The RSS and the Tricolour
Jawhar Sircar
10 Aug, The Telegraph
As Indians get
ready to celebrate the nation's 70th anniversary in few days, our main worry
should not be whether some have suddenly decided to become anti-national, but
it should be on a new dangerous game of competitive hyper-nationalism that has
recently been unleashed. Ridiculous ideas are floated to instil this
‘nationalism’ like installing a military tank within the precincts of a
genetically restless university. With systematic attacks on plurality, the
atmosphere has already been heated to the desired degree that facilitates the
branding of inconvenient dissent as anti-national. We shall soon witness how a
government that excels in event management zaps the nation on its Independence
Day with dollops of patriotic fare produced at public expense, which must of
course come with that mesmerising oratory. But one fact is certain: the
organisation that runs the party that
runs the regime cannot just appropriate the ‘Indian national movement’ as its
own.
This is extremely relevant because of the well planned ongoing exercise
to slaughter the Nehruvian legacy and pluck other national leaders of stature -
from Gandhi to Patel - almost out of context to replant them on the rightists’
pantheon, that is so understaffed. True, both these leaders hailed from
Gujarat, as does the Gir lion, whose weird gear-crunching ‘Make in India’
animation has put the traditionally-peaceful India’s elephant icon into the
shade. But that cannot suffice and even Swami Vivekananda is not spared by
those who cannot see beyond his saffron dress but fail to read his very stern
anti-communal messages. And, in all such cases, the political right makes
selective use of their words and deeds to claim them as as ‘mentors’ in the
hope that their association may lend some ‘mainstream lineage’ and
respectability to a sectarian and secretive ultra-national outfit. Despite tireless systematicattempts to distort
history, the version we possess till now is quite clear that the Rashtriya Syawamsewak
Sangh, the RSS, had refused to participate in the freedom struggle. It has,
therefore, no right to claim its glory even though the Congress cannot also
monopolise on any ‘sole heir’ status, for various reasons.
K.B. Hedgewar, who founded the RSS in 1925, did have
some initial loose association with the freedom struggle but from the 1930s, he
ensured that his boys in khaki shorts stayed away from this historic
movement and the harshest of retaliation it attracted. His biographer, C.P. Bishikar quotes him as having said “Patriotism
is not only going to prison. It is not correct to be carried away by such
superficial patriotism.” On the other hand, Savarkar of the Hindu Mahasabha,
who is another cherished role model of the current ruling dispensation, had
been active long before Hedgewar but he was rather mercurial. He did lead
strident anti-British agitations and was jailed, but he also signed multiple
clemency petitions to the colonial government, promising total cooperation if
only they released him. The Congress retaliated in 1934 and banned its members
from joining communal organisations like the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS and the
Muslim League. In any case, during the critical phase of the Quit India
movement and other agitations, not only was the RSS missing but we have British
reports of the ‘good conduct’ and the law-abiding nature of its members, while
so many thousands of women, children and men all over India braved the onslaught
of imperial repression.
Nana
Deshmukh raised the issue in his book, RSS: Victim of Slander (1979) “One
might well ask: why did the RSS not take part in the liberation struggle as an
organisation? The question arose for the first time when Gandhiji launched his
movement in 1929-30. It was decided that the members of the RSS were free to
take part in their individual capacity”. Fine: but it may be educative to know
which particular RSS member actually took part and what suffering he went
through for it. The National Archives in Delhi have preserved the Home Ministry
files that contain Intelligence Branch records of the role played by them as
well as by the nationalists. It is only logical that the RSS and its dedicated
cadre that runs the government should come clear on this phase of history
before attempting to snatch credit in its new version of ultra-nationalism.
This caveat is essential as we come to the next issue on how the RSS had
actually opposed the Indian national flag.
On the eve of Independence, when much of the nation was bursting to
celebrate freedom, the RSS’s mouthpiece, Organiser, declared that the
Indian tricolour “will never be respected and owned by Hindus.The word three is
in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a
very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country.” Apart from
distorting facts like the age old reverence of Hindus for ‘three’ as evident in
the Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar, this reveals the nonsense
that rules the minds of those who peddle faith for votes. We must also
understand the psyche that declares cow urine to be a divine antidote and
declares that an elephant’s head was grafted on a decapitated Ganesha, through plastic surgery in very ancient
times.
The
earlier issues of the Organiser, such as those of 17th and 22nd July
1947, had also voiced the opposition of
the RSS to many such national issues, but to get to the root, we need to see
the book Bunch
of Thoughts that the second head of
the RSS, M.S. Golwalkar published. He lamented that “our leaders have set up a new flag for the
country. Why did they do so? It just is a case of drifting and imitating...Ours
is an ancient and great nation with a glorious past. Then, had we no flag of
our own? Had we no national emblem at all these thousands of years? Undoubtedly
we had. Then why this utter void, this utter vacuum in our minds.” We would, in
all fairness, be enlightened if Guru Golwakar could show us the ancient
national emblem or flag that he refers to, unless his intention is to
substitute the nation's culturally-composite flag with the Bhagwa Dhwaj. This saffron ‘split flag’ of the RSS symbolises not only divisionism
but is synonymous with Hinduism and Hindutva, that
militate against the very plural reality of India.
Mahatma
Gandhi's assassination on 30th January 1948, however, changed the political
chessboard of India decisively. Government banned the RSS and the Deputy Prime
Minister, Sardar Patel declared quite unequivocally that “though the RSS was
not involved…. his assassination was
welcomed by those of the RSS and the (Hindu) Mahasabha who were strongly
opposed to his way of thinking and his policy”. Golwalkar repeatedly pleaded
with Patel, but the leader whom the current regime seeks to appropriate,
remained totally firm. He lifted the ban on the 11th of July 1949, only after
the RSS undertook to stay away from politics, not be so secretive and to abjure
violence. More important, it had to profess “loyalty to the Constitution of
India and the national flag.” Is it this ‘complex’ that engendered the recent
government order to publicly demonstrate patriotism every where, even in movie
halls?
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