[With India’s
national election campaign in
its final stages, the R.S.S. has thrown its weight behind Narendra Modi, who
has been active in the group since childhood and is now the front-runner for
prime minister, India
By Ellen
Barry
VARANASI, India — Shortly after dawn in the village square here each day, two
dozen boys and men dress up in crisply laundered khaki shorts and fall into
military-style formation behind a saffron-colored flag, brandishing bamboo
sticks as if they were rifles.
They spend the next hour performing
highly structured drills that interweave physical training with religious
indoctrination, ending with 108 repetitions of the chant “Ram Ram,” which
refers to a Hindu deity, and a song whose refrain is, “The nation should
awaken.” This is a local branch of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an ideological
organization whose fortunes have ebbed and flowed for decades with the
influence of Hindu nationalists in New Delhi
With India’s
national election campaign in
its final stages, the R.S.S. has thrown its weight behind Narendra Modi, who
has been active in the group since childhood and is now the front-runner for
prime minister, India
As a candidate, Mr. Modi has made
economic growth and development his central theme, building a vast electoral
base that includes moderates and minority groups. He has pushed traditional
Hindu-right projects to the margins of his campaign, and canvassers from the
R.S.S. and its affiliates have avoided controversial subjects, limiting
themselves mainly to exhortations to vote.
But in
interviews, many expressed certainty that, with the election over, Mr. Modi
would take action on a religious and cultural agenda.
“We can all see it now, that it is
happening — that the awakening is happening,” said Praveen Rai, 38, who leads
the morning drills here in Varanasi India
Mr. Modi has practical reasons to
distance himself from the Hindu right wing. His campaign, which has won the
support of large corporations, has focused on a pledge to attract investment and manufacturing, a
goal that demands domestic stability and collides with the R.S.S.’s
protectionist tradition. He is known as an independent decision-maker who, in
12 years as leader of the state of Gujarat , regularly resisted attempts by R.S.S. leaders to influence
him, journalists who covered his tenure say.
Asked last month about the R.S.S.’s
muscular assistance, Arun Jaitley, a top official in Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya
Janata Party, dismissed the notion that the group would have a place in a
postelection government.
“People who do have a lot of ideological
affinity to us have been extremely active and helpful in this campaign, not so
much as organizations but as individuals,” Mr. Jaitley said. “As far as
governance is concerned, we have been in power as a political party, and I can
assure you we take our own decisions.”
Ambiguity has long surrounded the
R.S.S. It was founded in 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, an independence
campaigner who had split from the Indian National Congress party over what he
considered “undue pampering of the Muslims,” according to “R.S.S.: A Vision in
Action,” published by the group in 1988. Its central ritual and recruiting tool
is the morning drill, known as the daily shakha, which was designed to “create
an all-Bharat national consciousness.”
The Indian government banned the
R.S.S. for 17 months in 1948 after a man associated with the group assassinated
Mohandas Gandhi, and for brief periods in the 1970s and 1990s. Its opponents
say it fuels religious conflict. For many years, the group has maintained that
it has no involvement in Indian politics, saying its mission is focused on
character-building. But many of its members have gone on to become candidates
for the Bharatiya Janata Party, whose spokeswoman recently referred to the R.S.S. as the party’s
“ideological fountainhead.”
“The B.J.P. and the R.S.S. are
married to each other,” said Dilip Deodhar, an analyst whose family has been
active in the R.S.S. for generations. “The power is there, but it is like that
of a mother over her children. The mother does not use it for anything but the
child’s welfare. There is no abusing it.”
The current campaign has thrust the
group into an unusually public role. In October, the R.S.S.’s leader, Mohan
Bhagwat, ordered the group and its affiliates to press for 100 percent voter
turnout, according to Ram Madhav, a spokesman for the organization. Last week
in Varanasi
Pramod Kumar — an R.S.S.
propagandist, based in Varanasi
“It was a very good feeling — that we
were going backwards; the country’s religion, integrity and culture was on the
back foot; and that we are going to set it straight,” he said. “Ever since I
was born, I have been waiting for good things to happen in this country. Most
definitely, that moment is here.”
Asked what changes he hoped to see
after the election, Mr. Kumar reeled off a laundry list. He began by saying
that Wendy Doniger’s book “The Hindus: An Alternative History,” recently withdrawn from publication in India
“It’s deep inside of our hearts, the
Ram temple, and it’s on — 75 percent of the work is done,” Mr. Kumar said,
adding that he did not mind the B.J.P.’s decision to soft-pedal the issue in
its election manifesto. “I can just fold my hands and quietly say the temple
must be built, or someone can make a big hue and cry about it. It makes no
difference. The temple must be built. It’s normal. It will happen after the
election.”
Others, however, were irritated. “It
is with a lot of slyness that the B.J.P. has included this only on the last
page,” said Praveen Kumar Chaubey, 24, a volunteer with Akhil Bharatiya
Vidyarthi Parishad, a student group affiliated with the R.S.S. “I feel it has
been pushed down because they don’t want to hurt the sentiments of certain
groups. Our sentiment is that it should be a magnificent reconstruction of the
temple, and we are there.”
In the meantime, the R.S.S. has
provided many of the same electoral advantages for the B.J.P. as megachurches
in the American heartland do for candidates: a highly disciplined and
structured canvassing force, and village-level networks of contacts.
Ashwani, 29, an R.S.S. propagandist,
was going door to door in the village of Baburi Kashmir a degree of autonomy — Ashwani chided him.
“Our biggest theme is the politics of
development,” he said. “I’ll give you an example. If the road is built
properly, a Muslim will walk on it, a Sikh will walk on it and a Hindu will
walk on it. If electricity is flowing, a Muslim can use it, a Sikh can use it
and a Hindu can use it.”
Modi fever seemed to have taken hold
in the village. In the narrow street, where storefronts offered piles of iced
pomegranates and fired earthen pots, a stereo blared a delirious pop tune whose
lyrics were “Har har Modi,” a slogan that echoes Hindu prayer. “This is Modi’s
tea — you must have it,” one shopkeeper said exuberantly, thrusting a clay into
a visitor’s hand.
A Muslim shopkeeper across the street
watched, stone-faced. When asked about Mr. Modi, the shopkeeper, who refused to
give his name, referred tobloody
religious riots that
broke out under Mr. Modi’s watch in 2002. “Do you think we are going to vote
for the murderer?” he asked.
Ashwani did not hear that exchange,
because he was chatting on the phone with an acquaintance who was interested in
joining the R.S.S. Hanging up, he said he expected the organization’s
membership to surge in the coming years. “Society is with the Sangh,” he said.
Suhasini
Raj contributed reporting.
