Fascinating article on Chaddis

Soon after taking over the RSS, Sudarshan tried to exert himself over the rest of the Sangh, including the BJP. Before an RSS function at a stadium in Delhi, for example, he issued instructions that nobody, including the press and NDA ministers, should be allowed in if they did not turn up in the RSS uniform, including the black Gandhi cap, long-sleeved white shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbow, and khaki shorts. None of the ministers—including Vajpayee, Advani and the education minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, all of whom had been swayamsevaks for several decades—attended. The then BJP president, Kushabhau Thakre, who was widely credited with building up the Sangh in Madhya Pradesh, arrived in the uniform but forgot to bring the bamboo staff that completes it. According to Deodhar, Thakre was asked to go back.

Delhi was Sudarshan’s base for much of the time that the NDA was in power. He frequently criticised the government in public, and meddled in ministries. In one characteristic episode, Sudarshan used a combination of Sangh organisational strength and government access to act as a cultural censor. When the director Deepa Mehta was shooting Water in Varanasi, filming was interrupted by RSS and VHP men who burnt down sets and shouted slogans against her, Mehta’s daughter Devyani Saltzman wrote in her book Shooting Water. Mehta was asked to get permission from the RSS chief in order to continue production; otherwise the protests would carry on. When she went to the RSS headquarters in Delhi one wintry morning, Sudarshan came to meet her wearing a heavy shawl, and a saffron balaclava over his face. He walked up to her and quoted a passage from Dante’s Inferno in perfect Italian, then sat down and told her not to misjudge the RSS.

“The Ganga is precious to us,” Sudarshan told Mehta.

“Have you read the script for Water?” Mehta asked. The RSS chief placed a copy of it on the table. “Where did you get that?” she said. Only one script had been shared outside of the production team—with the ministry of information and broadcasting.

Sudarshan said, “After all, whose ministry is it anyway?” He asked Mehta to work with Sheshadri Chari, then the editor of the RSS weekly Organiser, on correcting the script.

- See more at: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/rss-30#sthash.dDWWkaXR.dpuf