Will Narendra Modi defy RSS over Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru now?

Will Narendra Modi defy RSS over Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru now?

Anil SharmaUpdated: Friday, May 31, 2019, 08:29 PM IST
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With all its nuances politics is the essential art of managing disagreements. These disagreements can spawn over everything: Ideas, methods of looking at problems, and finding solutions. When we come to politics in India, after 1947 the main conflict has been between the idea of a secular India envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi and the idea of a Hindu Rashtra that has been the dream of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. It is a different matter that the present day followers of the RSS embrace Mahatma Gandhi and are at loggerheads with his chosen successor Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. But the reasons for this shift are existential and strategic. After Mahatma’s assassination in 1948, there was no point in carrying on the battle with him. However, Nehru gave them all the reasons to hate him. In the first place he never trusted the ‘super patriotism” of the RSS.  Writing to chief ministers on December 6, 1948, he said: “The RSS has been essentially a secret organisation with a public facade, having no rules of membership, no registers, no accounts, although large sums are collected. They do not believe in peaceful methods or satyagraha. What they say in public is entirely opposed to what they do in private.’’

Then in spite of the RSS insisting that it had nothing to do with the Mahatma’s assassination, in another letter on the subject, Nehru wrote on February 5, 1948, ”Investigations are proceeding. But enough has come to light already to show that this assassination was not the act of an individual or even a small group. It is clear that behind him lay a fairly well widespread organisation and a deliberate propaganda of hate and violence carried on for a long time.”

In the same letter, Nehru mentions the ‘temerity and meanness to celebrate by distribution of sweets or by slogans the assassination of Gandhiji.” However, this fundamental difference between the RSS and the idea of India has persisted even after 67 years of the Mahatma’s assassination. Rahul Gandhi, the present day representative of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty continues to blame the RSS for the Mahatma’s murder and refuses to regret his remarks, even though it could lead to the end of a tricky litigation.

The strains of this essential political conflict were littered all over the two-day debate in the Lok Sabha that did end with a commitment from prime minister Narendra Modi that “India first” is the only religion and the constitution the only scripture. But anyone who believes that this has ended the debate over secular India versus Hindu Rashtra is living in a world of make believe of his own. None of the debaters in the house over the two days even dared to mention that the much-appreciated architect of the constitution Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar had embraced Buddhism just two months before his death, because he did not want to be an “untouchable among the Hindus”. Yes, in its quest for new icons, the BJP wants to celebrate November 26 as the constitution day and honour Dr. Ambedkar in its sustained effort to denigrate Pandit Nehru and, in the process, it is always convenient to forget inconvenient facts. For the architect of India’s constitution, if a Hindu Rashtra did not offer any redemption, then a secular India without a Hindu Code bill was equally frustrating. He quit the union cabinet as law minister and opted out of the religion of his birth.

However, Prime Minister Modi took the first belated steps during the course of the debate from being the chief campaigner of the opposition party to becoming the prime minister of the world’s biggest democracy. For the first time, he articulated the significance of consensus vis-à-vis the power of majority over the minority. He got down from his high horse and extended an invite to Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

But the Congress has every right to be wary of him. All his ministers take unabashed pride in running down their opponents, and miss no opportunity to have a go at the idea of a secular India. Even the mild-mannered Rajnath Singh, believed to be the most pragmatic among them all, did not pull any punches as he sought to make the RSS argument of that secular means ’panth nirpeksha” and not ‘ dharma nirpeksha’; he even taunted Aamir Khan by suggesting that for all the ‘slights’ Dr Ambedkar received, he never thought of quitting India. Trained in the RSS thought culture, Singh clearly forgets that secular India embraced Dr Ambedkar as Mahatma Gandhi wanted him in the first union cabinet, even though he had differences with him, and Babasaheb was able to draft the constitution because the Congress also agreed with the Mahatma. Yet, it was his frustration with Hindu Rashtra that saw him embrace Buddhism.

Modi has spent only 18 out of his allotted 60 months, and still has a long way to go. From repeatedly telling his audiences domestic as well as global that the last 60 years have been a complete waste of time for India, for the second time he has made a reference to the contributions of all the past prime ministers. This reference in the Lok Sabha should be considered as a new start, as after the first time he made these observations from the Red Fort in 2014, he rewrote the script with vehemence and vengeance to denounce all of them in subsequent speeches.

The point of interest is does this speech in Lok Sabha mark the arrival of a consensual Modi? As an RSS pracharak does he carry forward the agenda of completely dismantling the Gandhi inspired Nehruvian India or does he build on the legacy of Pandit Nehru as the architect of modern India? In the process, he would do well to remember that Pandit Nehru was not just critical of the right wing RSS, he equally opposed the left wing Communists. The idea of India is not a collection of slogans. It is the embodiment of liberal humanism. It recognises all the freedoms of an individual with the right to dissent being the foremost. The RSS cannot concede that Nehru was the great liberal. Will Modi cross the RSS hump?

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