Submitted by admin4 on 19 October 2013 - 2:08pm
By Saeed Naqvi, IANS,
By triggering a debate on its Op-ed page last week, "The Hindu", possibly unintentionally, lifted the scab from an old wound for many of us.
The debate, initiated by Vidya Subramaniam’s column Oct 8, had its locus elsewhere: the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh's (RSS) growing stranglehold on the Bharatiya Janata Party. Her point was that the RSS’s relationship with the BJP violates a commitment the RSS made to India’s first home minister, Sardar Patel, before it was unbanned on July 11, 1949. Remember, the RSS had been banned four days after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination on Jan 30, 1948. But S. Gurumurthy of the RSS, in the course of establishing his rebuttal, wanders into the attitudes of senior Congress leaders towards the RSS. The Congress Working Committee, as is well known, was divided on this issue as it was on the country’s partition. The Congress has historically fudged these issues.
Gurumurthy clinches the fact that the RSS violated no agreement, by quoting then Home Minister of Bombay, Morarji Desai, a Patel acolyte. In a written statement to the Bombay Legislative Assembly Sep 14, 1949, Desai admitted that the ban on the RSS was lifted “unconditionally”.
When, returning from Muzaffarnagar after last month’s orchestrated, piecemeal ethnic cleansing, I heard exactly the anti Muslim slogans I had heard during the Gujarat riots in 1969, it did hurt. On that occasion Badshah Khan, the Frontier Gandhi, put down anchor in that city for nearly a month because he could not believe what he saw - 512 killed in what Justice Jaganmohan Reddy called “largely one sided riots”. Handbills calling for a “religious war” were distributed “to the rioters by the RSS and the Jana Sangh”. Congressmen joined the chorus that “Muslims were anti-national”. Yes, in 1969.
I had a ringside seat with Badshah Khan that year. "The Statesman" had loaned my services to function as the Frontier Gandhi’s press adviser. This was at Jayaprakash Narayan’s behest. Since Indira Gandhi had split the Congress, Badshah Khan’s utterances were being carefully weighed by both sides. Was he favouring Indira Congress or the Syndicate Congress?
The issue of which way Badshah Khan would tilt was settled by the horrible communal situation in Ahmedabad. He was pained at Chief Minister Hitendra Desai’s alleged communal bias during the riots. And he saw the chief minister a political descendent of the Patel line. At this stage Badshah Khan had more or less accepted Ram Manohar Lohia’s list of the Guilty Men of India’s Partition. These “Guilty Men” were, in his book, not terribly averse to association with the RSS as Gurumurthy makes quite clear.
Gurumurthy quotes Patel’s speech in Lucknow in which he chastises his “powerful” colleagues in the Congress who wished to “crush” the “patriotic RSS”. The “powerful” Congressmen being referred to must be those led by Jawaharlal Nehru. Did this galaxy include Maulana Azad, president of the Congress from 1939 to 46? I doubt it. His prestige has since taken such a beating by sheer neglect that historian Ram Chandra Guha does not even mention him among Makers of Modern India. He considers Hamid Dalwai more worthy of mention.
The Maulana was “powerful” so long the real wielders of power in the Congress allowed him to. Nehru, for instance. But once they had made up their minds that they were full square behind the AICC resolution of June 14, 1947 endorsing India’s partition, Maulana Azad was an obstacle. There could have been no more weak and isolated leaders as Maulana Azad and Badshah Khan.
When Patel suggested to RSS leader Golwalkar that the RSS should join the Congress, the RSS supremo was quick with his response. The two should work separately and “converge”. When, pray, would they “converge”? When Hindu Rashtra has been achieved?
The first Home Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, Rajeshwar Dayal, has in his autobiography, "A Life of Our Times", this story about Golwalkar and Congress stalwart, Govind Ballabh Pant, UP’s longest serving Chief Minister and Union Home Minister from 1955 to 1961.
When communal tension in UP was high, Dayal carried incontrovertible evidence to Pant about Golwalkar’s plans to create a “communal holocaust in western UP”. Pant was convinced of the plot but he would not permit them to arrest the RSS chief. In fact Golwalkar was allowed to escape, having been duly tipped off.
“Came Jan 30, 1948 when Gandhi, the Supreme Apostle of Peace, fell to a bullet fired by an RSS fanatic.” Dayal concludes: “the tragic episode left me sick at heart”.
(19.10.2013 - A senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com)
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October 8, 2013
Updated: October 8, 2013 00:54 IST
The forgotten promise of 1949
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Vidya Subrahmaniam
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The RSS wrote a non-political role for itself as part of an undertaking it gave Sardar Patel. The overt political role it has assumed in 2013 is a breach of that agreement and its own constitution
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s constitution explicitly states that it will stay clear of politics. The constitution itself was written, in 1949, because Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel would have it no other way.
The events of 2013 have comprehensively erased that part of India’s history. The RSS has taken full control of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It has overridden internal opposition to name the party’s prime ministerial candidate. No act can be politically more overt than this.
A mentor
The RSS has always been to the BJP, earlier the Jan Sangh, a mentor the latter could not disobey — because the Jan Sangh was seeded by the RSS whose top pracharaks (propagandists) formed the new party’s intellectual and political capital. In its constitution, the RSS abjures a political role for itself but permits individual swayamsevaks to join any political party.
The RSS has used this caveat to place its representatives in the JS/BJP. From Lal Krishna Advani to Narendra Modi, every BJP leader of consequence has been from the Sangh’s deep bosom and each has had to mandatorily follow a curriculum involving pilgrimages to the Sangh offices in Delhi and Nagpur and deferring to the patriarch’s wisdom.
The unstated part of the BJP-RSS relationship was that the Sangh chief, Sarsanghchalak in RSS parlance, himself would not show his hand. The behind-the-scenes role for the minder was necessitated both by the 1949 undertaking to Patel and to overcome the strong political opposition to Hindutva. The governments of 1977-1979 and 1998-2004 became possible only because the RSS agreed to keep out of sight.
The events of 2013 are remarkable for the reason that the BJP’s need for allies has not translated into the Sangh taking a backseat. Instead, today more than ever before, the mentor is in a frontal, commanding role.
A look at recent history will show that the Sangh’s takeover bid started in real earnest in 2005, following Mr. Advani’s visit to Pakistan and his apocalyptical praise of Mohammad Ali Jinnah delivered straight from the latter’s mausoleum in Karachi. So livid was the Sangh at the transgression that it ordered Mr. Advani removed from the presidentship of the BJP. And though Mr. Advani did become the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in 2009, his unique place in the Sangh was lost forever. The marginalisation of the ideologue started at that point and has ended today in his complete isolation.
The epic clash of 2005, and Mr. Advani’s barely controlled anger at his public sacking by the minder, are best captured in Mr. Advani’s own words. Addressing the concluding session of the party’s September 2005 Chennai national executive, Mr. Advani said an “impression had gained ground” that his party could take “no decision” without the consent of the RSS : “This perception, we hold, will do no good either to the Party or to the RSS. The RSS must be concerned that such a perception will dwarf its greater mission of man making and nation-building. Both the RSS and the BJP must consciously exert to dispel this impression.”
Lesser players had clashed with the Sangh earlier, and paid the price too, but Mr. Advani was beloved of the Sangh, and among the early pracharaks sent to the Jan Sangh. The BJP veteran was blunt when he called the RSS a busybody; in truth, it had always been so. What was unprecedented was the Sangh divesting a leader of Mr. Advani’s stature and vintage of his presidency.
Seven years on, the Sangh has issued another decree — this time to give a leader a double promotion executed in two stages. Narendra Modi’s June 2013 elevation to the BJP’s campaign committee chief, since relinquished by him, was followed in September 2013 by his appointment as the party’s prime ministerial candidate. In 2005, the RSS’s role was inferred, with the evidence coming from Mr. Advani. In 2013, the fig leaf has been cast away.
Mr. Advani, who had resigned from key party posts protesting Mr. Modi’s June 2013 elevation to campaign panel chief, climbed down on the Sangh’s orders — a fact acknowledged in writing by BJP chief Rajnath Singh. This was a first in RSS-BJP history. Mr. Singh’s June 11, 2013 statement to the media said, “Shri Mohan Bhagwat (current Sarsanghchalak) spoke to Shri Advani and asked him to respect the BJP Parliamentary Board (PB) decision and continue to guide the party in national interest.” The BJP’s PB did indeed make a request to Mr. Advani but from Mr. Bhagwat it was a command. The words were gentle but the message was not.
Thus, the takeover bid which started in 2005 was full and final with Mr. Modi’s projection as Prime Minister in September 2013. In June 2013, Mr. Advani wanted that Mr. Modi should not head the campaign panel. That has happened today, proving that the first-stage elevation was a ploy aimed at wearing down internal opposition to Mr. Modi.
‘No politics’
Cut to 1949 and the RSS’s undertaking to Patel to write a constitution, which, among other things, would specify that the Sangh had “no politics” and would remain “devoted purely to cultural work” (Article 4(b) of the RSS constitution; D.R. Goyal, 1979). The written constitution was Patel’s pre-condition for lifting the ban imposed on the RSS in the wake of Mahatma Gandhi’s January 30, 1948 assassination.
Then Sarsanghchalak Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar pleaded not guilty and Patel himself was clear that the RSS was not involved in the assassination. He said this in his February 27, 1948 letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and reiterated it later too. However, Patel was strong in the belief that the Sangh’s “violent” ways contributed to the climate in which Gandhiji was killed. Golwalkar’s telegrams to Nehru and Patel expressing shock at the murder did not mitigate the situation.
The government’s ban notification, dated February 4, 1948, did not implicate the RSS in Gandhiji’s murder; it in fact made no mention of the murder. The charge in the text was of violent subversion: “... in practice members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have not adhered to their professed ideals (fostering feelings of brotherhood, love and service among Hindus). Undesirable and even dangerous activities have been carried on by members of the Sangh … individual members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition. They have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect firearms, to create disaffection against the government and suborn the police and the military. These activities have been carried on under a cloak of secrecy …”
On November 14, 1948, the Home Ministry held by Patel issued a press note which said Golwalkar wanted the ban lifted without agreeing to the government’s demand that the RSS reform itself. Further, the note quoted information received from the provincial governments, which showed “that the activities carried on in various forms and ways by the people associated with the RSS tend to be anti-national and often subversive and violent and that persistent attempts are being made by the RSS to revive an atmosphere in the country which was productive of such disastrous consequences in the past…”
Two letters
Prior to this, Patel wrote two significant letters. On July 18, 1948, he wrote to Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, rejecting his defence of the RSS: “The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of the Government and State … as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming more defiant and are indulging in their subversive activities … in an increasing measure…”
The letter of September 11, 1948, was to Golwalkar himself. In this Patel lauded the RSS for its service to Hindu society even as he outlined the “objectionable part” which “arose when they, burning with revenge, began attacking Mussalmaans …” Further, “As a final result of the (communal) poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji …” Patel said people’s opposition to the RSS grew when “the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.”
So, the charge that led to the ban was not that the RSS was involved in Gandhiji’s murder. The charge was of violence and subversion. (The Sangh was later formally cleared of any connection in the murder). This is what led to Patel’s pre-condition that the RSS write a constitution specifying, among other things, its respect for the Indian flag (the Sangh swears by the Bhagwa flag), its commitment both to function as an open and peaceful organisation and to stay clear of politics. It was a prolonged battle. Golwalkar resisted writing the constitution but Patel won out and the ban was lifted on July 11, 1949.
The RSS has gone back on the promise to keep off politics.
October 16, 2013
Updated: October 16, 2013 17:10 IST
Debate @ The Hindu
Lifting of ban on RSS was unconditional
S. Gurumurthy
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PTI
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In her article in The Hindu "The Forgotten Promise of 1949,”, Vidya Subrahmaniam asserts that Sardar Patel lifted the ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1949, because it had promised to be non-political, but it reneged on it in 2013. But publicly known facts recalled here contradict her assertion.
It all began with the arrest of the RSS chief, M.S. Golwalkar, after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. On February 4, 1948, the government banned the RSS alleging that, contrary to its professed ideals, the RSS members had carried on violent activities, collected illicit weapons and exhorted people to violence. Rejecting the allegations but respecting the law, Golwalkar suspended the work of the RSS. Six months later, he was released but interned in Nagpur. On August 11, he wrote to Pandit Nehru that despite the “hasty and unbalanced action” against the RSS by those in highest authority, he offered to cooperate with them as the times were critical.
Nehru, cleverly or properly, sent Golwalkar’s letter to Patel for response because just before Gandhiji’s assassination, speaking in Lucknow, Patel had warned “those in power in the Congress” against efforts “to crush” the patriotic RSS. Patel replied to Golwalkar recalling his positive views on the RSS and lauding the young RSS workers who served the Hindu society and protected women and children. But he also charged them with targeting “Mussalmans” in “burning revenge” to avenge “for the sufferings of the innocent” Hindus, and accused them of spreading “communal poison” that cost Gandhiji’s life. Still, Patel advised the RSS to “carry on” its “patriotic endeavour by joining and not opposing the Congress.” Surprisingly, this letter did not reach Golwalkar.
On September 24, Golwalkar again wrote to Patel — also Nehru — demanding that the allegations and the ban be withdrawn because countrywide searches and investigation had yielded no proof against the RSS. Patel responded to him on September 26 through R.S. Shukla (Premier, Central Provinces and Berar) enclosing his earlier letter which did not reach Golwalkar. Patel asserted that since all provinces unanimously wanted the ban to continue, “there must surely be some basis for it.” He advised the RSS to function according to “the rules of the Congress.” That there “must be some basis for it” perhaps admitted the lack of any basis.
On September 27, a PMO official wrote to Golwalkar that to lift or keep the ban was the Home Ministry’s prerogative, but reiterated that governments had a “great deal of evidence” and the U.P. government had already sent a “note” on ‘the evidence’ to Golwalkar. On November 3 an angry Golwalkar denied having received any “note” and challenged the government to disclose the “great deal of evidence” and prosecute the RSS. He also wrote to Patel trashing the allegations. On Patel’s suggestion that the RSS join the Congress, Golwalkar replied that the Congress in the political field and the RSS in the cultural domain could compliment and converge. And despite Golwalkar’s open challenge, no evidence was forthcoming.
Nehru’s letter to Golwalkar (November 10) again asserted that the government had a “mass of information against the RSS.” Accusing Nehru of a closed mind, Golwalkar responded that to talk of “mass of evidence” without disclosing it amounted to convicting a person without evidence — like in the “Dark Ages.” His strong words obviously put off the government. On November 13, the Home Secretary refused to lift the ban and asked Golwalkar to go back to Nagpur. Golwalkar exploded and replied that such “arbitrary acts fit with autocratic rule” in “barbaric ages,” not “a civilised state.” Either prove or drop the charges, he challenged Patel. Refusing to leave Delhi, he asked the RSS workers to restart the suspended Shakas. Forthwith Golwalkar was arrested. The RSS began a satyagraha on December 9 demanding “prove the charges, lift the ban and release Guruji [Golwalkar]”. In one month, some 80,000 RSS workers were arrested. Yet no proof of wrongdoing by the RSS was made public.
It was then that T.R. Venkatrama Shastri, former Advocate General of Madras and head of the Servants of India Society, intervened. He wrote an anguished letter in The Hindu, met Sardar Patel and urged him to lift the ban. In the fresh negotiations came the new argument that since it did not have a written constitution, the RSS functioned secretly — a shift from either ‘join the Congress’ or ‘adopt the Congress rules’. Shastri drafted and submitted the RSS constitution. But the talks failed.
On July 9, 1949 the government refused to lift the ban citing “fundamental differences.” Shastri then decided to publicise the details of the substantive issues discussed — one, on the authority of the RSS chief to nominate his successor and the other, on participation of minors in its activities. On the RSS and politics, Shastri said that there was a “comment that though they profess to be a non-political body, they may turn into one overnight,” to which Shastri responded, “And so they may. If they did it would be no crime.” That was all. Shastri added that with the suspicion of the RSS’ complicity in Gandhiji’s assassination “recognized to be without any real foundation” and the charges against the RSS in some cases having been found unsustainable, continuing the ban was untenable. Surprisingly the very day Shastri’s statement was sent to The Hindu (which published it on July 14), namely on July 11 itself, the government lifted the ban. It must have been advised that the ban without evidence would be unconstitutional under the Constitution of India.
The ban was lifted unconditionally. Here is the proof. In a written statement to the Bombay Legislative Assembly on September 14, 1949 (Proceedings p2126) the Home Minister Morarji Desai admitted that the ban on RSS was no longer considered necessary; it was lifted unconditionally; and the RSS gave no undertaking. If no undertaking was indeed given in 1949, where is the question of reneging on it in 2013?
(S. Gurumurthy is a commentator on political and economic affairs.)
Vidya Subrahmaniam responds:
Written constitution was indeed a pre-condition
October 16, 2013
Updated: October 17, 2013 00:09 IST
Debate @ The Hindu
Written constitution was indeed a pre-condition
Vidya Subrahmaniam
The Hindu Archives (Clockwise from left) Reports from The Hindu dated July 14, May 26, and July 24, 1949 respectively.
The purpose of my article was to show how the RSS has incrementally increased its hold on the BJP — in breach of its 1949 commitment to Home Minister Sardar Patel and the written constitution that followed. That a written constitution with specific undertakings was a pre-condition for lifting the ban is fully established by the government of India’s July 11, 1949 notification lifting the ban. The conditions imposed and agreed to included: rejection of secrecy and violence, respect to the Indian flag and adoption of a non-political, cultural role. The preamble of the RSS constitution is self-explanatory: It states that “till now” the RSS had “no written constitution” whose writing had become “expedient” in “the present changed conditions.” Article 4(b) states that the Sangh “as such, has no politics.”
Patel’s relationship with the RSS was complex. He praised it in some forums and was convinced it was not involved in Gandhiji’s assassination. But Patel was emphatic that the RSS had created a climate in which Gandhiji’s murder became possible. The ban was handled entirely by the Home ministry which in its November 14, 1948 press note accused RSS members of a tendency to be “anti-national and often subversive.” Patel’s letters to S.P. Mookherjee and M.S. Golwalkar (cited in my article) reiterated this point in stronger words. So the ban was far from being a product of flimsy reasoning.
Patel did want the RSS to join the Congress but that was to subsume and contain its political ambitions within the larger umbrella of the Congress (Patel supporter A.G. Kher said as much at the October 7, 1949 meeting of the Congress working committee).
The fear of what an unfettered Sangh could do is the reason why Patel compelled Golwalkar to write a constitution undertaking, among other things, to abjure politics. Golwalkar and the Home Ministry exchanged bitter words over the writing of the constitution, and as Anderson and Damle, note in their authoritative and largely empathetic work, The Brotherhood in Saffron: “RSS writers exaggerate Patel’s pro-RSS sympathies … (but) Patel did not exactly deal gently with the RSS during the ban period and extracted some hard terms from them before he agreed to lift the ban.”
Just what the hard terms were can be seen from the July 11, 1949 notification and news reports from The Hindu from that period.
vidya.s@thehindu.co.in
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