Hindu and extreme Hindu – O. V.

Vijayan
(translation of Haindavanum Atihaindavanum)
November 1987

A news item of ‘Times of India’ of October 4: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh supremo

Balasaheb Deoras declares, the Congress has no rival for time-being. My memories fly to the 1983
election for Delhi Metropolitan Council. When the election results were being announced, my
childhood friend O Rajagopalan was with me in the living room. The seasoned leaders of BJP were
losing one after another. I was apprehensive of the headway made by the Congress as I believed
that “fierce majority” is not good for democracy. In the Northern regions where there are no leftist
rivals, the opposition is bound to evolve at least temporarily from BJP, Lok Dal, Janata Party etc.;
as there are no other options. It is when we see the denigration and autocratic tendencies in the
Congress, due to the absence of a meaningful opposition, that we realize the relevance of even
parties like BJP who are tainted with hindu communalism.

“Your candidates are losing,” I told Rajagopal.

“Yes”, Rajagopal replied calmly, “losing.”

May be it’s my interests as a painter in reading faces, I doubted if there was a satisfaction
gleaming in Rajagopalan’s face. When we open the windows towards the secret depths of Hindu
politics, what we see is its surprising and idiotic skeletons. Years ago, when Rajagopalan was my
guest for a night, I had asked him when he was about to leave, “What will come of the divisive
politics of Jan Sangh? You don’t have an updated economic view. You don’t have a democratic
solution to the lingual and regional paradoxes of India – ”
“We will be accepted at All India level,” he replied.
“How?”
My friend sympathetically smiled at my foolishness. He said. “Any organization that takes birth
in the beds of Sindhu-Ganga is bound to win.”

I was surprised at this frail mysticism. Only once more did I experience this kind of a
surprise. An evening with poet Kesavarao who wrote under the pseudonym “Nagnamuni”. He was
one of the extremist poets who were collectively called “Digambara” poets. Nagnamuni talked to
me about Maoist thoughts, with all the contempt and pity of the philosopher to a journalist.
“The thoughts of Mao are relevant for all nations, isn’t it so?” I asked so not because I did
not know the relevance of Mao; it was to measure the depths of its magical misuse.
“It’s relevant”, Nagnamuni said.
“In its pure form?”
“Yes, in its all purity.”
“Today and tomorrow?”
“Yes, today and tomorrow.”
“After a thousand years?”
“Even after a thousand years.”
Mao was transforming into a goblin in the hypnosis of incantations. Rajagopalan, viewing
the Jansagh – the political face of the “cow belts” of North Indian provinces wrought with
communal rivalry and the memories of partition – from the distances of peripheral Kerala, was
also under the spell of black magic.

Let us go back to 1983 and my living room. An average political observer had sufficient
inputs to comprehend that Rajagopal’s calmness was not a mere exception. The loyalty of
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Rajagopalan and several like-minded members was to the Sangh, and not
to BJP. A ceremonial informality that would dismiss the least idea of BJP supporting Congress,
even in case the Congress accepted and supported hindu communal interests emotionally as well
as politically.

I see as an analogue the paradoxes that brewed up in the Communist party during the early
decades of naxalism. The CPI (ML), till the day it separated from the Left Communist Party,
existed as an extremist group within the party – Marxism and extreme Marxism. It is almost like
this that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak is living within the walls of BJP.

After the Bluestar operation of 1984, the Congress inclinations of the Sangh became more
practical. After Indira’s death, in the 1984 elections, a good number of Swayamsevaks took part
in the Rajiv wave, even though they will deny it.

The issue that the Sangh is handling is not the devaluation of Indian democratic process,
not the racial power of Nehru family who deny the Nehruvian roots, not Bofors, not any known
issue of political relevance. Sangh’s problem is mythology – the war of devs and asuras.

The left parties turning a blind-eye to this paradox is not practical politics. Jayaprakash
Narayan had visualized a not so extreme hindu organization participating in Indian democracy as
a ‘Centrist’ party, like the European Christian Democratic parties. The Janata Party of seventy-
seven was the demonstration of that vision.

To separate the hindu from the extreme hindu is an ultimate aim that needs to be sought
for by any Indian interested in areligious politics and democracy. Such a separation can weaken
the communal roots of the hindu, as was proved by Vajpayee through his stand towards Pakistan
in his capacity as foreign minister and later his distancing from the Swayamsevak Sangh. The
inability to encourage that wisdom and progression was one of the failures of Indian democracy.
The collapse of the Janata experiment diverted its constituents to their own narrow constituencies.
The effort of Jayaprakash, the institution he built for communal awareness, was decimated.

To rejoice in this decimation is ignorance. To try to overcome it once again is prudent.

We should not be blind to the truth that the BJP has several personae like Atal Bihari
Vajpayee. We should also perceive that they are stuck in an invisible conflict with the dark-minded
leadership of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. By keeping them off practical democratic settings,
we are forcing them into the reign of the Sangh. Push those capable of fighting for a modern
democracy into the war of gods and devils! A very cruel joke.