Is The RSS Making Peace With Modernity? It Certainly Seems So

Change is always gut-wrenching. Especially for a nearly 100-year-old traditional organisation that is coming to terms with modernity. But the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has recently taken halting steps towards modernity that should be lauded by anyone who does not have a jaundiced eye.

In just a few months, the Sangh, founded 91 years ago by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, has made at least four changes that augur well. The least important among them is, of course, the replacement of its khakhi shorts with full trousers for its members. This may be symbolic, but behind every symbol is a deeper idea of change.

The other day we had Sangh Joint General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale telling the India Today Conclave that homosexuality is not a crime. He said: “I don’t think homosexuality should be considered a criminal offence as long as it does not affect the lives of others in society.” Even though the Sangh backtracked a bit by saying gay sex was still immoral, it did not back down from Hosabale’s suggestion that it was not a crime. This means, at some point, section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises gay sex, can be removed quietly. If the BJP finds the courage to do this, it would be stamping the mark of liberality in its own outlook.

More recently, we had the Sangh-generated controversy over whether all Indians should chant “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. But soon after the uproar, especially by Muslim organisations, Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, made it clear that there could be no coercion in this chant.

He said the chant was about winning over people by showing them real patriotism through deeds. “We (India) have to show the way to the people of the world with our life and deeds. We do not want to win or defeat anyone. We do not want to impose our ideology and thoughts on anyone. We wish to show them the path because we accept them as our own. We have to show the path to the world through our deeds”.

Bhagwat is on the right track. Like Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.”

Two days ago, General Secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi was quoted as saying he gave equal importance to Vande Mataram and Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem, and considered both the Bhagwa and the Tricolour as national symbols. But, it seems, the nuances in his statement were lost in the media reportage. He was talking about the difference between state, political power and nation, and the three ideas cannot be conflated.

According to a report in The Telegraph, Joshi was speaking on Rajyadharma and Rastradharma in Mumbai – which roughly translates to the ‘nature of the state’ and the ‘nature of the nation’. He had made a distinction between “the geographical concept of the country, the political concept of the state, and the cultural concept of the nation.” The RSS also clarified that it had not demanded a change in the current national anthem or the Tricolour.

Unwittingly or wittingly, Joshi has stumbled upon a real 21st century truth: that the ideas of ‘nation’ and ‘state’ can be different.

The nation-state was created by Europe after centuries of violence and strife dictated by geography, where people who identified racially and emotionally with one another herded themselves into separate geographies. People who fought together against common enemies thus bonded together to form “nations”. The European idea of nationhood was perhaps best defined by Ernest Renan, a 19th century French historian, who said a “nation” could be defined by a long, shared past of “endeavours, sacrifice and devotion”. Nationhood for him meant having “common glories in the past, and to have common will in the present, to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform more.” He added: “These are the essential conditions for the constitution of a people.”

Ambedkar too bought into this idea of nation, and hence his support for the idea of Pakistan. He also felt this explained why India never became a “nation” in the European sense of the term. We didn’t have enough force and violence welding us into one nation, with caste providing the anti-glue.

But the reality is this: the European idea of nation is well past its expiry date. It made sense only when “nations” had very little immigration, especially immigration of racially or religiously different people with different values. Today’s Europe – as we have seen with the shift of Islamic terrorism to this continent – is becoming multinational in character, and state and nation are no longer the same. This has been the case with India for centuries, and continues to be so even today.

There are very few nations left in the world, and even these are anachronism. They will die out.

The RSS, born in 1925, grew up with European ideas of creating a monocultural nation within the geographical area of “Akhand Bharat.” It is interesting that it is now separating the two ideas of state and nation. This is entirely modern (or post-modern, if you like that term better) in conceptualisation.

Today, barring countries that completely bar immigration and people movements (China, Japan, and some Islamic countries), the rest are “states”, not “nations” with common cultural underpinnings. The US is no longer a WASP nation; it is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial state; Britain isn’t Anglo-Saxon either; nor is Europe all-white and Christian. Saudi Arabia may be largely Muslim, and a bigoted one at that, but it too has at least two nations residing within its territory – Sunni and Shia, not to speak of the thousands of people belonging to other faiths who go to Saudi Arabia for jobs and contracts.

Today, the only organisations trying to recreate old-style European nations are Islamic State, the Taliban, the al-Qaeda, and their ilk – barbaric fundamentalists who will kill and maim to force people to become the same. It is for this very reason that ISIS cannot survive. It is fighting against the truth.

Nations are about emotional connect and culture; states are about geography and the rule of law. This means that there can be several nations within one state, and several states can exist within one nation. ‘Nation’ is not equal to ‘State’.

This means the RSS version of the Hindu nation is about emotional connect to people who think of themselves as Hindu – but this nation is not coterminus with the geography of India; nor is it limited to India. Its search for a Hindu Rashtra can exist independent of India, the multi-ethnic, multi-religious State.

Memo to RSS: if it continues along the lines it has been changing of late, it has a bright future. It may even put India’s phoney “secularists” out of business.