“Not one of the people who want to
associate themselves with the BJP would be admitted within the vicinity
of a detergent advertisement.”
-T K Arun, “The BJP hype”, The Economic Times, Dec 26, 1997.
“Its phenomenal growth notwithstanding,
the BJP has always lacked acceptability in that segment of society for
which BBC and the Time magazine serve as a window to the world.”
-Bhaskar Roy, “Five o’clock faces”, The Times of India, September 16, 1999.
Though these two quotes name the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the sentiments they convey is intended to
apply to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates. For
decades, cut-and-paste articles have appeared, primarily from those
belonging to the left spectrum of politics, which proclaim that the RSS
has not produced any intellectuals of note.
The
intention of these articles is not merely to state a fact – like the
RSS headquarters is at Resham Bagh in Nagpur, or that it was founded in
1925 on Vijayadashmi day. If it were so, then it would merit a line in
an article, and not a full one. And, even if a full article is written,
it would not merit the multiple cut-and-paste articles that one has
seen. You do not get to read an article on the architecture of Resham
Bagh or the various buildings and offices in the compound, nor what
happened on that momentous day in 1925.
The real intention is to imply that
there has to be something intrinsically wrong with an organisation that
is supposedly not able to produce any intellectuals. The leftists seem
to start with the proposition that for an organisation to be successful
and effective it has to keep on churning intellectuals. So, when they
say that the Sangh has not been able to produce intellectuals, they are
effectively saying that the Sangh is not a successful or an effective
organisation.
The growth of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
I think there would be a very few takers
for the statement that the RSS is not successful or not effective. One
could talk about the extent of having achieved this goal. I think a
very large majority would give a score in excess of 80%. I do not base
this number on any survey, but based on my own personal experience.
Given that the RSS is going to complete 90 years of existence on this
year’s Vijayadashmi day, and that it has been continuously growing and
expanding, reinforces my experience.
The growth of the RSS has happened despite a continuous and vigorous opposition of the governments in power
– the British during the pre-independence period, and the secular
governments in the period after that. And also strong opposition from
those occupying the intellectual space. The articles about the RSS,
particularly in the English language, have been written by the ones who
had a deep antipathy to the organisation and its ideology. However,
given the growth of the RSS, it would seem to me that these articles
really did not have much impact in the minds of even the English readers
in Bharatiya society.
Today, the RSS has spread its activities
to nearly all sections of the society. And its organisations lead in
many sectors – for example the labour wing and the student wing, set up
just prior to independence. Then there is the organisation that I am
active with – Vishwa Hindu Parishad – which has been successfully able
to bring together the sants and swamis of the various sampradayas of the
larger Hindu fold. Ekal Vidyalay runs more than 40,000 schools in the
tribal areas on the principle of one-teacher school. In the successful
struggle against the Emergency of 1975-77, those who had come out in the
streets were largely swayamsevaks, and they formed more than 70% of
those who spent time in jail. It was the swayamsevaks, settled outside
Bharat, who formed the backbone of the Friends of India Society
International, which ensured the flow of information to the world.
It runs large number of schools where
value education is provided besides what is prescribed to get the
qualification. It has put together the history of the development of
science throughout our civilisation. It has encouraged Sanskrit and
other Bharatiya languages. It has encouraged the temple priests to
study the proper way to conduct the rituals, and also explain them to
the devotees. Such micro level work in the samaj has also been emulated
by other Hindu organisations, leading to a big synergy of effort.
The RSS has also inspired hundreds of
thousands of swayamsevak to undertake a large number of social service
activities in various fields. My favourite is the Dr Hedgewar Hospital
in Aurangabad, which is one of the largest private sector hospital in
the country. In contrast to many of the other private sector hospitals,
poor people can access quality medical treatment at very low rates, and
sometimes without having to pay. It was started by a few medical
doctors in Aurangabad, who decided to devote their lives in service to
the people of Bharat, forgoing an opportunity to earn large incomes if
they had gone into private practice.
The leftist ‘intellectuals’
In contrast, I would like those who are
opposed to the ideology of the RSS to let the people know what they have
achieved in activities similar to where the RSS is present. They can
even list out the achievements in managing state funded institutions.
And then we can have a discussion on the issue of successfulness and
effectiveness.
The multitude of articles about RSS and
lack of intellectualism, also implies that those opposed to the ideology
have been continuously churning out what are called intellectuals. It
is necessary to understand how this was achieved. While not so openly
stated in the past, there is now an admission that those opposed to the RSS were the ones who were dominating the state-funded institutions.
That their appointment was on the basis of conforming to an ideology,
and not on the basis of scholarship is clear in the next section.
The leftists have produced the
intellectuals not by setting up their own institutes, but by capturing
the state institutions, which were set up by using the money from the
society. And they did this through subterfuge, and not honestly. Once
in the position of power they had little concern about being loyal to
the society, and they tried to thrust their ideology on an unwilling
people.
Three articles
To explain my point, I would like my reader to read the following articles by Ramchandra Guha:
I am deliberately using one person to
make my case, because I have had correspondence with him in the past,
and I attempted to put across to him the Sangh world-view on certain
matters. And I met him once in Mumbai in a meeting lasting about two
hours. Some time ago, he requested me not to send him any messages, and
my messages to him have stopped. However, reading the comments on the
articles that he has written, there seem to be sufficient number of
people who are giving him perspectives that came to my mind. (Provided,
of course, he does read the comments.)
Guha’s twitter introduction says that he
is a lapsed Marxist. I have not been able to find out when he lapsed,
and I really do not see his writing to be any different from what a
Marxist would write – though, perhaps due to the pressure from social
media, he does deviate from the party line here and there. But, he
always seems to revert back. Given the way Guha admires the Marxists
that are mentioned in the article, he does not seem to have taken the
necessary step to critically assess the Marxist ideology.
In one of the articles, Guha starts
about how in 2004 a senior minister took a senior journalist for lunch,
where the minister asked for names for the ‘directorship of a
prestigious centre of historical research’. No names were given, so we
just have to take Guha’s word that it was a prestigious centre. Nor
will be dwell much on why the views of a journalist (name unknown) were
sought for the position, instead of doing a professional search. It
reminds me of the phone conversations that the ex-lobbyist, Nira Radia,
had with journalists like Barkha Dutt, Vir Sanghvi etc.
What Guha says next is quite interesting
– maybe amusing is the right word. His name was rejected because he
wrote critically about Indira Gandhi, and that of Partha Chatterjee (a
‘distinguished political theorist’) met a similar fate because the
latter wrote critically about Jawaharlal Nehru. Since we do not know
the name of the institute, the nation has lost an opportunity to
identify the Nehru-Gandhi sycophant who eventually made the grade. And
an opportunity to evaluate his professional contribution to the
‘prestigious’ centre. Maybe Guha can let the nation know. If nothing
else, it would be an interesting gossip.
In another article, Guha talks about his
first job as a supposed academic at the Centre for Studies in Social
Sciences in Kolkata, a state funded institution. He lets out that early
into the job, in an interaction with a senior colleague, the latter
assumed that Guha was a Marxist. (Perhaps it was true at the time, and
that Guha lapsed only some years later.) Furthermore, he clearly says
that this colleague was a member of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) and he did not seem to see anything wrong that a state
institution is manned with card-carrying members of the communist party.
Perhaps inadvertently, Guha lets out
that ‘(a)t least since the time of Indira Gandhi, the Central government
has sought to undermine the autonomy of institutions that promote
culture and scholarship.’ I do not know whether Guha wrote anything substantially about the undermining while it was happening.
What is clear is that he does not dwell on the effect of the
undermining today, except to state that there was undermining. He
brings it up only in context of proclaiming that the RSS’ supposed
attempt to undermine the integrity of the institutions will lead to a
disastrous situation. As if we are presently in a land of milk and
honey, where academic freedom reigns, and high quality professional
research is being undertaken.
There are many other tit-bits that we
can glean from the above three articles about how the Marxists used the
state funded institutions to try and thrust their ideology. He admits that the leftists were allowed to capture the state institutions where one would normally find intellectuals,
and that this was done with a political objective in mind. And he also
says that only fellow-travellers had any hope of being admitted in the
supposedly hallow portals.
However, there is a common thread that
even though it was a fact that the autonomy of the various institutes
was undermined, the sycophants were actually quite competent in their
field of work. Not the best perhaps, but competent nevertheless. But
the reader just has to take Guha’s word that one can be competent and
sycophantic at the same time. For example, if post-independent history
of Bharat is not critical of the Nehru-Gandhi family, even where there
is a legitimate reason, how can the history be unbiased? Of course,
hindsight is perfect vision – but a society can learn from its mistakes
only when it is admitted that the mistakes are made in the first place.
At one place, Guha says: “Marxist
historiography is a legitimate model of intellectual enquiry, albeit one
which — with its insistence on materialist explanations — is of limited
use when examining the role of culture and ideas, the influence of
nature and natural processes, and the exercise of power and authority.”
How is it possible that a legitimate model is of limited use when it
comes to applying it to so many different strands of inquiry? Such
statements, and many others, makes me to conclude that Guha comes out as
a confused person, drifting all over the place, and unwilling to admit
that a major mistake has happened. The articles come out as written by
one who has a reasonably good command over the English language, but not
so much on logic or reasoning. Of course, I read it from my lens of
being a right-wing.
The intellectual space
I would, therefore, like to make a
distinction between an intellectual and one who occupies the
intellectual space. This space consists of academic institutions,
analysts who write from popular and/or specialised publications on
issues relating to a nation, journalists, etc. This intellectual space
need not necessarily be the one created by the state. However, when the
person occupies the space created by the state, he has an aura of
independence and unbiasedness.
When a reader explicitly knows that a
person’s writing is influenced by his ideology, the reader is able to
sift the wheat from the chaff. He also understands that to form an
informed view on a matter, he will have to read articles written by
others. But, when the state institutions have been captured by the
leftists, and the ideological inclinations of the people occupying the
position of knowledge is not generally known, the reader has a problem.
Either he will accept what he reads as unadulterated truth, or he will
be in a state of confusion.
To understand the problem, let us look
at the contribution of the leftists towards resolving the various
problems that are faced by our nation. They have projected that within
the Marxist school of thought, solutions to the issues confronted by the
socially underprivileged will be found. Yet, even today one frequently
hears of atrocities against the Dalits primarily by those who are
classified as Other Backward Castes. They have authenticated the
political programme of the appeasement of the religious leaders of the
minority communities, as a legitimate tool to win elections. But the
Sachar Committee has highlighted the failure of the political leadership
to do anything for the economic and social progress of the poor in the
Muslim community.
Their definition of secularism was exclusively in terms of opposition to the RSS ideology.
When sociologists like T N Madan and Asish Nandy wrote one article each
questioning the practice, and inquiring whether there is true
secularism, they were projected by their colleagues as having suddenly
become supporters of the RSS. The former wrote, in apparent
exasperation, “A couple of my critics have, however, jumped to the
conclusion that, since I have reservations about secularism as presented
in the prevailing discourse, I must therefore by a supporter of
communalism. This is patently absurd.” [T N Madan, “Secularism and the
Intellectuals”, Economic and Political Weekly, April 30, 1994.]
The two, and many others, were
intellectually terrorised in stopping their inquiry on the lines they
had proposed. And so the project of a perverted secularism still
prevails.
In the economic field, the Marxist
ideology determined the policy directions that the state followed. By
1980 it was clear that these policies were a failure. However, instead
of introspecting on the causes of the failure, the Hindus were blamed by
the Marxists for being cussed at not using the supposedly wonderful
opportunities that were provided to them. Today, the same Marxists
proclaim that the growth that has been achieved by the changes
instituted since 1980 has done nothing for income equality between
sections of the society. They do not even think of considering to
examine whether there was income equality when their policies dominated
the thinking at the time.
In case of history, the Marxist starting point is that there is nothing in the history of our nation that we need to be proud of.
Hence, any inquiry into our past will only lead to disappointment and
so there is no profit in it. In fact, the history is presented in a
form that does not conform to the national consciousness. During the
1940s, they said that Bharat consists of many countries, following the
line of the Soviets in USSR. They completely ignored the cultural unity
that enabled Adi Shankaracharya to give discourse on Hindu philosophy
all over the country. Or that of Swami Vivekanand speaking, again all
over the country, on the same subject after he came back from the World
Parliament of Religions, held in 1893.
It is also pertinent to point out how
the leftists used their positions in the various state organisations to
enrich themselves. Guha accepts that the Marxists who were given
positions of influence in the state run institutions went about their
task in a partisan and nepotistic manner. And, as Arun Shourie pointed
out in his book “The Eminent Historians”, they also had funds coming
their way without showing any results of their efforts. In fact,
Shourie has clearly shown the blatant disregard that these eminent
historians had to any normal rules of public funded institutions, and an
attitude that would seem to indicate that it is the duty of the society
to ensure that they had a luxurious lifestyle, even though the people
on whose behalf they claim to be speaking live lives of misery.
But, as is said, you cannot fool all the
people all the time. The RSS, through its various organisations, and
through mass level contacts amongst all the classes of people, have been
able to bypass those who occupied the intellectual space. And through
these contacts, the RSS has been able to disabuse the minds of the
people of what can only be called the brainwashing that they have been
subjected to by the leftists. The tragedy for the nation is that this
brainwashing was conducted by using the financial resources provided by
the victims, that is the people of Bharat.
Marxism and intellectualism
To really understand the failure of the
Marxist ideology, we need to look into the history of Marxism and
intellectualism. A defining feature of Marxism was that there was never a
robust discussion, amongst those who continued to identify themselves
as Marxists, about the premise on which it was based. Organisational
rigidity and a top-down leadership ensured that free thinking was
actively discouraged. With changing social environment, the discussions
would have fine-tuned the ideology to make it relevant and dynamic. I
believe it was John Maynard Keynes who said that when the data changed,
he had no problem to change his views.
Marxism, right from the time it
captured state power at the political level, has had a deep disdain and
suspicion of those occupying the intellectual space, particularly those
outside the state institutions. Lenin said: “In general, as
you probably know, I am not particularly fond of intelligentsia, and our
new slogan ‘eliminate illiteracy’ should by no means be taken as
expressing a wish to give birth to a new intelligentsia. To ‘eliminate
illiteracy’ is necessary only so that every peasant, every worker can
read our decrees, orders and appeals by himself without anyone’s help.
The goal is purely practical. That’s all there is to it”. (Quoted in D N
Ghosh, “A God that is failing”, The Times of India, December 6, 2007.)
In effect, Lenin set about creating an
army of useful idiots, who, being literate, could be given space in
state institutions to take the Marxist propaganda forward. And the
persons occupying the intellectual space found it monetarily profitable
to lend their services. This happened in countries where the
opportunity to earn decent salaries were limited, and the useful idiots
allowed himself to be exploited. In the developed countries, the useful
idiots were also created – here the funds used were from the society.
But due to reasons of accountability, the Marxist had competition, and
the same institutes also encouraged a critical study of Marxism, and
alternate paradigms were also provided to the students and the society.
But, merely occupying the intellectual
space really does not necessarily make one an intellectual. There is an
important characteristic that is required, the one that Ghosh, in the
above referred to article, quotes Albert Camus as saying, “…the
intellectual’s role will be to say that the king is naked when he is,
and not to go into raptures over his imaginary trappings”. The writings
of Guha would show that the Marxists who have commandeered the position
of patronage in all the state funded institutions know that if they
said that the king was naked, they would have to suffer the same fate as
that of the intellectuals (in the true sense) who opposed Marxist
leaders like Lenin and Stalin.
In every country with a Marxist
government, even in West Bengal, the ones occupying the intellectual
space were always under threat of the state funding drying up. If
anyone wanted to say that the king is naked, they had prior examples
about what would happen if they mustered the courage to be honest to
their profession. The sad experience of dissidents like Maxim Gorky and
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet Union were examples of what would
happen to them if they even thought of mustering courage to defy the
party line. Every Marxist government has shown the same disdain for genuine intellectuals as expressed by Lenin.
They thought such people would be a threat to their position of power,
and so had to be controlled, if possible, or neutralised (by exile or by
death) otherwise.
In China, during the time of Mao Tse
Tung, anyone occupying the intellectual space showing even a hint of
questioning the party line was sent to labour camps for supposed
re-education. In Cambodia, thousands of intelligent people were killed
merely for being intelligent.
A useful idiot can never be an
intellectual, who should have the interests of the people at large so
that they are free in all sense. And when the situation is going in a
direction that is not desirable, they should speak out in favour of the
people. They should have no fear of their own safety, nor of their own
material well-being. Genuine intellectuals should be a threat to the
government in power.
Do read the full Ghosh article at:
He also says: “For years on end, Stalin
and the top party leadership carried on this tradition, treating
dissenting intelligentsia as “socially dangerous” elements.” The
dissenters in Bharat are those who think that within the parameters of
Hindutva, solutions to the nation’s problems can be located.
Lessons in logic
The first lesson in logic dwells on the
following: “All the ducks that I have seen are white, therefore all
ducks are white.” The second lesson dwells on what is to be done if the
above person meets another who says: “All the ducks that I have seen
are grey, therefore all ducks are grey.” There can be one of two
reactions – to contend to the other that what he has seen are not really
ducks, or to consider the possibility that ducks could have a colour
other than white. It is only when one is ideologically driven, and not
logic driven, that one will straightaway insist the former, rather than
reassess one’s opinion and then come to the correct conclusion.
A true intellectual, when given the
additional data, will accept his conclusion that all ducks are white
does not conform to the reality. Furthermore, he will investigate if
ducks have more colours other than white and grey. He will define the
duck not on the basis of the colour, but on other characteristics, like
the shape of the beak, the size of the body, the way the bird walks,
whether it floats on water, etc.
The late Yadavrao Joshi, a very senior
RSS pracharak of yesteryears said that whether there are intellectuals
in the Sangh is for others to say. But one can definitely say that
there are intelligent persons in the Sangh. One such intelligent
person, Dr Keshav Hegdewar, started the RSS ninety years ago. He
inspired other intelligent persons to join the RSS, and all these
intelligent people have built up the RSS to what it is today. The RSS
would like the people to judge them by the work that is done, and not by
flaunting the education qualifications, or the name of the state funded
institute that they are employed at.
The Intellectual Kshatriya
Even though the intellectual space was
denied to them by the machinations of the Marxists, and their political
masters, the Hindus worked in their own way to keep the memory of our
civilisation and spirituality alive. The Hindu samaj provided theses
Intellectual Kshatriyas the financial support to maintain their body and
soul together. And because these Kshatriyas were working for a
civilizational cause, they did not much care for material benefits. The
viewed the value of their work by the body of knowledge they imparted.
The task of those who looked at history
from their own civilisational perspective was not all that difficult
because this work has been going on for centuries. Bharat is unique in
the sense that those who came here from outside to conquer the land and
subjugate the civilisation were not fully successful. The people may
have been politically ruled by those who were ill-disposed to the
philosophy and culture of the Hindus, but their control stopped at the
level of the mundane issues relating to administration. The Hindus
continued to control, and nurture, the civil institutions through which
their history and culture was propagated through generations. And this
formed the base on which the Hindus could easily build upon when they
had the political freedom to do so.
The Hindu samaj provided the Kshatriyas
various platforms to convey their thoughts to the people at large. In
the true Hindu tradition, these platforms were not a one-way flow of
information. There would be debates and there would be discussions, so
that the Intellectual Kshatriya could refine their thoughts, as well
keep them relevant to the needs of the time. Through such debates, Adi
Shankarachrya was as much a student as he was a teacher.
The Hindus who ventured into natural
sciences always found the philosophy books as important to their work as
the ones in sciences. Many of them wrote treatises on Hindu philosophy
with as much fluency as the ones they wrote on sciences. And they had
no hesitation in accepting that the understanding of Hindu philosophy made them better scientists.
Out of the tens of thousands of the
Intellectual Kashatriyas, I would like to name two – Ram Swarup and Sita
Ram Goel – to whom I am grateful for forming my own thought process and
keep them rooted in the Hindu culture and history. Apart from being a
historian, Goel also set up a publication house, which allowed so many
others to see their work in print, and so reach a larger number of
people. Other Hindus have posted these works on the internet, and it
has become available to tens of millions of people all over the world.
The influence spread not just to those who were born Hindus. Others who
came in contact with the people of Bharat, and who soon started to look
at Hindu Dharma with a certain amount of empathy, found these works as a
basis to research in a manner that made sense.
Due to their training in pamphleteering,
and thinking that language can make a good substitute for logic, the
Marxists are not able to comprehend that without intellectualism a mass
based organisation cannot reach the levels that the Sangh has. While
emotions are very important for a mass based organisation, without a
sound grounding in sensibleness, the organisation cannot sustain itself
in any meaningful way. Through various programmes, the Sangh explains
its world view on various issues to its swayamsevaks, who then convey it
to others through their contacts. Also, through the programme of mass
contacts, these views are conveyed to the people at large.
In Conclusion
The swayamsevaks in general, and the
Intellectual Kshatriyas in particular, will not allow the histrionics of
the Marxists to distract them from going about their self-appointed
tasks of keeping Hindu Dharma not just alive but also dynamic. We know
that it was the sacrifice of our ancestors that ensured the survival of
our civilisation. We will not allow this sacrifice go in vain.
(Ashok Chowgule is the Working
President (External) of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. This article is a
tribute to the intelligent people in the Sangh parivar, the Intellectual
Kshatriyas, and the hundreds of million Hindus who are doing their own
bit for a resurgent Hindu Dharma)
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