They are wrong in associating the RSS or the BJP with terrorism

by Rishi Wed Mar 06, 2013 11:03 pm

Nathuram Godse

To start with the last point: ideologically, Nathuram Godse had remained an RSS man, singing an RSS hymn to Mother India on his way to the gallows. His brother Gopal Godse testified in several interviews, including to myself, that Nathuram had emphasized his quitting the non-political RSS (for the political party Hindu Mahasabha) in order to provide the RSS some breathing distance to his own inevitably demonized person. His non-membership was an organizational technicality, but ideologically, he had remained with the RSS. That way, at least, Gopal liked to pull the leg of the “soft” RSS and its even softer political party, the BJP. However, I think Nathuram’s non-membership was essential in the one respect that is crucial here: if he had been a full RSS man, his superiors would have told him not to commit the assassination.

No matter what its ideological position, the RSS was first and foremost an organization. It had a purpose, and considered itself important to the realization of that purpose. So, it wanted to safeguard itself. Now, the crackdown on the RSS and other Hindu organizations after the Gandhi assassination in 1948 was perfectly foreseeable. On the other hand, Gandhi was discredited by his non-resistance against the Partition and its attendant calamities. The Hindu movement had been proven right and had the wind in the sails. The assassination changed all that completely: the grip on society by Jawaharlal Nehru and his secularism was enormously strengthened while the Hindu movement was marginalized and thrown back for decades. It is unlikely that the RSS felt suicidal and would want to bring this setback on itself. An RSS member would have thought of the consequences to the organization and the wider Hindu movement. Only a non-member, ideologically on the same wavelength as the Hindu nationalists but organizationally a lone wolf, could commit this murder. In the RSS, the widespread anti-Gandhi sentiment was suppressed by the even higher consideration of the Sangh’s own welfare. But Godse made himself the instrument of this much wider sentiment, shared by many suffering Hindus who had never been near the RSS. That is why leftists who blame the RSS for the murder of Gandhi are wrong.

For the same reason, they are wrong in associating the RSS or the BJP with terrorism. More than any other organizations in India, the RSS and its allies know that if anything happens, they will get the blame. Even they are not stupid enough to smash their own windows by engaging in terrorism. But numerous Hindus are on the same Hindu nationalist wavelength without being members, and some of them may be tempted by hit-and-run alternatives rather than by the characteristic discipline of the RSS. I have already remarked that many Hindu initiatives are seeing the light of day without any RSS affiliation. That counts for those disappointed with the weak-kneed policies of the RSS, or with its anti-intellectual inclination, or with its appeasement of the non-Hindus; but it may also take the form of nuclei of militants who want “direct action”.

http://koenraadelst.blogspot.com/2013/01/hindu-terrorism-how-to-prevent-it.html