Interview with Dr. Ramesh N. Rao on his book: "Hindu Demons and Secular Gods: Targeting the BJP and the RSS."

"Hindu Demons and Secular Gods: Targeting the BJP and the RSS" Dr. Ramesh N. Rao, associate professor of communication, Truman State University is the author of the book with the above title awaiting publication.

Here is an exclusive interview Vijaykumar Chalasani of HamaraShehar.com had with Dr.Ramesh N Rao recently.

HS: Dr. Rao, what is the book about, and why did you write it?

RR: It is an analysis of the RSS and its affiliates, including the BJP, following the Ayodhya incident in 1992. There have been numerous books published, post-Ayodhya, that are critical of the "Sangh Parivar", and I thought it would be interesting to take a fresh look at the events preceding the Babri masjid destruction of 1992, and what followed it. I had neither the background for nor an interest in writing such a book, but when newspapers began to publish shrill pieces of "analysis" as soon as the BJP came to power in 1998 I began to read what had been published in the past ten years. I was aghast at the programmatic and sustained campaign of vilification and demonization that had followed the Ayodhya incident, and I was even more surprised at how the RSS had been portrayed since its inception.

HS: So, what did you find out?

RR: First of all, I realized that my generation of Indians had been programmed to look at Indian history in a particular way. Our education had basically directed us to gloss over certain aspects of history and politics. Gandhi and Nehru were the "fathers" of Indian independence, and the rest were minor figures who each got a sentence or a paragraph in our middle school and high school history textbooks. History prior to British colonization was a strange blur of characters and dates, and there was a rather large chunk of it devoted to the Mughals. Some brief mention of the four Vedas, and of the Ramayana and Mahabharata were all there was to Indian "pre-history". I realized that was how India was "framed" for us, and that the RSS and similar organizations had been seeking to enlarge that frame, a frame they labeled "Hindutva", and that I needed to read a lot about it to understand the events leading up to the Ayodhya disaster and events following it.

HS: Is the RSS then right in talking about Hindutva?

RR: I think the RSS and its supporters should realize one thing first. There is no way that the Christians and Muslims, let alone the Communist Hindu-haters will accept Hindutva. That attempt to convince the followers of the three most deadly ideologies in the world is a wasted effort. The RSS' policy of bringing the converted back to the Hindu fold will be only marginally effective if its main policy is not focused on spreading the precepts of Hindu philosophy, or Vedantism, working hard to rid the inequities of caste, and making sure that Hindus clean up their home first. Let the Christians and the Muslims and the Communists slug their battles out amongst themselves. There is enough bad blood amongst them to last a few generations. Look, for those advocating Hindutva it means that those living in India should accept the country as both their motherland and their holy land. Sorry, I don't think that will appeal to the Muslims who turn towards Mecca five times a day to pray, and for the Christians who swear by Jesus' second coming.

HS: So, is the advocating of Hindutva equal to fascism or Nazism?

RR: Well, at least according to our home-bred communists, and their strident followers in academe and the media. But drawing such an analogy is a travesty. And it is unfortunate that in India we have had a whole generation of scholars and media pundits who have labored hard to push that kind of an analysis, and they have been successful to quite a large extent in the West. Go to any U.S. university and look at the books that are used in their South Asia history or political science programs, or look at the dissertations that are being churned out year in and year out on this matter, and you will find not one program, not one course, not one dissertation that allows for a nuanced reading of modern Indian history and politics. I term the kind of analyses that such academics have pursued as "theory in search of data". They have very little data to pin the blame on the sangh parivar. But they have a whole lot of fancy theories - modern, postmodern, feminist, and Marxist - to work with and use against the RSS and its affiliates.

HS: But not all these academics could be collaborating on painting the RSS into a corner?

RR: There is a strong belief among the ordinary public that scholars and university departments work in such a way that the truth will be out. The truth will be out mostly in the scientific and quasi-scientific areas. However, the humanities and the social sciences are a whole different ball-game. There is no particular and easily validated "truth" in the world of religion, politics, history, and culture. Thus it is easy to shape "reality". Scholars have vested interests in telling a particular story and a particular kind of story about the world we live in. And not so strangely enough, for the past fifty years, it was convenient to tell India's history, modern, medieval, and ancient in particular ways to enable some to shape the modern Indian nation and polity. The RSS came in handy as the "bogey man" for explaining away India's troubles. For these scholars, these politicians, the partition, the thousand years of conflict between the Muslims and Hindus, all of it could be wished away if only the RSS would behave! Unfortunately for these "leaders" most Indians would not buy into that kind of "groupthink"

HS: So, what did you find out about the RSS, the BJP and the other parivar affiliates?

RR: That they are more sinned against than sinning! Honestly, very few in India know the history and work of the RSS. What some knee-jerk, liberal, secular, Indian or Western graduate student or academic thinks of the RSS or writes about the RSS is based on a very cursory and a very biased reading of the work of the RSS and the life and times of the RSS leaders. It was fashionable to label the RSS leaders as authoritarian or fascist simply because the RSS was founded by a Maharashtrian Brahmin (Dr. Hedgewar) who felt keenly the dissension and division in Indian polity, and in whose lifetime there were the kinds of conflict between Hindus and Muslims that pained, troubled, and worried him. Most of our "secular" leaders, starting with Gandhi, want to sweep the Muslim "problem" under the carpet, and they hope that way things will be sorted out. That sweeping under the carpet created Pakistan, that attitude is keeping the Kashmir problem burning, and that attitude ignores the pan-Islamic movement that targets Indians and Hindus. Hedgewar, and his successor Golwalkar, sought to strengthen the Hindu polity and society, not weaken or threaten the Muslims. They believed that in strength and cohesion lay India's prosperous future. They feared that dissension and division would lead to the kinds of onslaughts on India that India had witnessed for a thousand years. Indians have been sleep-walking for a long time, and they have continued to do so after independence. I think that the RSS ideology and philosophy needs to be given a proper hearing, and not subjected to the kind of knee-jerk slander that has been the hall-mark of Indian, left, academic "analyses".

HS: What about Western academics writing about the RSS?

RR: Let me give you two examples. The first is a book by Christophe Jaffrelot, a French academic, which was first published in France in 1993, and republished by Columbia University in 1996. It is "impressive" in the usual fashion: lots of research, lots of theoretical speculation, and the usual "objective" style preferred by academics. But read carefully, and you will find the most biased projections and speculations. Jaffrelot concludes, "The strategy of stigmatisation and emulation of 'threatening Others' is based on a feeling of vulnerability born of a largely imaginary threat posed by 'aliens', principally Muslims and Christians. This strategy is the cornerstone of the Hindu nationalist movement; it was the first to be formulated, and sustains its ideology" (p. 522). According to Jaffrelot, the Hindu fear of Muslims and Christians is "born of a largely imaginary threat". So, for scholars like him, the Indian history consisting of the pillage, murder, and desecration of India for a thousand years is merely an "imagined" history! The modern division of India into India and Pakistan and Bangladesh is also "imaginary". The threats of Osama bin Laden is also "imaginary". The three wars India has fought with Pakistan in the last 50 years is also "imaginary". The call of the Pope last year to make the next millennium in Asia a Christian millennium is also "imaginary". The crusades by the likes of a Pat Robertson and a hundred other Christian groups out to "harvest" souls for Christ is also "imaginary". An academic like Jaffrelot has even the temerity to suggest that the RSS does social work merely as a tactic: "The urban success of the BJP was symptomatic of the implantation by the RSS and its affiliates of a dense network of activists and of the latter's propagation of Hindu nationalism and a social welfare tactic" (italics mine) (p. 511).

The other book that I am going to mention is by Thomas Blom Hansen, a Danish scholar, and whose book has been published by Princeton University Press. It came out in 1999, and is titled "The Saffron Wave". In his introductory chapter, "Hindu nationalism and democracy", Hansen says that the "enormous diversity of India obviously makes it impossible to generalize too heavily from this material" (material collected only from Maharashta, and only in the form of random interviews), but goes on to generalize anyway. At the end of the chapter he acknowledges the benefit from scholars who have commented on his work. And if you read the list of scholars, it is a who's who of the usual suspects. There is not one person in there who has written anything favorable of the RSS or the BJP or who has anything kind to say about the reasons for the rise of Hindu nationalism. Most of them, especially the Indian scholars - Partha Chatterjee, Bipan Chandra, Amiya Kumar Bagchi - are the ones who have built a cottage industry of manufacturing arguments to demonize the BJP and the RSS. And neither Hansen nor Jaffrelot refer to the works of Arun Shourie, Koenraad Elst, Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel, and others who have written a lot on the state of the modern Indian nation, and give their version of why and how the RSS and the BJP have come to acquire some popularity.

HS: So, according to you, the RSS and the BJP have done no wrong?

RR: No, I do not claim that. I believe that in the rough and tumble of Indian politics that it would be well nigh impossible to maintain the high ground even by the most disciplined and well-managed party. But I do believe that the RSS is led by thoughtful and well-educated people, and has always been so. Each one of its top leaders have had very good academic qualifications, and they have led a modest if not an ascetic life. They seek to inculcate in the people a love for the great Indian philosophical and religious (if there is something like that in India) texts and precepts. They have consistently and seriously tried to remove the blemish of caste and caste divisions in society. However, even some of its well-wishers, like Koenraad Elst, have said that the RSS tends to be a little archaic, a little too slow to change and respond to feedback, and so on. In my book I have detailed some of those criticisms and the RSS response to them. I met two senior leaders of the RSS, Mr. H. V. Seshadri (general secretary) and Mr. K. Suryanarayana Rao (a veteran RSS leader now head of their publicity division). I also met a number of old time RSS workers, who had to quit the RSS because they joined government service or whatever, but now in their golden years have come back to the fold. These were retired chief engineers, heads of universities, scientists, doctors, and businessmen. I met them in the house of a wonderful man in Bangalore, whose work and attitude, at age 75 is something that I wish I could emulate. Now, I mention these things to tell you that the RSS is not a moribund and calcified organization. It may not be as adept as some other political or social groups in India who know how to use the media, but that may be its biggest sin. And don't forget, there is enough manipulation by Christian and Muslim organizations in India which call upon their "international" connections to hound the RSS and its affiliates.

As far as the BJP is concerned, I believe that Advani's rath yatra was a double-edged program. In one sense, it brought some focus to the BJP's agenda and to the people's anxiety and concern about the corruption, criminality, and conflict that was sapping the nation. However, it also unleashed a movement that was rather difficult to control and manage. I think that the BJP lost more than it gained by focusing on the Ram janmabhoomi issue. But that is the irony and paradox of life. The BJP now is also not very good at lining up its ducks in terms of policy, principles, and programs. Look at the latest fracas in parliament on the Gujarat government's policy of allowing government servants to become RSS members. Unless the policy had been approved by the Central government, and unless the BJP had gotten its 22-party coalition to agree to it, and unless their parliamentary affairs minister had given serious thought to the management of debate in parliament, it was foolish to do something like that. Anyway, they went ahead and did it. Now they have lost face because of the way the Congress and other opposition parties held parliament hostage, and because the BJP coalition parties chickened out. This is just one example. There are some others that I have highlighted in my book.

HS: So, would be fair to say your book is pro-BJP and pro-RSS?

RR: If you wish to characterize it that way, I have no problem. I realized half-way through the project that it was difficult to be a "middle of the roader" or a "fence sitter" on this issue. I did not grow up in a household that had anyone attending an RSS shakha or anyone who expressed any sympathies for the RSS. I did not have friends in school who were RSS swayamsevaks. I did not know anyone in college who were ABVP members. So, a lot of what I have found out about the RSS and the Jan Sangh/BJP has been on my own, and that too fairly recently. Like any "new convert" I may be making the case rather strongly. I have no doubt that any human organization has to deal with contradictions, both internal and external. But from what I have found talking to some senior RSS and BJP folks is that they are aware of those pulls and pressures, and of those contradictions. Overall, I believe that the BJP and the RSS have intelligent and some wise men guiding those two organizations. But India is now going through another period of flux and who knows how the country and the people will respond to events and concerns.

Dr. Ramesh N. Rao, associate professor of communication, Truman State University is the author of "Hindu Demons and Secular Gods: Targeting the BJP and the RSS."