The Sangh’s Political Avatar And The Attack On Democracy

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) national general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale provided proof positive on June 26, if it was needed in the first place, that the organisation he belongs to is indeed political and that its politics is obscurantist and sectarian.

Hosabale urged a review of two words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ inserted into the Constitution through the 42nd amendment on the hilariously specious grounds that they were not included in the document adopted by the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949.

Before we get to Hosabale’s arguments and the larger context of secularism, multiculturalism and pluriversality, we must, once again, put some fabrications to rest. The RSS claims it is a non-political organisation. Its constitution, in English translation, says, ‘The Sangh as such has no politics and is devoted to purely cultural work. The individual Swayamsevaks, however, may join any political party…’

Addressing RSS workers in January 2018, one among many occasions, RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat had said his organisation had nothing to do with politics but worked for the moral and cultural uplift of the country. For good measure, he added, “Elections mean nothing to us. We are working to maintain the values of the country for the last 60 years.” He didn’t seem to have explained the significance of 60 years.

Be that as it may, let us note that Bhagwat is the head of the RSS and Hosabale is his deputy. The fact that Hosabale plunged himself into an intensely political question, also venturing into a critique of the Emergency of 1975-77 and the Congress party as it stands now, speaks eloquently of the RSS’s political character, apart from the fact that it is well known that the RSS and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are joined at the hip and the former’s foot soldiers work extensively to bolster the latter’s election campaigns.

It just doesn’t wash if you say that the second most senior functionary of an organisation waded into political controversies in a personal capacity. In this case, the RSS has issued no statement after Hosabale’s comments provoked criticism, though he was supported by Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar and Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, among others. The BJP did not issue an official statement, though.

Let us examine Hosabale’s statement in greater detail. The RSS leader demanded that the Congress members apologise for the various iniquities committed during the Emergency and, in a curious conflation, brought up the issue of the insertion of the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ in the Preamble of the Constitution through the 42nd amendment in 1976.

Let’s get one thing clear. Apart from concurrence, the inclusion of the concepts of secularism and socialism has no connection with the subversion of democracy through and during the Emergency. Let us also lay to rest the utterly jejune and false claims made by Hosabale. First, he says that there has been no discussion on the retention of these two words in the Constitution. This claim is ludicrously risible. Within and outside the sphere of formal politics, the Indian people have debated these two ideas ad nauseam. Entire elections have been referendums on these two ideas. Moreover, the Supreme Court has held the amended Preamble to be part of the ‘basic structure’ of the Constitution and, therefore, inviolable.

Second, the proposition that the ideas of socialism and secularism need some kind of special review because they were not in the original text of the foundational document of the republic betrays complete ignorance of the political history of independent India. The Constitution has been amended 106 times in the past 75-plus years. Article 368 of the Constitution specifies a special and rigorous process for its own amendment.

Constitutional scholars like Sarbani Sen have argued persuasively that this provides the basis of consensus-building over an extended period of time within and outside Parliament because the framers of the Constitution envisaged India as a popular, as opposed to parliamentary, democracy in which sovereignty resided in the people rather than the currently constituted Parliament.

By that logic, everything is up for extensive popular debate as the foundation for the further refinement of constitutional values, morality and procedure. But the fact that Hosabale chose ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ as his targets underlines the fundamental ideological orientation of the RSS and its ideological progeny, the BJP.

First, both are ineradicably sectarian, communal and majoritarian, and a Hindu rashtra remains their ultimate goal. Second, both are wedded to the exigencies of a corporate state, which mandate high levels of cronyism and corruption. As a matter of fact, communalism and corporate cronyism feed off each other, with the former functioning both as a core ideology and a diversionary tactic—the circus in a bread-and-circuses strategy.

This is not necessarily to say that the Congress or the other major oppositional parties offer a significantly welfarist, forget ‘socialist’, vision. But the Congress now offers the closest defence of a liberal, constitutional, and democratic order in which diversity and pluriversality can flourish. Notwithstanding the fundamental limitations and fictions of liberal democracy.

We are not in a position to assess just how fatally the current neo-fascist regime has damaged liberal democratic traditions and institutions in its attempt to fashion a majoritarian state. It is possible that the more egregious institutional wounds can be healed. But it seems clear that the capture of state and civil society spaces has proceeded apace and cannot be reversed, perhaps in a generation. With the added prospect, of course, that the current regime will remain in power beyond 2029.

The impunity enjoyed by the Sangh Parivar protagonists is, thus, emboldening them to launch more frenetic attacks on the foundational document of the republic. Only the sovereign—the people—can prevent India’s flawed democracy from being dismembered.

Suhit K. Sen is a historian, author and freelance journalist.

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