They opposed him and his ideas, mocked at his morals — but RSS and BJP also need to appropriate the Mahatma

 

They opposed him and his ideas, mocked at his morals — but RSS and BJP also need to appropriate the Mahatma

 

Jawhar Sircar

National Herald, 2nd October, 2020

 

          As the 150th birth anniversary celebrations end and the Mahatma returns to his confined habitat of museums, a fact worth noticing is the visible turn — we still cannot call it a turnaround— in the attitude of the Hindu Right to the man they hounded to death.

          HV Seshadri, the biographer of the founder and first chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), KB Hedgewar states quite unambiguously: “Gandhiji worked constantly with one eye on Hindu– Muslim unity…But Doctorji (Hedgewar) sensed danger in that move. In fact, he did not even relish the newfangled slogan of ‘Hindu– Muslim Unity”.

               Like the RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha also boycotted Gandhiji’s ‘Quit India’ movement in 1942, but its leader Shyama Prasad Mookerjee went a step further and requested the British to take stern action against the freedom fighters. Mookerjee had joined Fazlul Haque’s ministry in Bengal and is revered by the present regime as the founder of the political wing of the RSS, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh that preceded the present Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). “As one of your Ministers”, he wrote to the Governor of Bengal on 26th July 1942, “I am willing to offer you my whole-hearted cooperation... in this hour of crisis”.

           We may fast forward to 1947 and we find that despite misgivings, Gandhiji still tried to convince the RSS to move to the mainstream and eschew violence. On 3rd April 1947 he revealed at a prayer meeting that the second Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, MS Golwalkar had met him and assured him that the RSS had not encouraged violence and also that it did not oppose him.

                But just before Independence, the RSS's mouthpiece, the Organiser’s issues of 17th and 22nd July expressed its vehement opposition on several national issues. When India’s long-cherished Independence finally arrived, sadly along with partition, the RSS bitterly opposed the choice of the tricolour as new India’s flag. Its logic was that it will "never be respected and owned by the 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 the country."

                 This is not correct, as Hinduism holds three in very high regard as well — quite evident in its veneration of the Trimurti and Triguna. Later, in his book, Bunch of Thoughts, MS Golwalkar reiterated this opposition to the tricolour and wanted the Hindu saffron bhagwa dhwaj as the nation’s flag. During this time, the RSS was moving among the very angry Hindu refugees from Pakistan, offering some relief, but also fomenting communal violence and demanding retaliation against all Muslims.

                  Gandhiji, however, kept on with his persuasion and on September 16, 1947, he even visited an RSS camp at Bhangi colony in New Delhi, where he addressed RSS volunteers. He also recalled that Jamnalal Bajaj had taken him to another RSS camp in Wardha long ago, when the founder of the RSS Dr. Hedgewar was alive. Gandhiji’s efforts did not succeed and, as Ramachandra Guha found from several reports of the Delhi Police of 1947, the RSS kept attacking Gandhi’s policies and inciting violence. Finally, on the 17th of November 1947, an exasperated Gandhiji declared that “I have heard it said that the Sangh is at the root of all this mischief. Let us not forget that public opinion is a far more potent force than a thousand swords. Hinduism cannot be saved by orgies of murder...such violent rowdyism will not save either Hinduism or Sikhism.”

                    On 30th January of 1948, the Mahatma was shot in cold blood by a fanatic of the Hindu Mahasabha who had earlier been associated with the RSS. History tells us that Sardar Patel, whose statue the ruling party has set up as the tallest in the world, had come down heavily on the RSS and had banned it immediately. Sardar Patel wrote on 27th February that Gandhiji’s “assassination was welcomed by those of the RSS and the (Hindu) Mahasabha who were strongly opposed to his way of thinking and his policy”. He also mentioned “allegations that sweets were distributed” by these two Hindu outfits. On July 18, 1948, the Sardar wrote that “our reports do confirm that, as a result of the activities of these two bodies (RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha), particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy became possible. There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasabha was involved in the conspiracy. The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of Government and the State. Our reports show that those activities, despite the ban, have not died down. Indeed, as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming more defiant and are indulging in their subversive activities in an increasing measure.”

                   The Sardar did not budge an inch on his ban on the RSS for one and a half years, despite pleas from Golwalkar and others. It was only on July 11, 1949, that he lifted the ban — after the RSS pledged to stay away from politics; not be secretive and abjured violence. More important, it professed "loyalty to the Constitution of India and the National Flag". It is ironic that at present it is the RSS and the BJP that are directing all Indians to display public respect for the flag or be branded ‘anti national’.

                Having said all this, the ‘turn’ worth noting during the 150th birth anniversary celebrations is that the RSS and the BJP appear to have finally ‘accepted’ the Mahatma. They are, in fact, flaunting their proximity to Gandhiji and praising several (not all) of his ideals. The Organiser of 15 October 2019 is quite overt in declaring that “Mahatma Gandhi’s encounter with Hedgewar, who founded RSS in 1925, could be traced back to the non-cooperation movement. When the Congress organised a mammoth rally in Nagpur in 1922 in reaction to Gandhiji’s imprisonment, it was Hedgewar who addressed the rally. Hedgewar proclaimed that there was no difference between the words and actions of Mahatma Gandhi”. It further states that Gandhiji was misled by his supporters in 1942 into believing that the RSS was against Muslims or the Quit India movement. “MS Golwalkar refuted this serious charge. He clarified that ‘RSS does not indulge in unnecessary demonstrations, or raise slogans.”

                The pro-RSS/BJP Swarajya has also strained to explain how Gandhiji had so much respect for the RSS and its philosophy as well as its discipline. There are numerous other items in the media on how the present RSS chief, Mohan Bhagawat, has emphatically declared his reverence for the Mahatma and his contributions to India. Some selective issues of his legacy like cow protection, organic farming, rural development, and swadeshi economy appeal quite naturally to the Hindu Right.

                There is an explanation offered by Ajay Gudavarthy that “They need him to keep the idea of a tolerant Hindu to remain in popular memory so that the violence by Hindus finds justification”.

 

(Please Click Here to Readthe article On National Herald’s Website)

 

Migrant Workers Certainly Need More Attention

 

 Migrant Workers Certainly Need More Attention

 

Jawhar Sircar

(1^st October, 2020,New Indian Express)

                    

      Of the three labour bills passed by Parliament recently, one has a special dispensation for unorganised workers, who have surely been neglected by successive governments. The utter chaos and largely-avoidable pain that migrant labourers, inter-state or intra-state, suffered after the sudden announcement of nation-wide lockdown in March this year is still fresh in people’s minds. Governments at the centre and in the states hardly have any updated records on who is a migrant worker and where exactly he is working at present. The well-meaning  legislation of 1979 called the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act failed India rather miserably in its hour of crises.

 

      One expected, therefore, that both unorganised workers and their most vulnerable part, the inter-state migrant workers, would be dealt with more sensitivity. After all, the latest labour legislations may be the final ones for several years to come. We cannot blame only the government as these labour codes were finally screened and vetted by the multi-party parliamentary standing committee — but this was before Covid. Since inter-state migrants can not vote in their guest states, unless they are long-time residents, political parties may  have lesser interest in these birds of passage. The terms ‘unorganised’ and ‘migrant labourers’ are, of course, not coterminous but the largest  large chunk of migrant workers belong to the unorganised category. The 2011 census located 5.6 crore migrant labourers, while the Finance Minister’s estimate was 8 crores.

 

        The 1979 Act just fell through the crack as the labour ministry’s machinery was overburdened with labour legislations benefitting the more demanding organised sector and could not prepare a comprehensive database of unorganised and migrant workers. But studies show that the organised part is only 10 percent of the total work force and the unorganised account for 90 percent. Within this 90 percent, not even the voluminous report of the Arjun Sengupta Committee on “Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector” of 2007 could locate the very fickle percentage of migrants. If we extrapolate its numbers, we find that unorganised workers may account for some 53.8 crores at present and organised workers are just above 6 crores — within India’s present estimated population of 138 crores, Yet, even the latest labour codes focus almost entirely on the 10 percent in the organised sector, as always. Perhaps, the deadline of getting the laws passed in the monsoon session of parliament meant that it was too late to insert special provisions for migrants labour.

 

           The latest Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code does, of course, have a promising chapter on unorganised workers. But it is all couched in so much bureaucratese that only lawyers or touts can navigate the system. Section 112 of this Code provides for settling up ‘workers’ facilitation centres’ to assist them but we have many such pious intentions strewn all over our law books. We are not sure what happened to the labour ministry’s intention to undertake a census of workers in the unorganised sector announced in 2015. It promised to assign them unique identity cards, linked to Aadhar, for getting social security benefits, health insurance and old age pension. Frankly, unorganised workers really require class  an exclusive labour law, instead of being boxed into the new Code dedicated to the organised sector. Or, at least its migrant workers surely warrant special attention. Incidentally, while almost all the major old labour Acts have been subsumed by the new Code, the failed Inter-State Migrant Workmen’s Act of 1979 has not been tackled. 

 

      Nevertheless, we can still make a start by with electronic registration of migrant labourers and  section 111 of the Code provides for this option. Since they are always moving around, a unique QR or even better code can easily be inserted (as for digital phone payments) and their current location determined by any smartphone. At the next place, the same location identification process can be repeated. This means that the previously insurmountable problem of locating a migrant worker can finally be tackled. Emergency relief in the form of direct cash benefit and food from ration shops under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana could surely be linked to this coded card. For additional verification, the migrant worker’s fingerprint could also be read by a smartphone. Of course, all such workers would not need to purchase or keep a smartphone, but they can access any one of the 50 crore smartphones available with every second adult in India — only to mark his current location and address.

 

            This labour welfare Code provides for a lot of benefits but these can only be implemented only when funds are available or the proposed cess is levied. Our major overriding concern is, however, to ensure that some identification system is in position so that if a nation-wide or regional crisis ever befalls us again, migrant labourers do not go through living hell again. If only we knew who was where after 25th March, relief could be rushed to them there, as soon as intentions and schemes were finalised. Most of them may actually have stayed back in their place of work and not scrambled to leave for home at any cost. Besides, migrants returning home may not have taken Covid 19 from urban habitats so deep into rural India.

             

(Please Click Here to Read the article On New IndianExpress Website)