 Summary of this article
- The RSS, a self-styled cultural organisation with a pan-India presence and a decade of power-sharing with the BJP, remains largely unknown to most people on the streets.
- The intriguing part of the RSS’ practice is where paranoia and civility, fear and sense of belonging, and culture and violence seamlessly inhabit together.
- They create problems of paranoia and provide the comfort in building new temples, and in bringing children from the Northeast to admit them in Vedic Pathshalas. In the absence of a friend in life, this looks like an assurance that does not pull you out of alienation.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” the opening lines from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities fits well with a similar epithet regarding the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The RSS has changed immensely over the years but there is no visible change. The best possible way to capture the journey of 100 years for the RSS is this moebius kind of inside-out and outside-in. The RSS has changed, relentlessly contradicting, overturning and denying many of its past practices, but in essence there seems to be no change in its approach to politics and its vision of a cultural/religious majoritarian state. |
