Conflict versus moderation: Sangh a divided ‘parivar’?

Despite calls for scaling down by the RSS chief, the Sangh Parivar is unlikely to give up its aggressive means of mobilising support

It is a cliché to say that while it is easy to ride a tiger, it is never so simple to dismount. About tigers, even metaphorical ones, it is generally believed that once the predator gets the taste of easy and vulnerable species – humans for instance, it never goes back to hunting more agile and swifter prey. Over the past few days, both axioms have played out in the context of one of independent India’s longest-lasting political conflicts.

Paradoxically, this discord, the single-most important factor in the Bharatiya Janata Party and its affiliates being catapulted from the ‘green room’ of Indian politics, to transmogrifying into a party of governance which is intoxicated solely in pursuit of political power, is now being pulled in opposite directions. One section of the leadership — that of its ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — recently called for scaling down the campaign for ‘erasing mosques and restoring temples’, while other groups proclaimed that unrestrained chase of countless theatres of conflict shall continue.

Some days ago, while delivering an address in Pune, the RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, spoke for restraint in the face of impromptu demands for ‘surveys’ of historical mosques with the aim of unearthing Hindu temples beneath them.

Even as the Supreme Court directed that all such calls be put on hold till the next hearing on February 17, when it takes up the plea challenging the legality of the much-commended Places of Worship Act, 1991, a group of seers, raised and reared by Vishwa Hindu Parishad, picked up cudgels against Bhagwat and asserted that matters related to the ‘restoration’ of Hindu temples be solely decided by dharmacharyas (religious leaders).

Hindutva advocates of the Sangh Parivar have campaigned since 1984 for Hindus to secure ‘deliverance from wrongs’, committed in history by ‘invaders’. Now when the sarsanghchalak pleads for moderation, he finds few takers.

Developments since the third week of November acted as a dampener to hopes generated in the aftermath of the SC’s Ayodhya judgement of November 2019. After that much-delayed verdict was delivered, a significant section of people in politics, civil society and media were dismayed at the apex court awarding the disputed land in Ayodhya to the majority community, despite referring to the destruction of the Babri Masjid as an “egregious violation of the rule of law”.

However, these people took solace from the fact that the judgement made a case for halting all ongoing or future conflicts over places of worship, steeped in history.

Hopes began fading when legal proceedings over the disputed Gyanvapi Mosque, Varanasi and Shahi Idgah, Mathura were reopened and fast-tracked. 

Worries especially mounted after D Y Chandrachud, then a judge in the apex court, in May 2022, while hearing the matter relating to the conduct of a survey in the Gyanvapi mosque precincts, made an ‘observation’ that the Places of Worship Act, 1991, did not bar ascertaining the religious “character” of the shrine. The ‘problematic’ comment was made in the case wherein Hindu groups attempted to secure archaeological ‘evidence’ to buttress claims on the shrine, despite its continuing use as a mosque. 

Although Chandrachud belatedly clarified that his personal utterances could not be construed as the court’s verdict, it did not prevent a Civil Judge in Chandausi, Sambhal district, from ordering a survey of the early 16-century mosque.

When this was followed by various courts moving towards granting approvals to similar pleas on other shrines, including the iconic Ajmer Sharif Dargah, Bhagwat was lulled into the belief that imminent communal flare-ups across India, as witnessed in Sambhal, had been pushed back.

Lack of follow-through

Despite the placatory tone and tenor of his speech, Bhagwat’s words rang hollow, for this was not the first time he intervened in a reconciliatory manner. His earlier statement, made a month after Chandrachud’s ‘observation’ and subsequent order permitting the Archaeological Survey of India to excavate specific portions of the Gyanvapi, may be recalled. Back then, while addressing trainee swayamsevaks, he said there was “no need to look for a shivling in every mosque”.

Even earlier, whether in the context of public lynching of Muslims on mere suspicion of carrying beef or when leaders of the Sangh Parivar delivered highly provocative hate speeches, Bhagwat called upon the government to ensure the rule of law. Yet, he never walked the talk thereafter — either never chastising the government for repetitively overlooking such incidents, or not reminding the rank and file to remain within the confines of law.

Actually, it is difficult to make out the real intention of Bhagwat and others in the RSS brass. Take, for instance, the meeting of the Sangh Parivar’s national executive in Mathura in the last week of October. 

The backdrop was the wide gulf between the RSS and the BJP, evident in the former’s disinterest during this year’s parliamentary polls and the latter’s declaration that it “no longer needed the RSS”. Thereafter, following the BJP’s loss of majority, Bhagwat made a series of scathing comments in which he named no one but left no ambiguity on who was targeted.

In continuity with those statements, the meeting of the all-powerful in the RSS rallied behind Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, not among Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s favourites within the party. But, while backing the saffron-clad leader, the RSS also endorsed a rank-provocative slogan coined by Adityanath – “Batenge toh katenge” (We will get slaughtered if we are divided). 

Approval for this coinage conveyed that the RSS remained committed to uncompromising Hindutva. Such a stance, however, was at odds with what Bhagwat spoke at Pune. Quite naturally, this sowed seeds of confusion within his political fraternity.

Worryingly for Bhagwat, the resulting bewilderment and disagreement are not limited to those outside the mainframe of the Sangh Parivar. What has complicated matters most is a cover story – ‘Beyond Sambhal: Truth and reconciliation healing the historical wounds’, accompanied by an editorial in the latest edition of the official organ of the RSS – Organiser, the magazine. This has made matters worse within the Sangh Parivar as many people consider this magazine and the separate Hindi magazine — Panchjanya —as representative of the views of the RSS and its leadership.

In contrast to Bhagwat’s contention that repeatedly raking up demands for determining the ‘true’ history of mosques built in the medieval era was “unacceptable”, the editorial argued that unearthing ‘real’ history of disputed sites and structures was important for “civilisational justice”. The editorial further contends that “religious acrimony and disharmony” can end only if the Muslims accept the “truth” and stop aiding separatism.

The accompanying article justifies legal pleas for surveys on Muslim places of worship that Hindus are now claiming. It argues that the “right to know the truth is a cornerstone of justice, reconciliation and the preservation of cultural memory.” These Hindu majoritarian arguments, however, deny equal rights for non-Hindu communities in India solely because they are minorities. 

The editorial, couched in journalese, argues that Muslims must not only accept the “truth about Itihasa (history)”, but they should also disassociate “from the perpetrators of iconoclasm and religious supremacy.” Effectively, this argument ratchets up the retributive rhetoric mouthed by several BJP and Sangh Parivar leaders, including Modi, that the medieval era in Indian history was little but a 1,000-1,200 years-long ‘period of slavery’.  

Bhagwat’s inability to carry rank and file of the Hindutva bandwagon stems from the fact that till the other day, he made the same arguments. Just as Bhagwat will, in coming weeks and months, find it almost impossible to erase past articulations, other sections within his fraternity are unlikely to abandon the easy path of hate-mongering to mobilise continuing mass support. Intoxicated by the venomous discourse, these core backers of every programme of the Sangh Parivar have the potential to walk away with the constituency so assiduously enlisted by the likes of Bhagwat and Modi. 

(Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is an author and journalist based in Delhi-NCR.)