of 1962, when they clamoured that "China's chairman is also India's chairman" and accused India of having started the war with China. But, they were always back on top within a short time, fully respected members of the democratic political spectrum. Better still, they managed even to make other parties implement much of the Communist agenda, from the nationalization of the banks to an unnecessary degree of hostility to the West, upheld by Congress and Janata governments alike. Such are the results when you make it your priority to control the ideological air space, rather than the ground level of work among the masses. Even worse(at least from a Hindu nationalist viewpoint) then the treatment which the Hindu nationalists received, was their own record as policy-makers.

To my knowledge, the best summation of this ideology appears in D. R. Goyal’s authoritative history of the RSS. In Goyal’s rendition, the core beliefs of what the Sangh Parivar calls ‘Hindutva’ are as follows: Hindus have lived in India since times immemorial; Hindus are the nation because all culture, civilisation and life is contributed by them alone; non-Hindus are invaders or guests and cannot be treated as equal unless they adopt Hindu traditions, culture etc.; the non-Hindus, particularly Muslims and Christians, have been enemies of everything Hindu and are, therefore, to be treated as threats; the freedom and progress of this country is the freedom and progress of Hindus; the history of India is the history of the struggle of the Hindus for protection and preservation of their religion and culture against the onslaught of these aliens; the threat continues because the power is in the hands of those who do not believe in this nation as a Hindu Nation; those who talk of national unity as the unity of all those who live in this country are motivated by the selfish desire of cornering minority votes and are therefore traitors; the unity and consolidation of the Hindus is the dire need of the hour because the Hindu people are surrounded on all sides by enemies; the Hindus must develop the capacity for massive retaliation and offence is the best defence; lack of unity is the root cause of all the troubles of the Hindus and the Sangh is born with the divine mission to bring about that unity.29

The Crusade against “Liberals” Promotion of Hinduism went hand in hand with an incessant fight against “liberals,” a highly derogatory term in the mouths of Hindu nationalists, which they use to refer to academics, NGOs, and journalists that do not adhere to their ideology. Bringing Universities to Heel—the Case of Jawaharlal Nehru University Universities with a “progressive” reputation have long been a Hindu nationalist target, but tensions further intensified after 2014. They have been subjected to two types of interference. First, the government appointed men from the Sangh Parivar or fellow travelers to head them with the task of reforming them. Second, the RSS student wing, the ABVP, could finally try to call the shots on university campuses with the government’s blessing. This dual strategy is most clearly apparent in the treatment inflicted on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). This institution, known for the excellence of its teachers—especially in the social sciences—had drawn bitter Hindu nationalist criticism as soon as it was founded in the 1960s due to the leftist leanings of many teachers and some of its main student organizations.97 In 2016, the Modi government appointed Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar vice-chancellor of JNU. This electrical engineering professor had been teaching at the nearby Indian Institute of Technology until then, and he had allegedly played an active role in Vijana Bharati, an organization under the Sangh Parivar umbrella that aims to promote indigenous Indian science.98 He brought about drastic budget cuts—academic spending was almost halved over three years99—and a decline in student recruitment, while systematically hampering the activities of student unions and faculty opposed to the RSS. The political disciplining of the campus took various routes, such as the harassment of professors who were openly hostile to the Sangh Parivar.

The growth of mutual respect went hand in hand as Hindu nationalism became dominant. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the founding father of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was an admirer of Nazism. Hindu fundamentalism and hatred of Muslims is at the heart of BJP thinking. A pioneer of this ideology, Veer Savarkar, wrote that India’s model for its “Muslim problem” should be how the Nazis managed their “Jewish problem.” The RSS has evolved since its founding but an admiration of Nazism remains in some contemporary sections of the party.

Too busy to think: A first perusal of the literature of the organized Hindutva movement, particularly of the Sangh Parivar, the 'RSS family' including the BJP, will leave the reader with the impression of an unusual intellectual poverty. First of all, relative to the age and membership of this family of organizations, its literary output is quite small. Secondly, what little is available is often very elementary and repetitive.

BN Jog, a contemporary RSS author argues that even after the 1937 elections, though often mentioned as proof that the Muslim electorate was largely 'secular' because of the poor results for the Muslim league, had already disproven the Congress claim: most Muslim votes had gone to other Muslim-dominated parties, chiefly the Unionist party of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan in Panjab and the Krishak Praja party of Fazlul Haq in Bengal. Even the supposedly defeated Muslim League had won 108 of the 492 Muslim-reserved seats in 1937, against 26 for Congress. So, Jog concludes, the Muslim vote was largely motivated by sectional interests rather than by commitment to the national struggle.

The Hindutva view of Islam is characterized by a progressive softening from V.D. Savarkar through M.S. Golwalkar down to the present BJP. And even Savarkar was not uniformly the hawk he is always made out to be. In general, the organized Hindutva movement has never produced a very sophisticated discourse on Islam, merely a few sweeping generalisations whether in a hostile or a flattering sense. In the founding statements of the RSS, there is no trace of a fundamental critique of Islam, nor is there any in the books and speeches of its leaders.