Shankar Gopalakrishnan - A Mass Movement Against Democracy: The Threat of the Sangh Parivar

A MASS MOVEMENT AGAINST DEMOCRACY

The Threat of the Sangh Parivar

Shankar Gopalakrishnan

Table of Contents

PREFACE: The Propaganda of the Sangh Parivar.............................................................3

Myths and Facts......................................................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION: Seeing the Sangh Parivar as a Political Movement.............................6

CHAPTER 1: Understanding the Sangh's Ideology...........................................................8

Understanding the Sangh's Notion of Unity........................................................................................9

The Sangh's Explanation for Social Conflict........................................................................................10 Social Uplift......................................................................................................................................11

The Role of the Sangh..........................................................................................................................12

The Sangh Parivar's Ideology in Summary...........................................................................................13

European Fascism.................................................................................................................................14

The Fascist Ideology.............................................................................................................................14

Mass Support for Fascism.....................................................................................................................15

Parallels and Differences with the Sangh Parivar.................................................................................17

CHAPTER 2: The Creation and Consolidation of the Sangh Parivar: The Early Years....18

The Freedom Struggle and the RSS......................................................................................................19

Post Independence: the Sangh Parivar is Formed.................................................................................20

CHAPTER 3: The Political Backdrop to the Rise of the Sangh Parivar in the 1980's......22

Classes and Movements in the 1980's...................................................................................................23

The Response of Capital.......................................................................................................................24

CHAPTER 4: The Individualist Bargain - The Sangh and Its Cadre Base From the

1980's Onwards................................................................................................................26

The New Mass Base.............................................................................................................................26

Offering a Bargain: Sangh Activities Among Adivasis.........................................................................27

Other Social Sectors.............................................................................................................................28

The Conditions That Make Sangh Organising Possible........................................................................29

CHAPTER 5: Consequences for People's Struggles........................................................34

Consequences for Local Organising.....................................................................................................34

Generating an Anti-Democratic Political Atmosphere..........................................................................35

Connections With Globalisation...........................................................................................................35

The Autocratic State With People's Support.........................................................................................36

CONCLUSION: Strategies and a Way Forward...............................................................37

Problematic Strategic Positions............................................................................................................37

Strategies to Fight the Sangh................................................................................................................38

APPENDIX I: Partial List of Sangh Parivar Organisations..............................................42

PREFACE: The Propaganda of the Sangh Parivar

Since the 1980s, a shadow has darkened Indias polity and threatened the fundamentals of its social and political existence. This is the Hindutva movement, organized, led and driven by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its front organizations the San gh Parivar.

To most of us, this growth of Hindutva has been most identified with its hate politics - the killing of tens of thousands in genocidal pogroms, systematic stoking of hatred against Muslims and Christians, building on people's communal prejudi ces etc. But is this all there is to the Sangh Parivar?

What, in fact, are the Sangh Parivar's actual goals? If the only goal of these groups is to create communal hatred, why have they been able to build such large scale mass support in the last few d ecades? What has changed in these years that has created this political phenomenon?

When these questions are explored, we begin to find that the Sangh Parivar is much more than just a group of anti-minority organisations. In fact, it is perhaps the big gest threat to popular struggle and social justice in India today. The more powerful these organisations become, the less and less political space there will be for people's struggles. And hence we must fight these groups not for the sake of secularism alone, not for the sake of our fellow minority citizens alone, but because otherwise the struggle for freedom, justice and democracy in our country may be set back by generations.

This booklet seeks to explore these issues. It will not aim to address th e myths that the Sangh Parivar spreads about minorities, since there is already material available on this.

Given the kind of propaganda that they spread, there seems little doubt about the n ature of the Sangh Parivar. Most critics have seen the Sangh s activities as a way of distracting oppressed sections, turning them against each other rather than against their exploiters. By playing on religious sentiments, we argue, the Sangh Parivar se rves the interests of the ruling class and divides the people.

This is no doubt true, but it is not enough. In fact it leads us to a double political problem. On the one hand we underestimate the danger posed by the Sangh Parivar, believing that we can defeat them by encouraging people to focus on the real issues and livelihood struggles alone. On the other, we overestimate their power by assuming that the Sangh is just another reflection of the division of people into different communities, and hence i t can never be defeated until all divisions between people are defeated. The net result is that we reduce ourselves to a position of political impotence, either ignoring the Sangh until it is too late or responding by trying to counter their lies in eff ect trying to compete on their own ground.

But are Hindutva organizations essentially just a reflection of religious divisions? Is the threat facing us and democracy today purely about dividing workers through fake propaganda about their religious ident ities? In reality, while these are part of the Sangh's work, to see the Sangh Parivar as only this is to miss three crucial features of their politics and their political action.