RSS Needs To Reinvent Itself Now

Once considered the main move maker, the parent organisation of the Bhartiya Janata Party – Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh – is now bobbing up and down to keep its head above water. The old Sangh has been in news recently due to a story based on interviews of Swami Aseemanand in Carvan magazine which puts serious questions about its being in a modern world.

While the magazine issued tapes of its interview with Aseemanand to supplement its claim that the former chose to implicate his boss, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, on their magazine rather than telling it to the police, the RSS found itself walking straight to the road of irrelevance.

The radical and non-radical groups – both spawned by the RSS – have now become bored of its ideology and have outgrown it. They do not want any more handholding or pressure for that matter and they want to take charge of the situation on their own terms. This is the precise reason that we keep hearing about Hindu terror groups seeking to target Bhagwat itself and BJP becoming impatient with the on and off demands of the group.

In a society where youth wants development and BJP wants to present itself as the harbinger of development, RSS is only constraining its becoming as the bigger force. It is an ancient army which has lost its purpose in this new era and is able to survive only because the myth surrounding it, that BJP depends upon it, has taken a larger shape than the reality.

This was seen at the time of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and can be seen in the emergence of Narendra Modi. RSS is now diminished to the role of a pressure group just like the various evangelical groups who have clout with Republicans in the US. The RSS will have to tune in to BJP’s aspirations and demands.

If at all RSS wants a future and not fall in the grave it is sitting legs in, it will have to reinvent itself. It will have to re-evaluate its working as a Hindu organisation and revamp its social service policy. Maybe ending caste system and opening dialogue with Muslims will help. It will have to adapt to modernity and accept the challenge of remaining in a highly religious market that is India. It will have to bring new dimension to its ideology by valuing intellectualism and start emphasizing on growth.

If not, it should be ready to march into oblivion.