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  My acknowledgements are due to the great scholars and Indologists who gave me a firm foundation for expounding the philosophy of RSS in a way that is slightly at variance with the conventional way it is presented by RSS ideologues and theorists. I am specially inspired by Koenrad Elst, Ramswaroop, Sitaram Goel, David Frawley and Rakesh Sinha for their meticulous way of presenting their ideas.

  A great Gandhian, Shri Dharampal has thrown new light on what was supposed to be a mythical story of a prosperous India of yore and I must thank him for this hard labour he put in and to Claude Alvares who has brought his viewpoints out so well. I obliged to Dr Sadhana Modh whom I have quoted for a management perspective on the organisational philosophy of RSS. I have quoted many other authors and scholars as well, whose contribution I have acknowledged in my Index at the end of the book and thank all of them.

  I express my gratitude to my uncle (Chacha ji) Shri Jagdish Chandra Sharda ‘Shastri’ who encouraged me to follow the path of selfless service for society through his own lifetime dedication to the cause of social service. He was instrumental in taking RSS work overseas, beginning from Kenya.

  Last but not the least, my family who has borne with me all these years, never complained about my priorities in life and suffered silently with deep understanding; supporting me throughout.

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Preface

  Acknowledgements

  Editorial Notes

  Prologue

  I.Sangh’s Fight for Democracy During Emergency

  II.Major Defining Moments in RSS History

  Part I – THE SPIRIT

  Extracts of RSS Constitution

  III.What Defines India

  IV.Need to Organise Hindus

  V.Daily RSS Prayer and its Meaning

  Part II – THE FORM

  VI.Shakha

  VII.Inculcating Values and Sense of Nationhood through Festivals

  VIII.Supremacy of Mission Over Self

  IX.Human Relations and Management Training

  X.Organisational Structure

  XI.Institution of Prachaarak

  Part III – THE MANIFESTATION

  XII.Off shoots

  Sister/Associate Organisations

  XIII.Nation, Society and RSS

  Second Line of Command

  Positive Force of Social Harmony

  Duty Towards Society – Seva

  Defending and Nurturing Hindu Faith

  XIV.Current scenario

  EPILOGUE

  XV.The Ultimate Secret

  XVI.Secretiveness of RSS and Media

  References

  Readings

  ANNEXURE

  Annexure I – Sarsanghchaalaks of RSS

  Annexure II – 1942, Quite India Agitation and RSS

  Annexure III – Background of Ban on RSS in 1948

  Annexure IV – Exchanges Between RSS, Patel

  and Nehru

  Annexure V – Satyagraha Against 1948 Ban and

  its Successful Culmination

  About the Author

  Editorial Notes

  Roman spellings of Indian words: I have avoided diacritical marks for Sanskrit and other Indian words throughout the book to make reading easier. But, to overcome the problem of pronunciation, I have used phonetic spellings being used by internet service providers in providing transliteration of Indian languages. e.g. Asha could be written as Aashaa, to help those uninitiated in Indian languages pronounce the words properly. But, commonly understood words like Bharat will not appear as Bhaarat as people generally read it correctly.

  Terminology: I have not used typical words used in RSS but given them in brackets in most places so that reader may not have to sit down with a dictionary from page one, and also make things more familiar sounding. Thus, I have used words like volunteer, activist, swayamsevak interchangeably though purists from Sangh school, as also linguists may not like it. Worker is not as dignified a word as kaaryakartaa, nor does it lend due weight to this word that people in RSS give. It does not convey the commitment, seniority and experience of a volunteer (swayamsevak) who becomes ‘kaaryakartaa’. I have taken this liberty to make reading easier. Similarly, I have not differentiated between India and Bharat, though a Sangh member or sympathiser generally prefers to use only Bharat. These two words have come to carry different connotations for the opinion makers but for common man they are same.

  Annexure: There is a great deal of history that needs to be shared with the reader to give a proper perspective about RSS. This centres around 1942 to 1948 i.e. from Quit India movement to first ban on RSS and its revocation. Critics have flung lot of mud casually at RSS with reference to this period feeling secure that that common people would not tend do tedious research to find correct facts. I felt that these details might come in way of the narrative that is meant to give an overview of RSS, its ideology, its structure and its reach in various social fields across India and bog it down. So, those chapters from recent history have been included in Annexure, making it larger than I had hoped for. However, any serious student of RSS and current history would like to know these facts, so I decided to live with this larger than expected Annexure.

  Prologue

  “RSS is a revolutionary organisation. No other organisation in the country comes anywhere near it. It alone has the capacity to transform society, end casteism and wipe the tears from the eyes of the poor. I have great expectations from this revolutionary organisation that has taken up the challenge of creating a new India.”

  –Shri Jai Prakash Narayan, 1977

  After the emergency, on Nov.3, 1977, JP addressed a huge RSS training camp in Patna. Excerpt from that speech

  I

  Sangh’s Fight for Democracy During Emergency

  Let me begin from the middle. The Emergency imposed by Mrs. Indira Gandhi on 25 June 1975 was a watershed event in the annals of independent India. It was also a defining moment for the RSS. It was an event which brought together all anti-Congress parties to a single platform, led to incarceration of various political leaders in common jails and gave them a chance to know each other better. At the end of it all, the Janata Party was born which brought down the curtains on this digression from our democratic traditions. The Emergency is a landmark event in the history of RSS too. People of my generation look at this struggle for restoration of democratic values as our signal contribution to the society. The current generations are unaware of ’a collective memory beyond the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and the 2002 Godhra train burning and subsequent riots in Gujarat. To them Emergency is a distant non-event. But, for the independent India, it was one of the most significant episodes in her modern history. I thought it would be a good idea to begin from this milestone in the life of RSS and our nation.

  For the people of our generation, who were in the prime of their youth, Shri Jai Prakash Narayan’s (JP) movement for probity in public life had fired their imagination about ‘sampoorna kranti’ – total revolution – to throw out old decaying system and bring about a fundamental change in the political system. That it didn’t end up that way is a sad commentary on our political leadership and a deep sense of disappointment for us who dedicated their lives for the restoration of democracy, and fight for ideals personified by Jayprakash Narayan at that point in history. This pain is exacerbated further when we note that people like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan who have mocked at the ideals of JP by following a blatantly casteist and communal agenda to fulfill their political ambition are also the products of that struggle. The Hindu mythology of churning of oceans (saagar manthan) tells us that every churning that throws up nectar will also throw up poison. How true!

  Let me not jump the gun and give a little idea about what this emergency was all about. After the heady days of 1971, with the decisive victory of India over Pakistan ending with liberation of Bangladesh, Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her courtiers raised her to a very superhuman pedestal. They presumed that they could do anything. This se
nse of arrogance, of absolute power was like an aphrodisiac for many Congress leaders who basked in the shadows of Mrs. Gandhi. Those were the days when the then Congress president Dev Kant Barooah declared that “India is Indira and Indira is India”. All this led to various acts of omission and commission. This arrogance went overboard with the persecution of opposition wherever possible. With power going to the heads of the ruling class, corruption became rampant.

  First, Gujarat came into the grip of ‘Navnrimaan Andolan’ led primarily by students who wished to displace the highly corrupt regime of Chimanbhai Patel propped up by Congress. It was essentially a non-political movement spearheaded by students. As it picked force, RSS, ABVP members, erstwhile Jan Sangh and other opposition groups also supported the agitation actively which ultimately led to the downfall of Patel and installation of the first non-Congress government in Gujarat headed by Babubhai Patel. The agitation inspired a parallel agitation in Bihar too. Jayprakash Narayan or JP as he was fondly addressed, was persuaded to come out of virtual retirement and lead the agitation fueled by idealistic youth and students. A forum called Lok Sangharsh Samiti was formed and Nana ji Deshmukh was nominated as the General Secretary of this forum which had members from the whole spectrum of political and student organisations and a few non-political social organisations too. This was also the time when JP came very close to Jan Sangh and the RSS leaders seeing their great work on the ground. This intense ferment in the society shook up Congress and Mrs. Indira Gandhi. In interim, her election was declared void by Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha of Allahabad High Court which led to political chaos.

  Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s coterie played on her insecurity and convinced her on taking strong action to suppress this agitation and opposition. She declared a ‘state of emergency’ on the midnight of 25 June 1975, citing grave internal security threat to the nation. It was the first time that emergency was imposed citing internal security. A draconian act, the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) was revived to quell any dissidence, which allowed detention without trial for atleast two years. All the important opposition leaders were arrested overnight and RSS was also banned for the second time since its existence. A few sundry organisations like Anand Marg and Jamat-e-Islami were also banned as tokenism to show that law was even-handed and there was no bias.

  The Emergency pitch forked RSS into the battle for restoration of democracy. Just to give my readers an idea of RSS’s contribution to this fight, nearly 100,000 of the 130,000 people arrested during emergency were from RSS ranks. Of the 30,000 people arrested under the dreaded MISA something similar to anti-terror Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA), , approximately 25000 were RSS activists. We realised during this time that other political parties like Socialists of different hues had more leaders than cadres, so it was very rare to see a socialist activist take part in the satyaagrahas, though their leaders were arrested. Thousands of activists spent nearly 18 months under the MISA, or jailed for six months or more under some IPC sections for staging satyagraha; while some like me spent a month or so before being released thanks to a historic decision by Justice Lalit of Nagpur High Court who declared that Emergency didn’t mean suspension of basic democratic rights.

  It is interesting to point out that Justice Lalit was virtually blacklisted and did not get his promotions later. This beginning of ‘committed judiciary’, as propounded by Mrs. Indira Gandhi, who was heavily influenced by a Communist coterie in those days led by late Mr. Kumarmangalam. The Communist Party of India (CPI) had supported her actions to ‘suppress and defeat forces of fascism’. It would also be appropriate to note at this juncture that the Communists had played a dubious role during the Quit India movement of 1942, and presented a petition to the Cabinet Mission of 1946 to divide India into 16 sovereign nations as it didn’t believe India comprised of 18 nationalities. They also justified the Chinese attack of 1962. The pro-Chinese section of Communists indirectly supported it by engineering a transport strike in West Bengal. Honourable comrades like Jyoti Basu were put behind bars for a short duration during this time. This section later split from the CPI and formed the CPI-M.

  RSS and its associate organisations’ leadership in consultation with other political parties, who were part of democratic struggle, instructed volunteers of all the associate organisations to organise satyagrah across the country to create awareness amongst people about atrocities committed in the name of saving India. This agitation was backed by RSS across the length and breadth of the country. Satyagrahis would appear in the most unlikely of places during public functions with high security cordons. Many of these acts of defiance were reported in international media too.

  In a small place like my college, Parle College (today’s Sathaye College) in Mumbai, where I was the General Secretary of its student union and we had a very lively young band of RSS volunteers, we were able to sustain satyagraha for months and courted arrests nearly every week, much to the distress of the police. Our principal, Mr Potdar was so pained with the regular disturbance as also a college bandh following my arrest, that he threw me out of college like many students of my times. Eventually I ended up in St Xavier’s college under the benign guidance of late Professor Oza, a well known Marxist economist. For this same crime a fellow volunteer, my friend Girish Bodas, a student of IIT Mumbai, was put behind MISA on the grounds of a complaint filed by our college authorities. Incidentally, the whole Bodas family is a devoted Sangh family. While two brothers were in jail, their mother and father worked silently for their respective Sangh related organisations for women and teachers. Their only mode of communication in those days was leaving behind small notes on paper about their likely time of returning home. Such is the dedication of members of RSS and its associate organisations.

  It is a telling commentary on the bias of so called scholars and of modern Indian history chroniclers like Ramchandra Guha that they simply gloss over these facts of history or write disparagingly about RSS contribution rather than highlight the exemplary way they bore the brunt of atrocities in and outside jail even as their careers, family lives and businesses were damaged or ruined.

  Even RSS sympathisers and activists who were not active any more were picked up on the basis of Crime Investigation Department (CID) reports made years back. An illustrative case is the raid police made to search for my elder brother who had long since moved to Surat but his name appeared due to his activities a decade before. They didn’t search for my belongings though I was very active at that time. We used to hear of such humorous mix ups in many places.

  We in Mumbai were a little lucky and police generally behaved decently with the agitators, realising that we were disciplined and law abiding. I suspect that police probably also understood the nature of the struggle and was sympathetic in many cases. Only if burdened with political pressure did they behave boorishly with volunteers. But, we listened and read about the indescribable horror stories of torture of RSS activists in police stations and jails, especially in states ruled by overzealous satraps of Congress like Punjab, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala (where both Congress and Communists hated RSS volunteers’ guts). But, the activists bore such insults and tortures resolutely. The tortures if described in detail would make the infamous Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp of US army look like a picnic!

  Just to give an idea to this generation of how a supposedly democratic government and its bureaucracy behaves when it gets absolute powers, here’s a glimpse of the torture heaped on to these political prisoners, often including ladies. It is an example of how a fascist state can behave under the garb of democracy. Remember they were not hardened criminals. Their simplest punishment involved parading activists naked and keeping them so for days, strangling their dignity thus. They would force them to pee into each other’s mouths. They were also subjected to more sadistic treatment, that involved performing unnatural sexual acts in front of their colleagues and police, pushing rods, burning cigarettes into various orifices of human body. It coul
d be plain torture by keeping a person thirsty for days on end, beating him or her, giving aeroplane treatment (tying hands behind back and letting the person hang from his hands for hours), pulling nails, and similar grotesque tortures. Most of these tortures are recorded by the victims and their colleagues while some are part of witness evidence in the Shah Commission appointed by the Janata Party government to enquire about the atrocities during the emergency. It is alleged that the Congress government upon winning power in 1980, destroyed all copies of the report. But, it was resurrected with one copy that was found. Its hard cover copy was available on Amazon.com, edited by late DMK leader Era Sezhiyan, but out of stock now. The working of this commission was disrupted by the party workers of the Youth Congress, led by Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s son Sanjay Gandhi. This is in itself is topic of contemporary history that students should study. These are the same elements who are top Congress leaders today and lecture RSS about rowdy behavior!

  My narrative won’t be complete without mentioning the incarceration of George Fernandes who was put into jail in harsh conditions along with his brother Lawrence Fernandes and well known industrialist Viren Shah on charges of planning violence against the State. The case was famously known as the ‘Baroda Conspiracy Case’. These people were alleged to have conspired to use explosives to create terror and bring down the government. Lawrence was so badly brutalised that he was a physical and mental wreck by the time he was out of the jail and died a sick man in 2005. George Fernandes was paraded around in chains and these photographs were published in national newspapers to scare potential rebels. This case was closed after the Janata Party came to power in 1977.

  The press at that time behaved in a very tame manner except for some great exceptions like the brave owner of Indian Express G D Goenka and journalists like B G Varghese. The government had clamped censorship on the press on the very day the emergency was declared. Everything that were to be printed in newspapers had to be vetted by an omnipotent censor committee. The press brought up on license quota raj and newsprint doles behaved more timidly than required. Commenting on it, L K Advani had famously remarked, It crawled when it was asked to bend. We were thrilled and inspired by Mr Goenka, when he chose to keep the editorial column blank as he couldn’t write what he wanted to. The government then passed an order that you cannot keep a column blank. But, the Indian Express refused to crawl throughout the Emergency. It stood stoic against the volley of arm twisters initiated by the government. Goenka was harassed and indicted under various laws. Then, there was a famous classified in the Times of India which condoled the death of Democracy in a coded manner. The only way news could travel was through secret meetings, rumours, guarded telephone talks (even the telephones were tapped), people travelling around to carry news or undertake various activities. There were underground pamphlets which were distributed surreptitiously in thousands by the activists to spread news and information about the pro-democracy agitation and government’s atrocities.