Welcoming The Sangh Parivar's Dalit Agenda

The anti-casteism of the RSS, its history and future. 

Dr.Praveen Togadia recently spoke about non-Dalit Hindus ‘befriending at least one Dalit family’. The apex body of RSS passed a resolution to make ‘one well, one temple, one crematorium’ in all villages. Clearly some churning has been happening within the Sangh circles regarding the social discrimination existing in Hindu society.

The English media though, has responded with Pavlovian determinism. It dubbed the resolution as “the Sangh Parivar’s attempt at checking the increasing number of religious conversions by lower caste Hindus” (The Hindu, March 22 2015). Earlier when the VHP  had called for non-Dalit Hindus to dine with Dalit Hindus, it was labelled as “an attempt to woo Dalit voters who can swing fortunes in many Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh” (The Indian Express,  October 16, 2014). The manufactured common psyche by the media is expected to perceive anything Hindu organizations do towards social justice as having no innate value. It is all regarded as mere window-dressing done with an ulterior aim.

However, contrary to the claims made by the English media, striving for social justice and eradication of caste divisions is not a recent discovery in Sangh circles. While it is important, though improbable, that the media looks honestly into its anti-Hindu prejudices, it is equally important and inevitable that the Sangh leadership looks at its own history and track record in the matters of social justice. It needs to ask the question that how and why its adversaries successfully portrayed the parivar as anti-Dalit.

As early as 1960s, M.S.Golwalkar had toiled against the social evil and brought together the heads of various Hindu religious institutions on one platform and made them pass a resolution against untouchability. Golwalkar was able to achieve this on the platform of VHP, at Udipi in 1966, within two years of the organisation’s birth.  Even Sanjeev Kelkar, a man highly critical of Golwalkar, admitted that it was an extraordinary achievement:

“…all the Dharmacharyas of the Hindus came together on a level platform. It indicated that all of them had given up (at least outwardly, or on such occassions) their egoistical insistence of their hierarchial privileges, their own sense of high and low among themselves. In one voice they declared that there is no sanction to untouchability in Hindu religion. On this instance, Golwalkar has been described to have been virtually dancing with joy, forgetting the normal restraint and decorum so characteristic of him.” (Lost years of the RSS, p.81).

However, in a letter written to the secretary of the Udipi conference, Golwalkar made it clear that he was neither expecting the resolution to be a mere symbolic victory nor for it to have any magical effects:

“The resolution on untouchability … cannot be translated into actual life by mere pious expressions. Centuries old prejudices do not disappear by words or wishful thinking. Hard work, right propaganda has to be undertaken from town to town, village to village, house to house and people have to be educated to accept and practice what has been resolved, not merely as a concession to the pressure of modern times but as an abiding principle and way of life, in a humble spirit of atonement for past mistakes.” The letter is dated 14-Jan-1970.

The third leader of RSS, M.D.Deoras, made a very analytical, hard-hitting speech against caste and untouchability in a major all-India RSS event in 1974. Within RSS circles, this speech, which had been reprinted many times and translated into all Indian languages, is considered almost a policy document.

Here, Balasaheb Deoras came out heavily against the traditional arguments in favour of caste system:

“Just because something is old, it need not necessarily be good and valid for all time. Neither should we think that since we have been living all these years on the basis of old principles, we need not even think on new lines…. Science has progressed, new inventions have been made.The whole environment has changed so fast. … .Therefore, it is inconsistent with the demands of modern times to insist on the hereditary varna and caste system. … Castes no doubt exist, but they have nothing to do with the preservation of social fabric. … What exists now is not system but disorder. Hence we should all put our heads together and think how to guide it – a system which has to die and is already dying must finally end and have a natural death.”

Coming to untouchability, Deoras paraphrased a statement attributed to Abraham Lincoln and declared:

“If untouchability is not wrong then nothing in the world is wrong. . . .if inter-caste marriage . . .takes place in a greater measure it will help to a very great extent in wiping out caste-differences and bringing about homogeneity in the society.”

He told the RSS members that each one of them ‘has to keep this in mind and subscribe towards bringing about social transformation; the change-over may take time, but it is bound to take place.‘

Hence, with regard to social justice, the fundamentals are clearly defined for the Hindutva movement. Yet, even after such a clear definition of ideals and aims, the “anti-Dalit, pro-upper caste” stereotyping of Sangh and affiliated organizations has been maintained by the media ideologically adverse to it.

The reason is not far to seek. The socially conservative orthodoxy also has a prominent presence inside the Sangh and they have also been working overtime piggybacking on the Sangh’s Hindu nationalist plank. Emotional issues and national upsurges often blur and momentarily close these faultlines within the Sangh. But, nevertheless they are very well there. Caste as a social capital has been recently promulgated by ideologists and a set of economists associated with Sangh. This is diametrically opposite to what Deoras said – that caste has nothing to do with the preservation of social fabric. In fact, caste, more than being a social capital has been fragmenting the capital of the society both in terms of economics, culture and values.

Behind this is the stranglehold of an axiom that birth-based varna system is divine and, though today diluted, is fundamentally right. At some point in time, a Hindu nationalist will have to encounter this shadow. Meanwhile, Church-affiliated organizations have been working overtime among Dalits and promoting a leadership that is specifically hostile to anything Hindu or Indic in their socio-cultural lives. This has strong socio-economic ramifications.

Historically, pioneers of the Dalit empowerment movement had opposed reservation benefits being extended to converted Dalits. Dr.Ambedkar considered Dalits converting to Abrahamic religions as ‘denationalizing’. Rettaimalai Sreenivasan and AyyanKali had also strongly opposed such a move. Yet, today the continuous and systematic work of the Church and related NGOs and academic institutions has succeeded in imposing a leadership on the Dalit communities which unquestioningly accepts extending reservation benefits to converted Dalits without asking the Church itself to implement Dalit reservation in its educational institutions. Often, these institutions are run with Indian tax payers’ money.

In this context, the RSS, being the largest pan-Indian Hindu ‘Sanghathanist’ organisation, has to come out with radical solutions to the problem of integrating Dalits with the rest of Hindu society. Despite the well-meaning resolutions and far reaching vision, Sangh needs to do a social audit with regard to the caste discriminations existing in the Hindu society and prepare annual reports of the same which should be submitted to the apex body and its office bearers of the regions should be made answerable as to what social empowerment work they have done.

In recent years organizations perceived close to Sangh had organized, in Tamil Nadu, a series of events where caste affiliations are honoured. Sangh needs to develop strategies that should remove the negative and abusive elements in inter-caste relations and develop institutions including counselling centers to facilitate inter-caste marriages in the cultural, spiritual and socio-economic contexts. Whether we like or not, today in any problem, the Dalit perspective offers a whole new dimension and solution. This is apart from, and in addition to, the non-Dalit perspective.

The Hindu perspective should evolve solutions to the problems of the society by churning both. This means the apex body of RSS should have reservations for Dalits and tribal communities. It does not matter where else we have reservations for Dalits but if RSS is to become a truly pan-Hindu voice, which it alone has the evolutionary possibility to become, then it should implement reservations for Dalits in its apex body.

The project of  ‘one well, one temple, one crematorium’ is implicit with wisdom and it needs a great effort on the part of Sangh for it to be success. The well symbolizes the natural resources; the temple, the cultural-spiritual realm; and the crematorium, basic human dignity. Sharing these aspects with Dalits is a moral and spiritual responsibility of every non-Dalit Hindu. What this essentially means is that we need to democratize every traditional institution of Hindus.

Even today, RSS-related individuals support discrimination on basis of caste and some Hindu ‘spiritual’ institutions have caste-based entry rules. There are CBSE schools which have hostel facilities only for persons belonging a specific caste and that is done in the name of Hinduism. Now that is a deeper insult to Hinduism than the one perpetrated by any M.F.Hussain painting.

It is in such an internal milieu that Sangh has taken upon itself a project which emphasizes the democratic sharing of resources– natural, spiritual and cultural. The only way to achieve this is to make the marginalized in the Hindu society have a say in the decision making bodies of Hindu institutions.