‘sevak’ 
for the 
nation

To serve the people and ensure just governance for all Indians, Narendra Modi and his party must break free from his organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and its regressive ideology

You may love him or hate his party’s ideology, but there’s no way you can ignore the organisation that planned and secured Narendra Damodardas Modi the PM’s post in New Delhi through the ballot. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, better known as the RSS, is dreaded by other religious groups in the country which are wary of its rightist ideology. It has bred and nurtured the future prime minister’s religious and political beliefs for 17 years while laying the seeds of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the political outfit planted with a larger purpose in mind — absolute power.

It gave Modi a share of the limelight back in 2001 by offering him the BJP Chief Minister’s post in Gujarat, which he gleefully accepted to put party veterans in the shade. India’s PM-in-the-making later survived the communal storm of the 2002 riots with their backing, and look where he’s now perched — as their patron of development.

A sweeping win will give no room for coalition partners in this regime. The BJP can afford to go it alone in government. It’s a kind of brute power in numbers even the organisation’s strategists did not expect to reach. Unlike the coalition experiments under the A. B. Vajpayee governments of 1998 and 2001, this is their crowning glory, a culmination of their saffron strategy 67 years after Independence, The RSS might derive its might from these figures for the next four years unless Modi charts his own approach with the party in tow.

For the men in khakhi shorts who brandish lathis (batons), one of their stamps of Indian-ness, the political road from Nagpur to New Delhi was strewn with thorns of national securalism or the pseudo variety till the summer of 2014. They can now sing their favourite verse aloud:. “Forever I bow to thee, Oh motherland, Oh motherland of us Hindus. Oh Lord, grant us such might as no power on earth can ever challenge.”

The great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, who penned the country’s national anthem with unity in diversity as its theme, dreamed of a time where the ‘mind is without fear, knowledge is free and where the world has not broken up by narrow domestic walls’. The organisation’s move to the national stage full-time to support Modi behind the scenes, or through remote control, could set the stage for the reversal of the secular goals so entrenched in the constitution.

A hotline is already in place with their chosen one even before a government has been formed. Reports say they have given Modi a free hand to choose his team despite rumblings in the ranks from senior leaders like L.K. Advani and Sushma Swaraj.

An initial arrangement will have Modi speaking directly to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on all party matters. The plan is shelve the Hindutva (rightist) plank for now and focus on governance under the watchful eyes of the organisation whose cadre took to the streets to galvanise support for the party in the heat and dust of the campaign. They also ensured supporters turned up at the voting booths to cast their votes for BJP candidates.

RSS cadre are put through their paces at 40,000 daily training sessions across India. The organisation and offshoots like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which helped tear down the Babri Masjid in 1992, bringing secularism to its knees, garner their support from the fringe which believes in moral policing and a Hindu conservative, vegetarian way of life.

Top guns, rather lathis of the organisation, are opposed to what they consider ‘minority appeasement’ (Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists are seen as minority communities). They want the special status for the state of Jammu and Kashmir revoked; a ban on cow slaughter; adoption of a uniform civil code for all communities which covers marriage, divorce and inheritance. Most communities in the country have their own personal laws on these subjects. The RSS is also against conversions and have often trained their ire against Christian missionaries.

Another big question is whether the organisation and its affiliates like the Parishad and Bajrang Dal would want to tamper with school textbooks like they did during the last National Democratic Alliance government led by the BJP from 2001 to 2004, which attempted to dilute the Congress’ role during the freedom movement.

Modi may find it hard to break from his mentors and from his extreme Hindu leanings in a country where ideas abound. But he must become his own man for the sake of a new India, driven by its youth and its ideals of a just and free society where every individual has a role to play in its development. Ideology cannot put bread on the table, ideas can and ideals will open doors to a country which shows enormous potential for growth.

The organisation let him go at the age of 36 for the sake of the party and power. At 63, it’s time for India’s prime minister-elect to take the nation with him. Even the poll numbers are in his favour. Can he cut the Gordian knot?

Allan@khaleejtimes.com

• India