Tipping Point: A Short Political History of India [1 ed.] 1032498307, 9781032498300

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Abbreviations
1. We Our Nationhood Defined
Introduction
Reveries on Roots of the Nation
Representation and Electoral Politics
Who did Indian National Congress Represent?
INC: Swimming with Hindu Revivalism, Sidelining Social Reform
Who did the Hindu Mahasabha Represent?
And who did the RSS Represent?
Why did they Create a Separate Organization?
Doctrines of the Far Right: Savarkar and Golwalkar
The Organization and Project of RSS: Where did its Funds Come from?
What Happened to the Peasant, Tribal other Class Based Left Wing Movements?
Shifting Political Economy of India, Electoral Politics, and Augmentation of the Right Wing within Congress
M.K. Gandhi, the Man, his Mark, Assassination and what the Trial Revealed
Conclusion
2. Left Turn at the Top 1969-76
Introduction
Nehru to Indira Gandhi: And Why a Sharper Left Turn Became Necessary for Her
Indira Gandhi Voted PM
The Congress Splits
Road to ‘National Emergency’: Dykes against Monopoly Capitalism and Attacks by the Usual Suspects
Perils of Left Turn by Legislation Alone
The Twenty Point Programme (TPP): The Cul-de-Sacs of Change by Legislation Alone
The Excesses of Emergency: They were Asked to Bend, and they Crawled
What Followed in the Name of ‘Total Revolution’?
Conclusion
3. Curious Case of Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan: Unlikely Messiah
Introduction
JP on his Purpose and the Appropriate Manner of Opposition in a Liberal Democracy
JP and Mrs Indira Gandhi
JP and his Favourite Variety of Socialism
JP’s Horror of Communists, Soviet Takeover of India, the Role of CIA and America in the World and Asian Neighbourhood Generally
JP and the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) in India
To Conclude
4. Gradualism, Marginal Redistribution: Confusion on the Left, Consolidation on the Right
Introduction
Travails and Dilemmas of the Communist Left
Communists in Free India, Confined by Parliamentary Democracy
Rupture in the Communist Party
External Pressures Yet Again
Complex Reality
Self-Analysis by the Communists
Socialists Disintegrate
Was there a ‘Liberal’ Right in India?
The Bombay Model, Daybreak for the Far Right
RSS, BJP and SS
Conclusion
5. Far Right at the Centre
Long March to the Centre of Political Power through Culture
Why this Narrative Ends with 2002 and Not 2019
A Shadowy Organization Becomes an Immense Shadow of Our Past in Our Present
Not without Enduring Support from the other Shadow of the Past, the Ancient Regime
Who was Watching our Growing Shadow?
World Wide Web of Priests and Temples
Migration, Hindus Abroad: Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP)
Globalization, Foreign Funds, Technology and Non-Government Organizations
Hectic Groundwork in the 1980s
Stirring the Communal Pot through the 1980s till it Overflowed in the 1990s and a Tedious Trick is Reused
Scaling it up-Gujarat Version 2002
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

TIPPING POINT A French journalist once asked Nehru that,‘what was the most difficult part of his experience at the helm had been?’ He replied,‘making a just society using just means. He further added,‘making a secular republic in a religious country.’ Both these projects appear endangered today. In the circumstance that we find ourselves today, this book sketches the history of political forces in modern India. It begins defining these political categories of left, right and far-right with the usual reference to French Revolution (for want of an indigenous equivalent), and discusses movement of forces towards left, or towards the right from the balance of socio-political forces or status quo at a point of time in India. It recalls historical facts, uses chronological order for clarity and leaders’ names and political parties, their world view and ideas of nation, social groups they represented, and their movements. It progresses by reopening only a few windows to modern Indian history and looks at periods like, the 1920-30s, and 1970-80’s, when there were significant movements and consolidation of socio-political forces to the right and far right. At the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were a series of policy proposals, legislations to nationalize assets and launch direct attacks on poverty that marked a sharp turn to the leftist ideology in Delhi (the central government of the time). Following these, a coalition of mostly right-wing forces rose to challenge the government at the centre and succeeded. This occurred in the context of heated Cold War geopolitics. In author’s consideration, this was the ‘Tipping Point’. The book makes a case that social conservatism and preference of gradual change implied that the right has dominated in the political spectrum and countered a tilt to the left successfully. Anuradha Kalhan has a Ph.D. in Economics. Kalhan has taught in Mumbai for three decades. She was an elected member of the Senate in the University of Mumbai, and a fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. Currently, she is an independent writer and researcher, and has published two books and numerous papers. She spends her time between India, USA and the UK.

TIPPING POINT A Short Political History of India

ANURADHA KALHAN

MANOHAR 2022

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Anuradha Kalhan and Manohar Publishers The right of Anuradha Kalhan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9781032498300 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032498324 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003395669 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003395669 Typeset in Adobe Jenson Pro 11/13 by Ravi Shanker, Delhi 110095

For My grandfather DI NA NAT H K A K

who told me, when I was no more than 9, that ‘there is no God’ My grandmother INDRANI KAK

who took me aside to tell me that ‘there is a God, and He must reside only in your heart’ and YO U N G I N DI A

Contents

Acknowledgements

9

Preface

11

Abbreviations

31

1. We Our Nationhood Defined

35

2. Left Turn at the Top 1969-76

117

Introduction 35 • Reveries on Roots of the Nation 37 • Representation and Electoral Politics 47 • Who did Indian National Congress Represent? 50 • INC: Swimming with Hindu Revivalism, Sidelining Social Reform 55 • Who did the Hindu Mahasabha Represent? 66 • And who did the RSS Represent? 71 • Why did they Create a Separate Organization? 71 • Doctrines of the Far Right: Savarkar and Golwalkar 79 • The Organization and Project of RSS: Where did its Funds Come from? 85 • What Happened to the Peasant, Tribal other Class Based Left Wing Movements? 90 • Shifting Political Economy of India, Electoral Politics, and Augmentation of the Right Wing within Congress 96 • M.K. Gandhi, the Man, his Mark, Assassination and what the Trial Revealed 102 • Conclusion 111 Introduction 117 • Nehru to Indira Gandhi: And Why a Sharper Left Turn Became Necessary for Her 121 • Indira Gandhi Voted PM 127 •The Congress Splits 133 • Road to‘National Emergency’: Dykes against Monopoly Capitalism and Attacks by the Usual Suspects 141 • Perils of Left Turn by Legislation Alone 144 The Twenty Point Programme (TPP): The Cul-de-Sacs of Change by Legislation Alone 158 • The Excesses of Emergency: They were Asked to Bend, and they Crawled 159 • What Followed in the Name of ‘Total Revolution’? 167 • Conclusion 171

8

Contents 3. Curious Case of Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan: Unlikely Messiah

176

4. Gradualism, Marginal Redistribution: Confusion on the Left, Consolidation on the Right

217

5. Far Right at the Centre

300

Introduction 176 • JP on his Purpose and the Appropriate Manner of Opposition in a Liberal Democracy 180 • JP and Mrs Indira Gandhi 187 • JP and his Favourite Variety of Socialism 194 JP’s Horror of Communists, Soviet Takeover of India, the Role of CIA and America in the World and Asian Neighbourhood Generally 197 • JP and the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) in India 200 • To Conclude 210

Introduction 217 • Travails and Dilemmas of the Communist Left 223 • Communists in Free India, Confined by Parliamentary Democracy 237 • Rupture in the Communist Party 250 • External Pressures Yet Again 254 • Complex Reality 256 • Self-Analysis by the Communists 259 • Socialists Disintegrate 264 • Was there a ‘Liberal’ Right in India? 267 • The Bombay Model, Daybreak for the Far Right 276 • RSS, BJP and SS 287 • Conclusion 292 Long March to the Centre of Political Power through Culture 300 • Why this Narrative Ends with 2002 and Not 2019 301 A Shadowy Organization Becomes an Immense Shadow of Our Past in Our Present 307 • Not without Enduring Support from the other Shadow of the Past, the Ancient Regime 318 • Who was Watching our Growing Shadow? 326 • World Wide Web of Priests and Temples 333 • Migration, Hindus Abroad: Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) 337 • Globalization, Foreign Funds, Technology and Non-Government Organizations 348 • Hectic Groundwork in the 1980s 354 • Stirring the Communal Pot through the 1980s till it Overflowed in the 1990s and a Tedious Trick is Reused 359 • Scaling it up-Gujarat Version 2002 370 Conclusion 374

Glossary

389

Bibliography

393

Index

407

Acknowledgements

I could not have begun this exploration of representation, public consciousness, and political history of modern India without books by historians like Sumit Sarkar, Bipin Chandra, Mushirul Hasan, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee and many others. Their works proved vital in the writing of this book. This attempt to chart our times would be impossible without their scholarship. Aijaz Ahmad, A.G. Noorani, Asghar Ali Engineer and others who find mention in the end notes, have illuminated various, more recent aspects of it. Authors like Ramachandra Guha have thrown additional, useful light on events in modern India. Many journalists have reported and tracked events of great significance to the theme and are credited here. But many also just go uncredited but they continually influenced my consciousness. Their impact in underlining events cannot be exaggerated. It is through all the works of these scholars and journalists that I have tried to pull together important stages that brought us where we stand today in India. I stake no claim to originality. I toyed with the idea of extending the title to ‘A Political History for Dummies.’ For I address it to all those who do not know enough about this history. Indeed, even I did not know, till I set out to explore it. Persisting in this rather unfamiliar endeavour would have been overwhelming without the support and encouragement of friends and students. I want to specially mention friends like Indira, who helped me most with locating material, paid patient attention to my perpetual ‘astonishment and horror’ as I discovered facts about India’s very recent past. Lina, who located and sent valuable reading material to me, Meena, who listened with great interest and who has already written on the Far Right and Shakti, my aunt who discussed aspects of recent developments regularly. M.M. Sharma read the drafts and commented on

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them. All of them helped me to understand the present considering the past. Most friends and collegues were stunned by the direction and speed of recent political developments in India but quite unaware of several facets and details of our more recent past that heralded the present. As I talked to them about what I had read and discovered, they encouraged me to put it together and write. I did not know where or even how to begin the forbidding account for years, till one night, many thousand miles from India, I dreamt of Jawaharlal Nehru. He was telling me with deep sadness,‘Do you realize now how very lonely I was…. even then’. In the last few years, it has also become clearer to me just why writing and teaching of history is important. As a social scientist one only thought of how to measure the present and move ahead, never for a moment thinking that historical legacies cast shadows and create path dependencies. Not only does history make the present more intelligible but it shines a light on the road ahead. We can ignore it only if we want to go round in vicious cycles. Anuradha Kalhan

Preface Some Bunched up Thoughts and an Enduring Empathy Deficit

As of 1920, the Italian Left was incomparably stronger than the rather small and disorganized fascist formation. Three years later, [Benito] Mussolini was in power, and by 1926 his power had become absolute, with the Left decimated as a political force, well before the Nazis came to power in Germany. In this context, Gramsci asked himself: what is it in our history and society, what was in the bourgeois nationalism of our country which has led to such easy victory for fascism and such easy defeat of the Left? Very large parts of the Prison Notebooks are a reflection on Italian history, on the special place of the Vatican in that history, on the peculiarities of the Risorgimento and Italian unification, on the stunted nature of the Italian bourgeoisie and its industrial cities, on popular fiction, and so on, so as to grasp patterns of popular consciousness.1

This short political history could be stimulating for those among us who wonder why India’s social indicators (what is now internationally measured by the UN as Human Development Index) are low and why they remained intractably low by international standards. The phenomenon persists despite three, recent decades of higher economic growth. The UN rankings are not contradicted by the study of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) published in the Lancet in 2018, which ranks countries on the basis of the strength of their human capital using data from government agencies, schools and health care systems. In that study India ranks 158 behind Sudan, among

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195 countries. Nepal and Bhutan are ahead of India, not to mention Sri Lanka which has been ahead of India for a long time. For me an appreciation of the manner in which the dominant belief system in India has been used by its exponents and the elite began in an unusual way—during years spent in field work while trying to analyse problems in the implementation of a poverty alleviation policy. The inescapable question that remained planted in my mind was- why has it been so difficult to address the issue squarely in more than 70 years as a free nation? Why were a few states much more successful than others, was the answer buried in their history? It is a fact that extreme disparity does not unnerve the upper middle classes who live cheek by jowl with it in cities across almost all states in India. This empathy deficit exists despite increasingly frequent references to our much exalted and ancient civilization, indigenous wisdom, culture, spiritualism, fervent nationalism and more recently even high economic growth rate. Had colonial rule arrested and then mis-shaped some aspect of cultural development or is there an intrinsically impaired cultural imagination that comes in the way of breaking away from the old to comprehend the basis of a modern nation? Are we essentially a pre-modern society that continues to nurture a philosophical outlook in which some people are inherently less equal, where salvation for self is far more desirable than salvation as a group? Why did a decent education and healthcare for all not become the rallying call in a country liberated by a historic, mass based, national movement, after independence? Nor did it become a rallying call after we adopted the lofty Constitution or even now? Was the idea of a nation of equals just an idea which did not turn to reality? These were misgivings swirling round in my head during years of field work as I grasped just how far behind we had fallen in addressing basic human deprivations. One day I turned a page in Bertrand Russell’s The History of Western Philosophy and these lines popped out, ‘The conceptions of life and the world which we call “philosophical” are a product of two factors: one, inherited religious and ethical conceptions; the other, the sort of investigation that may be called “scientific”, using this term in the broadest sense2 (p. xiii).’ He describes philosophy as an integral part of social and political life, both a cause and effect of the character

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of various communities. Were the answers to my questions embedded in our national ‘philosophy’? So, I tried to look at the roots and branches of Indian nationalism for a clue, found a saga. I have tried to summarize some of that story in the first chapter drawing from the works of major historians of modern India. Gradually the book emerged and became an attempted history of political forces at work in modern India. The principal thesis here is that the supremacy of the right wing (people who bunch together to preserve hierarchy, authority, traditions in culture and society and the ideologies that make it possible to do so) in India has been largely unbroken. Anti-emancipatory, conservativism has been politically and culturally typical in India for a long time. The dawn of our nationalist consciousness was marked by an exaltation of an ancient golden past. This harking back for courage to march forward was plausibly necessary to confront racism and colonial domination of two centuries. But it fused into India’s early development as a republic. This made all manners of hierarchical and unscientific traditions and perceptions that had been part of India’s tradition, heritage and cultural consciousness tolerable, even defendable. We had become so fond of them that we did not call it a religion, we called it a ‘way of life’. Quite soon after independence it became obvious that doubts raised to confront these traditions head on, were threatening to the general enchantment with new national identity. Those who did question were regarded too westernized, possibly godless people who were not aware of the deep Indian heritage. Even Jawaharlal Nehru could not escape this tag. Gradually a veritable cottage industry grew around the search for all traditional virtuosity. Eventually in free India too, few would become culturally revolted by the structural violence of mass poverty. Oppression of dalits, women, and minorities came to be considered traditional. A deeply hierarchical traditional society was evermore, intensely, anti-egalitarian. If people are meant to be unequal and an entire sacred theory exists to explain that, then inequity is all right. The degree of inequality is also not a sensitive issue in popular consciousness. There is little room for empathy among unequal people. Moreover, even as laws are enacted to grant ‘equality in law’ they lead to, revulsion and reaction by beneficiaries of the hierarchy. There are few people who appreciate the law,

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who endorse it actively and too few who want to implement the law impartially. The Constitution in eleven volumes and 395 articles that we adopted and expected would give us justice, social, economic and political; equality of status, of opportunity and before the law freedom . . . and so forth was hedged by this predilection. Deficit of empathy and rejection of radical solutions was born out of the same fondness for traditions. It became the soft cradle in which linguistic, cultural and religious bigotry grew. No surprise then that, few supported Hindustani, the language of popular exchange in the populous north. Few opposed the imposition of Hindi as national language. Hindi, in the form it took soon after Independence was not a commonly spoken language and even fewer people cried out against its increasing Sanskritization. Eventually the highly Sanskritised national language became unintelligible to a huge majority, particularly of poor, unschooled people. It became a language of official communications in the north. That too was traditional. Barely anyone questioned the wealth of temples and why temples were becoming wealthier in a poor country. And temples, mosques and churches outnumbered schools and hospitals even after Independence. Soon enough protecting cows caused more public orchestration, became even more sacred than building human capabilities in the new nation. Still too few protested. Religiosity induced more people to adopting vegetarianism for purity, by the 1990s people in metropolitan areas began living in segregated ‘only vegetarians’ buildings. Eventually even denying eggs to malnourished rural children in mid-day meals at school was acceptable. And still those who resisted and raised questions, were an insubstantial minority, right into the twenty-first century so few that the more vocal could, without difficulty, be silenced by assassins. Nor did the more silent resistance count in the outcomes of elections. And all along, hardly anyone, even in the growing educated classes was shocked that tens of thousands of ‘educated’ men actually wanted to marry someone ‘fair’ complexioned but only within their own caste, and said so boldly in classified advertisements in national dailies. So, what happened to the legacy of the mass struggle against racism of the European colonisers? Was colonial racism only supplementary to an earlier traditional, homegrown racism? Nor did the computer and

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internet change this, it only aggravated the situation. Hardly anyone thought it was racist, it was customary. Computers were vigorously assisting search for fair brides and marriages within the same caste. While computerised astrology, palmistry and vastu shastra was assisting all kinds of choices from wedding venues to homes. Urban or rural, property owning classes were even more conservative than their poorer counterparts, schooling and academic accomplishments notwithstanding. And when their offspring grew up, their heartfelt desire was to conduct themselves like feudal kings and queens on their wedding day. Laden with silk and jewels they desired a red, velvet, and gold throne to sit on! An entire traditional wedding industry grew, matching the flourishing religious festival industry. Kings, princes, their privy purse, and the zamindari system were abolished by law in the years after Independence but that obviously did not alter popular aspirations. The rich and aspiring classes go so far as to prefer old palaces as wedding venues to this day. And, when chariots began running across the country making a commotion over yet another temple in the supposed birthplace of a mythological king, hardly anyone was outraged! In fact, tens of thousands of people became motivated by this spectacle in late 1980s. This enthusiasm was able to sustain itself right into 2014 and beyond, in addition a fervent, religious nationalism assumed centre stage. Through the 1990s there was a proliferation of upwardly mobile families with a personal spiritual guru, over and above the ubiquitous family deity apparatus. That did not invite astonishment. It was common to see pictures of gods, guru and temples used as mobile phone covers, wallpaper or printed on gadgets and cars. While caller tunes sang out religious hymns, outsized SUVs, with replicas of deities, temples within, played loud religious songs invoking a favourite deity. The Indian family’s spiritual quest accelerated as they acquired college degrees, mobile phones, new gadgets, ‘objects of desire’ and personal physical trainers. Some observers have called this marvel, the ‘modernity of tradition’, it is perhaps simply the evergreening of tradition, not to mention its express commercialization in the decades after 1990s. One can only imagine how the barely literate masses were handling the ‘modernity’. They were everywhere desperately trying to ape the wealthy, with marginal success and growing resentment. As education and health

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care became more expensive and urban housing unaffordable, they were left trailing far behind. Yet who dare point out that this ‘ever greening’ of tradition was not going to save us from social fragmentation and crisis with immense psychological ramifications? As the twenty-first century unfolded, a frenzied consumer culture was wedded quickly to tradition and religious identity. Relentless advertising of luxuries that only a few could afford easily, and a commercialized film industry sold illusions in colour and music, it spread the gospel of a good life far and wide. Satellite television beamed into homes and showed everyone, the great life Americans lived. A frenetic, unprecedented display of ambitions and aspirations swept through society; it moved people from villages to cities and from cities to foreign shores. Wherever it was possible to earn more, live more comfortably. Anomy amid swift change all round the urban landscape should have rung some alarm bells but they were drowned out by temple bells perhaps. Most relentless of all was the rate of changes at the workplace3. In a whirlwind, employment now came with a greater intensity of work and insecurity of both work and income. People began holding on, with increasing nervousness, to symbols of their identity. Everywhere temples were overflowing with offerings of worldly goods, bright lights, loud drums, firecrackers, garish hues, decorations, and ritzy music during increasingly raucous religious festivals. Television as well as public spaces were overtaken by loud exhibitions of religiosity; traffic could be held up for hours right in the middle of the metropolis, to accommodate religious euphoria. The revellers were mostly the working poor whose numbers multiplied with every influx of rural dispossessed. Celebrities from the cinema, in finery and bare footed piety, political and public figures alike made their way midst much publicity, often walking through filthy streets to bend down before an idol in an ornate temple. Hinduism was famed for being tolerant, inclusive, and plural and indeed it did seem to embrace the dispossessed, alienated, meek, the rich, poor, the loutish, the uncouth, and the criminal but above all else, it seemed to embrace capitalism. You could be anyone, do anything no matter how horrific, but Gods could be won over, propitiated with offerings of money, gold, and diamonds. This God then became, not the plural gods with diverse ways of the old Hindu pantheon, but the

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new Gilded God who could deliver its believers to wealth and good times. And the city of neo liberal India was his abode. Here the tedium of crumbling infrastructure and crushed masses, unstable work, young, desperate, and lost humankind, found relief in pulsating festivals and temples. While among the well-heeled, an old belief was reinforced by the exuberance of worship that those crushed, left far behind in the saturnalia deserved no better, their karma was at fault. The Gandhian type of a genteel, inclusive, renouncing, ameliorating Hinduism probably died with him, its spirit hovered over some people for a few decades and then it died too. The ‘Hindu tradition’ our parents grew up in revered renunciation, the Hinduism of the twenty-first century was a creature that had adapted smoothly, was in fact found to be revelling in the neo liberal creed of greed if gold, cash donations and garish celebrations in temples was an indication. Gods were sinking in gold as believers remade them in their own likeness. And so, such ways of being, living and thinking in which tradition, ritual, superstition, religious chauvinism, hyper consumerism, aspirations for greater wealth appeared in one ribbon roll and became typical. It predisposed us all from the upper to the lower socio-economic strata so that society moved so far and away from the essence of secularism and socialism that India’s foremost social scientist was constrained to make a gentle plea for some public spiritedness and argue against the notion that the privileged deserve what they have.4 Leading up to the 2014 elections, which were fought deliberately to create a Hindu India, there was a thirty per cent increase in communal riots and incidents. This is not to diminish the scale and barbarity of Muzaffarnagar riots in August 2013, between Muslims and Hindu Jats. In this riot forty-three lives were lost, and 50,000 Muslims were rendered homeless in their own land. In the freezing cold that followed, at least 30 adults and eight newborn babies died. Yet this heaving mass, of what mainstream media calls the middle-class in India (constructed on the fact that they are not absolutely poor nor are they fabulously rich), did not stir. Deeply inured to violence and so frenzied had they become in their own insecurities. Only during two episodes was there a public upsurge.5 One followed a ghoulish assault, rape of a young middle-class, physiotherapy intern in Delhi whose father had sold his land to educate her. He worked as a loader in a private company. She died as a result

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of her grievous injuries. Her fortune was a metaphor for deep insecurities physical and mental, faced in the metropolis, specially by women seeking upward mobility. A wave of anger and revolt broke out across the subcontinent and all six accused were caught, tried within months found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. All this at an unprecedented speed. The second episode which stirred the‘middle-class’ was corruption, rather someone else’s dishonesty and ill begotten wealth. As mainstream media began a relentless campaign against some mega scams people took to the streets and organizers of the campaign against corruption called India Against Corruption, acquired tremendous prestige. New political parties grew to address issues like improving urban public services. Old ‘cultural’ organizations, like the far right Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS) were not just involved in organization but also profited the most the anti-corruption episode.6 In the chapters that follow, recalling of the recent past emphasises the thesis – that typical social consciousness of the majority was and continues to remain decidedly skewed to the right, the push to the far right has been gradual. Defining the term left, right and far right in the preface itself, the book encapsulates the journey of the far right wing organization from 1915-49, till the assassination of M.K. Gandhi, it summarizes the trial and the reopened trial of the assassination. It will then unpack two decades that were decisive in the formation and ascent of the far right – the 1920s and the 1970s. These are the subject of chapter one and two. The third chapter describes the dilemmas of the organized left and fate of socialists up to the 1970s briefly. The last chapter bridges developments of the past with more recent times in the journey of the far right. It is by no means a comprehensive or decisive account. The central intention presented in the first chapter, ‘We Our Nation Defined’, is that at least in the early days (by the end of the nineteenth century and beginnings of the twentieth) the problem began with the social elite (elite in terms of land ownership, education and professions) when they sought to fashion a national consciousness by reviving ancient Hindu creed, mythology, glory. Contest between marginal social reform and resistance from orthodoxy was the norm. Names and movements like Ranade (National Social Conference), K.N. Natrajan (Hindu Social Reform Movement), Tilak (Deccan

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Education Society), Bankimchandra, Ramakrishna ParamhansaVivekananda (Rama Krishna Mission), Dayanand Saraswati (Arya Samaj), are associated with this period, not to mention Anne Besant and the Theosophical Society that provided a western endorsement of Hindu civilization and mysticism. A similar pattern was emerging in the Muslim community, where reform and revival confronted each other. This stirring was occurring in the context of colonial rule which by now was almost 150 years old and had entered a mature phase. The British rulers of India were trying to maximise land and other revenue extraction, to meet growing costs of administration. To that was added costs of developing markets for British industrial products and controlling the colony better by expanding infrastructure, transport and communication. This later phase of colonization was advancing amidst heightened racism. At least that is how the growing tribe of English educated began to perceive their subordinate position as they gained access to western ideas and movements. By the 1880s the number of English educated was close to 50,000, of which graduates accounted for only 5,000. The number continued to rise rapidly so did the circulation of English language newspapers. Sarkar says, ‘. . . this emergent social group enjoyed an importance far beyond its size. English education gave it a unique capacity to establish contacts on a country-wide scale. English educated government employees, lawyers, teachers, journalists or doctors worked fairly often outside their home region’.7 They were eventually to form the leadership of the national movement. Hinduism (as a way of life or a set of diverse beliefs, practices and social ordering of human existence) was the main vehicle of socialization and culture for the vast majority. Colonizers tried to gauge its contours, codify it with the help of its leading votaries mainly for administrative and legislative reasons. In the bargain they also gave it an identity and unity it perhaps did not have in earlier times. As it was practised, Hinduism lacked even the primary initiation for an overtly collective social consciousness. The kind that are found in the principles of say Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Buddhism decreeing the equality of all believers and in some cases women too, is absent in Hindu practice! Even assembly norms like all believers sitting on the same level in a common place of worship to be addressed regularly by

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scholars and sages of the belief system, were largely absent. Local congregations were mainly around seasonal festivities, they were infused with mythology and parable but these were rarely celebrated as all-encompassing community events, some castes would be routinely excluded. There were of course tenets that declare that the world is a family of a pervasive God (Vasudeva Kutumbakam) with the usual hierarchies that exist within a Hindu family, one presumes. But practices and rituals which underscore the unity, dignity of men or oneness of the believers, are conspicuous by their absence. The reason perhaps is that Hinduism was not a congregational or a doctrinaire creed to begin with, one’s consciousness of it as a creed as such, is a colonial feature. The Arya Samaj as a Hindu revivalist-cum-reform movement introduced congregation and propagandising towards the end of the nineteenth century. However it was popular only among the upper castes in north western region of India. Nonetheless, the ability of Hinduism to draw together the consciousness of millions and influence their morality through mythology, sacred symbols, culture of rituals, ubiquitous and enormously wealthy temples, men of religion attached to temples, wandering men of religion like ‘sadhus’, is strong and also quite incomparable. So, it had endured over the ages. As a belief system it was widespread in the subcontinent and hence available for nationalist and political harnessing. This was the situation in spite of the ‘outside’ rule, Muslim and British colonization that together lasted a thousand years! Before the Partition of the subcontinent non-Hindus were 24 per cent of the population, they formed only 15 per cent of the population after that. The point being made here, is that the journey from Hinduism to an egalitarian collective sentimentality is an awfully long one, a journey that too few Hindus took, till the 1920s at least. In the decade before Independence, Dr B.R. Ambedkar (a major dalit leader and chief architect of the Constitution of India), was to wage a lonely battle against social inequality and after Independence renounced Hinduism in disgust.8 Bhagat Singh and others like him who located themselves outside the frame of religious communities, as secular radicals, came to be considered positively hazardous to the nationalist cause, albeit privately, in the highest circle of the national movement. A similar fate circumscribed the communists.

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The second chapter skips the first three decades after Independence as the Nehru years were relatively stable. The first Nehru decade was occupied with adopting the Constitution, consolidating borders, reorganizing states and administration, locating India in the world order. The halcyon years ended with the Indo-China war of 1962 that ended unfavourably for India. The war also offered the first major opportunity for the right wing to orchestrate an opposition to the influence of left leaning ministers in Nehru’s cabinet. The second chapter, therefore, moves directly to India’s attempt at expanding state control over monopoly in industry and finance and simultaneously, designing and implementing direct attack on poverty under the third Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi. What can now with hindsight be viewed as a pivotal leftward swing in some important central government policies (in the late 1960s) under Indira Gandhi, led to a vigorous offensive from the Right. The offensive was constructed into an anti-Indira movement, managed substantially by a far right wing organization at the ground level, led and camouflaged by leaders claiming allegiance to Mahatma Gandhi and home-grown brands of socialism. It was so well timed and contrived that even sections of the left could not recognize it for what it was. State level electoral competitions had become so vicious by then that even if they recognized it they chose to ignore it and the forest was lost for the trees. The Congress seeking frantically to maintain a hegemony that was being challenged regionally, had no mean role to play in the confusion and acrimony that led to the Emergency. This coalition of the right against Mrs Gandhi caused unrest and lawlessness that ended in the proclamation of the Emergency. It lasted from 1975-7, during the period many democratic rights were suspended. This phase is often described as the darkest phase of Indian democracy and at least up to 2014 it perhaps was. The far-right wing rose to become a major back seat political player after the emergency. During the period leading to and during the emergency its large, disciplined force proved capable of uniting, escalating and spreading the agitation against Mrs Gandhi. The role of the anti-Indira movement, its connections with right wing forces within and imperialist forces outside India, are considered here. These were indeed redefining years for the far-right wing seeking, as it were, some respectability after their well publicised association with the Gandhi

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assassination which had proved to be a public relations disaster for them. After the Emergency was lifted, the right wing was no longer a political pariah. Having used the years between 1949 and 1975, very productively, it had created social and cultural capital for itself. Thereafter it set out to capture political power coming closer to it with every decade (not just electorally but in influencing public opinion and weakening the Congress). Since then, the far right has managed to strengthen its cultural and political grip progressively and through multiple religious and cultural interventions, even sectarian violence, all culminating first in the first National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition government of 1998 and then in a historic landslide victory in the 2014 general elections. The rest is still unfolding around us. The third chapter is a deviation from what and why of events to a personality, that of Jayaprakash Narayan and the curious role he played. The fourth chapter contains a thumb nail view of the journey and dilemmas of the left in India, first under gruelling colonial repression and after Independence, as a participant in liberal democracy. A few other contestants in electoral politics are also discussed. The fifth and final chapter, far right at the centre, charts the rise of the far right wing through the 1980s culminating on the ruins of Ayodhya in 1992. The ascent of the free market, pro-big business Gujarat model as a national ideal, role of neoliberalism in shrinking the state, valorising greed and aspirations for wealth midst social backwardness and conservatism, are the milieu in which secularism and socialism both collapsed. Failure of the centre right Congress Party to distinguish itself significantly from the far right in the political competition that followed made it easy for the far right to succeed. The terms left, right and centre are familiar in political deliberations. In this text too, political forces of the left and the right will be used frequently and defined as usual with mention of the French Revolution 1789-99. This is unfortunately necessary for the lack of an equivalent event in the Indian subcontinent. Indian political forces of nationalism are an early twentieth century phenomenon. Here nationalism can only be defined in its colonial context, as an affirmation of an ‘Indian’ identity constructed gradually and broadcast throughout the movement for Independence. Its anti-imperialist position for

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self-determination is considered as fundamentally a historically progressive movement and Independence in 1947 is the most prominent moment of reference for most political discussions. These euro-centric definitions are, therefore, not entirely appropriate for India besides being unsophisticated, but one thinks they are basically adequate for the present purpose. The left in the post French Revolution world was an ideology and political formation, most closely aligned with the principle of equality and fraternity in society. It grew in opposition to monarchies and feudalism. Carlyle says that the Revolution was against worn out, corrupt authority.9 But it was perhaps much more than that. The principle of equality was justified by using enlightenment philosophy and science. Eventually it placed the principles of democracy on a rational, scientific basis. The left emerged from within the revolution, which had differences with other interpretations of democracy over right to private property. Jacobins were the most vehement critics of private property. The right was defined in hostility to the left, as an upholder of tradition, hierarchy, customary practices of monarchies and feudal societies. The right made a forceful case that hierarchy is natural and necessary for peace and social order, its absence leads to anarchy and disarray of which the post revolution period offered many expedient examples. By the middle of the nineteenth century as capitalism matured and feudalism became a vestige of the past, the left came to be defined in opposition to capitalism and eventually, it aligned with Marxism, socialism and communism. It stood in resistance to Imperialism, myriad forms of dominance, discrimination and exploitation, in favour of more genuinely egalitarian ‘peoples democracy’. Congruently not just the Left’s manifesto but its rank and file, composition, organisational structure. The Right now manifests itself as an upholder of the present day capitalism, its hierarchies and inequalities. It is often spotted with additional features like political democracy, liberties of religion, expression, freedom of choice, equality of race, ethnicity with support for ‘multiculturalism’ or national ‘unity in diversity’ and it may also offer a range of safety nets for the poor. It is identified with such features as can help identify it as centre right or far right based on the intensity of violence it uses to encourage inequalities.

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Liberty, equality, and fraternity are ideas that many nations may adopt formally in their Constitution and implement them in some order of priority. These ideas remain important 200 years after they were mounted and define political discourse even today. The left may put equality, fraternity before liberty and even deny some forms of liberty, while the right might emphasise liberty and pay only lip service to equality. But the left and right are not some inert categories or grades on a sun dial. Socio-economic and so political force within nations (and globally) are ever-changing. In a dynamic analysis, the centre (between left and right) has often come to denote the status-quo or the persisting equilibrium of those forces. Given this centre, political forces to the right, and left may be judged according to their agenda. Hence at the turn of the twentieth century, Indian National Congress (INC) could be broadly labelled a force of the left, against the status-quo, against Imperialism and for direct representation of that government but by the turn of the twenty-first century it had become quite evidently a force of the centre-right. The far right sits at the edge of the spectrum beyond the right, a feral child of the right. It shares with the right a belief in social privilege and hierarchy if anything, more rabid opposition to socialism and support for monopoly capital. But it has additional illiberal dimensions like extreme nationalism constructed on some bygone glory or some imminent war or projection of a national monoculture. It is scornful of most forms of liberalism. It may also project a national identity accompanied by religious or racial fundamentalism directed most often than not against immigrants. Marked by a nurtured cult of hate which in turn is constructed by devaluing, oppressing, and discriminating against a group on the basis of their alleged inferiority or deviation from the national culture, accompanied by the cult of a strong ‘masculine’ leader and his coterie. An ethos of authoritarianism is fostered, storm troopers, a militia are trained that can indulge in extra state violence if needed. Time and again appeals to the pride and self-respect of a group who have been wronged or displaced from their preeminence in a social hierarchy, are made a pretext for ‘spontaneous’ violence. The far right movements everywhere share these features but in each country, the far right has a unique connection to the countries history and is shaped by present conjunction of socio-political forces. Twentieth

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century Europe produced many movements of the far right, some became well-known as ‘Fascism’ and ‘Nazism’. They referred to the ancient glory of the Roman Empire for inspiration or the superiority of the Aryan race and thrived on anti-semitism, grew rapidly in the period that preceded the great war between the capitalist powers of Europe but climaxed after the First World War (WW1) and the Bolshevik Revolution, as a communist state was created besides Europe and that called for a response from the right. The left views the far right as an essential appendage of the right and monopoly capital, to be used against any democratic upsurge of the left. It is also used to make way for a war and militarization or simply as a means to push political forces nationally to the right. The most influential essay on the historical origins of fascism in the west was that of Arthur Rosenberg (1934),‘Fascism as a Mass Movement’; he saw the roots of fascism in the reactionary, ultra-patriotic, violently anti-left, racist movements of the late nineteenth century. Their resurgence was the result of the support they received from the existing government and also their wide appeal across classes. Rosenberg says ‘. . . that the political dynamics of the capitalist countries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are a hugely complicated affair. The peculiar equilibrium of capitalist society has always depended upon a multiplicity of distinct and seemingly opposed forces (p. 148)’.10 The forces include representatives of the pre-capitalist feudal order, monarchies, upper bureaucracy, army and church. They contain both economic (free trade) and social (freedom/choice) liberal and anti-liberal movements. The tendency to move from liberal to illiberal policies in support of capital, follows consolidation of capital and its booms, busts, depressions and revivals. However, a long term tendency for concentration and monopoly underlies these gyrations and it calls for ‘authority, centralism and violence’. In Tsarist Russia, for example, in the years before the WW1, big capitalists like their counterparts in Europe, consolidated behind imperialist adventures of the ministers. In these years the police agents of the Tsar created a mass movement from the lumpen proletariat with liquor and money called the Black Hundreds or True Russian People as a resistance to the Revolution. It conducted many pogroms. In 1848 and 1871 the French capitalists suppressed the workers in Paris with a series of bloody massacres and Bismarck kept German workers

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shacked with anti-socialist laws. The arrangement is repeated from the English Revolution of the seventeenth century to the French Revolution of the eighteenth century to the Russian Revolution in the twentieth century. When the crisis of resistance is severe, the ruling classes cannot hope to succeed only by use of normal state power especially when state power is weakened for any reason, they need to explore other means. That is when volunteer-corps are recruited from the population and trained. They are usually recruited from the most impoverished strata of society, what Trotsky called (at the start of the Russo-Japanese war of 1905) the consciously planned and organized mobilization of the scum of society. He talks of an extraordinary development where the core of a militia was formed on a disciplined and organized military basis. This hardcore group received its slogans and watchwords from above and passed them into the ranks below. It was also this group that decided the timing and scale of any murderous action that had to be organized. The first attack would come through the media, mainly newspapers published by them and distributed in specific circles. Their success is always made possible by the state whose instruments they are. All this resonates in India today. After the Second World War (WW2) the cold war between America and USSR (capitalism and communism) served this purpose of making enemies and creating fear, well and right up till 1991. Kalecki (1964) talks of fervent activity among strong fascist groups in the developed countries in the late 1950s and early 60s, when government intervention was becoming a part of reformed capitalism. These movements like the Organisation Armee Secrete (Secret Armend Organisation) (OAS) in France, Neo-Nazis in West Germany and Goldwaterites in United States, did not resort to social demagoguery of the Nazi type but they were supported by the most reactionary groups of big business, were anti- communists, raised a variety of racist slogans, and indulged in cold war demagoguery, appealed to the angry members of the military establishment, and some like Goldwater also spoke against government intervention in the economy and social insurance. He says ‘The fascism of our times is a dog on a leash; it can be unleashed at any time to achieve definite aims and even when on the leash serves to intimidate the potential opposition (p. 104)’.11 In late twentieth century some advanced capitalist democracies like USA and UK moved further to the right, abandoned the welfare

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state and the Keynesian compromise with monopoly capital. Promarket policy shifts in communist China in the late 1970s around the same time as the advanced capitalist countries, and then implosion of communist USSR in 1991 marked the turning of the tide. Gulf wars that lasted for almost three decades expanded the military enterprise of the capitalist world thereafter. It gave birth to great waves of refugees and immigrants, a political vacuum in war torn countries, a virulent reaction that took the form of a proto fascist movement in the Islamic world which took to terrorist acts against America and Europe (partners in the west Asian wars). Thereafter, the tumult was categorized as a civilizational war, a culture war, war between democracies and non-democracies. Al-Azmeh12 says that the Muslim political phenomena developed out of marginal proto fascist youth militias and sporting club movements, nurtured in a system of meagre public education, in the 1920s and 30s mainly in Egypt and some in Syria as well. They were supported, provided ample finance by petro-Islamic agencies. This went on in an international climate dominated by the Truman Doctrine, the policy of containing communism using Islamic fundamentalism. In the Arab world it was used in countering secular Arab nationalist, socialist and arguably pro-Soviet regimes. Social conservatism and political Islamism was systematically cultivated and used as a bulwark against communism. Out of these grew various nihilist cults, ultra-conservative, hyper nationalist populism of late twentieth and early twenty-first century radical Islam in an entirely different context. American exceptionalism, hegemonic military capacity, collapse of the Soviet bloc were the setting of the endless West Asian wars that drove a continuous rightward shift within advanced capitalist countries. New enemies materialised, at first dictatorship of Saddam Hussain in Iraq till it transmuted into the axis of evil comprising of ‘all enemies’ of democracy and then all Muslims as an overarching enemy after 9 September 2001. Entering the twenty-first century, the equilibrium of political forces within advanced capitalist countries was much further to the right than it had been thirty years ago and it continued to shift in that direction as it weakened welfare services and state enterprises to embrace neo-liberalism and perpetual war simultaneously. Presidency of Clinton and Obama (Democratic Party) in the USA and government of Tony Blair (Labour Party) marked the point of convergence of the ‘centre-right’ and ‘centre-left’ of the capitalist world into what came to

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be known as the ‘extreme centre’ far to the right of centre of the 1960s. It stayed there, in the extreme centre even after the crash of 2008 which began in the American financial sector and spread across the globe pulling the world into a recession. It was widely described as the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of 1929. Occupy Wall Street, the mass protests against the depredations of the crash, benefits granted to the financial sector despite their culpability, echoed across Europe but it did not shift the equilibrium of political forces. Inequalities of wealth had risen continuously, having consolidated itself into an oligarchy of top one per cent of the population. Monopoly capital, in liberal democracies of advanced capitalist countries, doesn’t even seem to need a major far right movement anymore. But observers noted that ultra-right grass root insurgency was multiplying in Europe. Fekete13 writes of the far rights capacity for mass murder across Europe from Norway on 22 July 2011 when Breivik killed 77 people in Oslo. He called them traitors for embracing immigration which would promote an Islamic colonization of Norway. He seemed to have fellow travellers, some 1003 people at least, to whom he sent out his manifesto before he went on the shooting spree. In July the same year revelations about a German neo-Nazi cell, the National Socialist Underground to name one, had executed eleven people mostly of Turkish origin and undertaken fourteen armed robberies. Other fascist group, Autonomous Nationalists, National Democratic Party (NDP) in Germany, Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident (Pegida) are also spreading widely in Europe. They formed the third most powerful parliamentary political force in countries like Hungary, Norway, France, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Sweden, and Netherlands. In September 2013 the Golden Dawn with army connivance infiltrated key state apparatus and threatened a coup d’état in Greece. Fueling the cause of the far right was the concoction of permanent war, distress migration and neo liberal economic policies. Fekete says these far right groups are not flash mobs; they are racist mobilizations swelling up from anger, fear and machismo. Grit for their mills comes from the grass root, converge with criminality of various kinds from pimping, to extortion, drugs, arms running, vigilantism, murder which is manipulated by the ultra-right. Less advanced capitalist countries like India are dealing with a

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different scenario as they embrace neo-liberalism amidst mass poverty. Here democratic pressures from below and forces of the left are still material. The far right has been organized and at hand for a hundred years almost, but it has made noticeable headway in neo-liberal times, both inside the parliament and outside. India now boasts of the largest militia of the far right in the world that rules through its political front at the centre. This book is an acknowledgment of the journey that brought far right to centre in India, the world’s largest democracy. Nothing about Indian economy, society, its dismal social sector is understandable without knowing just how deep, and widespread the roots of the far right are. What passes off as the sacred cow of traditional culture is in fact a deeply right-wing predisposition that made their arrival relatively uncomplicated.

NOTES 1. A. Ahmad (2019), ‘A Conversation with Aijaz Ahmad: The State is Taken Over from Within’, Frontline, 2 August 2019. 2. B. Russell (1945), The History of Western Philosophy, New York: Simon & Schuster. 3. A. Kalhan (2018), Work in a Metro, New Delhi: Manohar. 4. J. Dreze (2017), Sense and Solidarity, Ranikhet: Permanent Black. 5. P.K. Verma (2014), The New Indian Middle Class, Noida: Harper Collins. 6. https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/prashant-bhushan-claims- annamovement-was-propped-up-by-bjp-rss-congress-says-told-you-so 7. Sumit Sarkar (2014), Modern India 1885-1947, Delhi: Pearson. 8. B.R. Ambedkar (2016), Riddles in Hinduism, New Delhi: Navayana and B.R. Ambedkar (1936), Annihilation of Caste, New Delhi: Navayana. 9. Thomas Carlyle (2002), The French Revolution, New York: The Modern Library. 10 A. Rosenberg (1934), ‘Fascism as a Mass Movement’, Historical Materialism 20.1 (2012), pp. 144-89. 11. M. Kalecki (1964), ‘The Fascism of our Times’, Monthly Review, 1972, New York, pp. 99-105. 12. A. Al-Azmeh (2003), ‘Postmodern Obscurantism and “The Muslim Question”’, The Socialist Register, pp. 28-50. 13. L. Fekete (2016), ‘Neoliberalism and Popular Racism: The Shifting Shape of the European Right’ in Socialist Register, pp. 1-23.

Abbreviations

ABVP AIADMK AICC AID AIML AIRF AITUC BBC BCSS BDD BJP BJS BKS BLD BMS CBI CCF CEC CIA CII CISCO CITU CP CPC CPGB CPI CPI(ML) CPM/CPI(M)

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam All India Congress Committee Agency for International Development All India Muslim League All India Railwaymen’s Federation All India Trade Union Congress British Broadcasting Corporation Bihar Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti Worli Bombay Development Department Bharatiya Janata Party Bharatiya Jana Sangh Bharatiya Kamgar Sena Bharatiya Lok Dal Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh Central Bureau of Investigation Congress for Cultural Freedom Central Executive Committee Central Intelligence Agency Confederation of Indian Industry Corporation of USA Centre of Indian Trade Unions Central Province Communist Party of China Communist Party of Great Britain Communist Party of India Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of India (Marxist)

32 CPSU CRPF CSP DDA DIR DMK FICCI AFL-CIO GIC GOI GP HRD HSC HSS I&B ICS IHME IISCO ILC IMF INC IPTA IRD IRDF ISI IT JP JPM KGB LPG MIM MISA MLA MNREGA

Abbreviations Communist Party of Soviet Union Central Reserve Police Force Congress Socialist Party Delhi Development Authority Defence of India Rules Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry American Federation of Labour – Congress of Industrial Organisations of USA General Insurance Corporation Government of India Gantantra Parishad Human Resource Development Hindu Students’ Council Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh Information and Broadcasting Indian Civil Services Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation Indian Iron and Steel Company Imperial Legislative Council International Monetary Fund Indian National Congress Indian Peoples Theatre Association Information Research Department India Relief and Development Fund Inter-Service Intelligence Information Technology Jayaprakash Narayan Jayaprakash Movement Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen Maintenance of Internal Security Act Member of Legislative Assembly Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Abbreviations MP MRTP MSEB NATO NDA NDP NGO NPA NRI NWFP OAS OBC OCI OFBJP OPC OPEC PIL PL PM PMO PMS PR PSB PSP RRP RSS RTUC SDRs SEATO SMM SS SSP TADA TCTSFH TDP TMC

33

Members of Parliament Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices Maharashtra State Electricity Board North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Democratic Alliance National Democratic Party of Germany Non-Governmental Organization Non Performing Assets Non-resident Indian North-West Frontier Province Organisation Armee Secrete (Secret Armend Organisation) in France Other Backward Castes Overseas Citizens of India Overseas Friends of BJP Office of Policy Coordination Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Public Interest Litigation Public Law Prime Minister Prime Minister’s Office Prime Minister’s Secretariat Public Relations Psychological Strategy Board Praja Socialist Party Ram Rajya Parishad Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Red Trade Union Congress Special Drawing Rights South East Asian Treaty Organization Samyukta Maharashtra Movement Shiv Sena Samyukta Socialist Party Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate Telegu Desam Party Trinamool Congress

34 TOI TPP UP UPA USIBC VHP VKA WPP WW1 WW2

Abbreviations Times of India Twenty Point Programme United Provinces/Uttar Pradesh United Progressive Alliance United States-India Business Council Vishva Hindu Parishad Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram Workers and Peasants Parties First World War Second World War

CHAPTER 1

We Our Nationhood Defined

In Russia, finally. What I see bewilders me. Not like any other country. The difference is in the roots. They have awakened all the people in the land. . . . What impresses me the most here is that vulgarity of wealth has completely vanished. For this reason alone, a sense of confidence seems to be universal in the country’s citizens. The peasants and the marginalized have thrown away the indignity in which they had earlier lived. This is what surprises me and also gives me happiness. . . . –Tagore, in ‘Letters from Russia’. Socialism is not a product of this soil. It is not in our blood and tradition. It has absolutely nothing to do with the traditions and ideals of thousands of years of our national life. It is a thought alien to crores of our people here. As such it does not have the power to thrill our hearts and inspire us to a life of dedication and character. Thus, we see it does not possess even the primary qualification to serve as an ideal for our national life. –Golwalkar

Introduction There was Russia and then there was China, in the neighbourhood of India, trying to build dignity and confidence of the marginalized. Tagore’s empathy was not a common sentiment. To feel impressed by the absence of vulgarity of wealth, by the confidence and dignity of the marginalized would have been a rare empathy especially among the upper-classes and castes that shaped the new Indian nation. The few leaders who felt empathy and concern like Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru, were in fact quite lonely. Their loneliness became more palpable

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on the eve of partition, and later in the midst of the most violent communal carnage in modern Asia. Their minority position became increasingly apparent in the decades after Independence. Certainly, the empathy of Gandhi and Nehru presented tremendous utility in the national movement when masses had to be electrified for acts of courage and defiance. Gandhi and later Nehru could both move the masses. Yet, after Independence the core leadership of the INC could not rationally, debate and construct a coherent programme to lift the relegated out of ignorance and abject poverty swiftly, let alone implement it. Much of what was to plague India, even seventy years later, like the problem of ‘surplus humanity’ or what in popular discussions is labelled as poor quality of human development, has its origins in that absence of elementary empathy which in turn breeds concern for or engagement with equity and fairness. Notwithstanding the rhetoric of few leaders in the nationalist project, the steady cave-in of parliamentary democracy that followed, produced the largest pool of absolutely poor people and it’s timorous foundations went almost unnoticed, till it caved in after 2014. Why did this blind spot exist and persist? To confront the indifference is to reexamine the ‘roots’ of this nationalist mission that swept the country to Independence. The traditional society, its cultural norms, its propertied classes, and the dominant religions that were carried along on the wave of the movement for freedom. It is from these roots that the new nation was shaped. Colonial status had certainly played a role in shaping the economy of India. When India gained freedom literacy was 17 per cent, life expectancy at birth 32 years, per capita income Rs. 247 a year, few had non-agricultural jobs. Economy had been largely stagnant for 3-4 generations. 80 per cent people lived in villages. Landowners in the rural economy, merchants and emerging capitalist class in the urban, formed the influential elite. Local government in the form of panchayats were the main institutions overseeing local customs, traditions, occupation and inter-caste dealings, while British made courts of law dealt with more serious disputes of property and crime. The British had not restructured religious, social and cultural norms in any significant way. They just found it easier to simply rule with the help of local social elite.

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Reveries on Roots of the Nation People have lived in clusters and communities whether they lived within a specific geographic boundary or not. The venture of defining national boundaries as one knows them today, is a rather recent occurrence in history and it is situated at a point of intersection of politics, technology and social transformation.1 The process of defining national boundaries usually passes through three phases. The first phase is largely cultural, folkloric and mythological. In the next phase some agents of the national idea, with less than transparent ambitions, begin campaigning for it, gradually the notion is woven around language, ethnicity or shared beliefs. It is only later on that the idea acquires mass appeal or is compelled; possibly it gathers momentum only as socio-economic interdependence over larger geographic areas increases significantly. The nation is hence constructed from above and broadcast in multiple ways to mould the consciousness of those below. The scale on which this becomes possible depends primarily on the scale of technological change. Machinery of mass communication like printing, radio and television and mass transportation have shifted the scale over a period of time. That in turn determines the magnitude and concentration of capital in production, transport, communication, and armament production. The project of nation building and aligning the political and national unit is just a recent detail. The compact of governments with those governed (regarding state effort and policy) were it exists at all is even more recent. Otto Bauer argued that nations are products of long history, of extended intermingling of people in a geographical location. Historically they develop a commonality through shared stories, languages, communication, habits, culture, philosophy and common political institutions. In the process they even develop a distinct differentiated national character. None of the above commonalities are static and do evolve in the real struggle for existence. They change when material conditions change rapidly, particularly when transportation, travel and communication increase, but they tend to retain their differentiation for longer periods and can be identified as differences in national culture. Therefore, nations experienced industrial capitalism in similar ways but with distinct national characteristics and not indistinguishably.2

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One finds this argument interesting because it explains historical patterns and path dependencies somewhat better. It includes the influence of culture, religions, social hierarchies, customs and belief systems on the collective choices that nations make. Nationalism is a formulation and articulation of that choice. It also explains pathways and trajectories more completely than the understanding of nations simply as products of capitalism, the great industrial transformation that expanded boundaries to accommodate increasing productivity and trade. The equation of nation to just the boundaries of government, a state and a collective aspiration of future class-based projects, is inadequate to explain the texture of shades around us globally. Identifying a common culture seems to have been the widely assumed mission when leading figures in the national movement of India set about imagining a nation and searching for shared commonalities. M.K. Gandhi in Hind Swaraj rejected the generally accepted hypothesis that the rise of Indian nationalism was a product of mainly western education, transport and modern means of communication. Rebuffing the British proposition that India would require centuries to become one nation, he says that India was one nation before the British arrived, ‘I do not wish to suggest that because we were one nation, we had no differences, but it is submitted that our leading men travelled throughout India either on foot or in bullock carts. They learned one another’s languages, and there was no aloofness between them. What do you think could have been the intentions of the far-seeing ancestors of ours who established Shevetbindu Rameshwaram in the south, Juggernaut in the south east, and Haridwar in the north as places of pilgrimage?. . . . They knew that worship of God could have been performed just as well at home. . . . But they saw that India was one undivided land so made by nature. They, therefore, argued that it must be one nation. Arguing thus they established holy places in various parts of India and fired the people with an idea of nationality in a manner unknown in other parts of the world. Any two Indians are one as no two Englishmen are.’3 Here the imagined nation seems to be bound specifically by the dominant religion and culture. Gandhi goes on ‘India cannot cease to be one nation because people belonging to different religions live in it.

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The introduction of foreigners does not necessarily destroy the nation; they merge in it’ (p. 52).4 It is not clear who the foreigners were in a world without passports. Yet there does seem to be a notion, born of a thousand-year old memory, through the mainstream nationalist discourse that there were some original inhabitants and some ‘others’, outsiders. Often, the dateline for original inhabitant in the nationalist dialogue was about one thousand years ago, even if rivulets of Aryans, Bactrians, Kushans, Phalvas, Scythians and many others were flowing into India for millenniums before. Perhaps the lack of interest in writing history seriously made all our national leaders rely on popular oral sources or hastily written ones. Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915 and soon became the pre-eminent leader of the political party that took the leadership role in the freedom movement. His ideas influenced the direction the national movement took. At that time, the INC was a microcosm of the elite propertied society. In the eyes of a vast majority of this leadership, traditional culture and norms were good enough and there was no need for revolutionary change to make a new nation. It was basically necessary and sufficient only to change the rulers from the British to more acceptable native ones. ‘I believe that the civilization that India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors. Rome went, Greece shared the same fate, the might of the Pharaohs was broken, Japan has become westernized, of China nothing can be said, but India is still, somehow or the other sound at the foundation’.5 Gandhi, however, did suggest some reforms and added that introspection, truth, non-violence, Satyagraha at individual and Swaraj at collective levels would be adequate means of transformation into nationhood. ‘The people of Europe learn their lessons from the writings of men of Greece or Rome, which exist no longer in the former glory. In trying to learn from them, the Europeans imagine that they will avoid the mistakes of Greece and Rome. Such is their pitiable condition. In the midst of all this India remains immovable and that is her glory. . . . What we have tested and found true on the anvil of experience we dare not change. Many thrust their advice on India, and she remains

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steady. This is her beauty; it is the sheet anchor of our hope’ (p. 66). . . . The Gujarati equivalent for civilization means good conduct. If this definition is correct then, India as so many writers have shown has nothing to learn from anyone else, and this is as it should be’ (pp. 66-7). Here Gandhi was rebuffing modern ideas of the nation and those of social evolution and progress. Since India was then rural and static, a non-industrialized country with only a small and new industrial wage-earning working class exposed to change. Gandhi was also perhaps playing to a wide gallery. When he wrote this, Gandhi had already spent a number of years in England. At the turn of the nineteenth century, England was a cauldron of new ideas and movements, like atheism, socialism, communism and Fabian socialism to mention a few. Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 and the first volume of Das Kapital had appeared in 1867, Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man was published in 1871. An independent labour party was formed in 1887, working class movements were active and winning concessions. These were transforming ideas and movements that were being discussed avidly in progressive and intellectual circles. Remarking on the Mahatma (an authoritative biography of M.K. Gandhi by D.G. Tendulkar) E.M.S. Namboodiripad notes,‘However, it is characteristic of the future Mahatma that the movement which interested him the most while in London was – vegetarianism!’ (p. 27).6 He joined the London vegetarian society, was on its executive committee, he contributed nine articles on Hindu customs and diet to a vegetarian magazine and started a club in his locality. Perhaps Gandhi was a misfit in the London intellectual world or more comfortable in the familiarity of Hindu customs and diet, or maybe he was grappling with the significance of roots, traditions and the possibility of using old paths to forge new roads leading to unfamiliar destinations. Rudolph and Rudolph, American scholars working on India think that Gandhi was for his time‘one of the most conspicuous modernizers of Indian politics’ and the fact that he could be so, suggests that ‘some elements of tradition can serve modern functions’.7 Giving new content to the traditional vocabulary of satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence), swaraj (interpreted simultaneously as mastery over oneself and as

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secular self-rule) he was shaping the ‘inner environment’ of Indians, transforming the sense of self-esteem, fear, inferiority and helplessness. These are the commonly observed consequences of colonial rule, where the conquered internalize a sense of being dominated. Nehru too comments on this effect of Gandhi, of engendering a psychological change among the masses and other Indian leaders. Namboodiripad, attempting to identify the traits and social forces that propelled M.K. Gandhi to the helm of the anti-colonial movement, eventually locates them in his ability to identify with the poor, talk to the masses and win their confidence for his purpose of anti-Imperial struggle but ‘. . . though speaking in the name of, and in a language understandable to, the masses of toiling people, Gandhi was firmly opposed to anything that would rally the masses against the existing social system’ (pp. 61-2). This stance was avowedly in the name of non-violence and perhaps based on a judgment that the possibility of uncontrolled violence and internal divisions would harm the cause of Indian Independence. The British control over the subcontinent was complete by the time Gandhi made a bid for leadership soon after he arrived from South Africa. Speculating on how M.K. Gandhi managed to assume the unquestioned leadership of the Congress so soon, Namboodiripad says, ‘Yet a few years after he came to India and settled down, he became the undisputed leader of the biggest national political movement which our country had witnessed. . . . Men and women, towering far above him in intellectual capacity, virtually pledged themselves to service under his guidance, and even subordinated their judgements to his’ (p. 38).8 The reason was his ability to connect with the Indian masses largely illiterate and simple minded drawing them into the national movement against colonial oppression. His self-presentation as an ascetic leader was such that the multitudes could recognize it and trust him. As it played out, Gandhi’s self invention captured both the imagination of millions and control of the nationalist thought sidelining other contending ideologies. This success was in no small way a consequence of its presentation as continuity of tradition of ascetics, self-suffering, faith and devotion (bhakti). He will be discussed at the end of the chapter.

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Nehru, although much younger, was the most prominent leader after Gandhi, both in terms of pan Indian public appeal and repute within the Congress. Nehru’s foray into the history of India does not use the Muslim invasion as a dateline, then popular among British historians and right wing ideologues. His idea of India’s past has a more universalist vision sweeping over the historic mingling of races, ideas and histories across the globe. He rejects the European construction of Indian and Asian history. His vision is considerably different from that of most other Congress leaders as well. This was perhaps a consequence of his own background and spirit. The formative years he spent outside India might have added to his vision. He was 15 when he was sent off to Harrow and then to Cambridge. Among the prominent leaders of the nationalist movement, he had perhaps spent the most time away from India in his most formative years. His book The Discovery of India is as much a personal encounter with India as he travelled for political work, as his synthesis of what he thought and understood about world, India and Indian history. He writes,‘My reaction to India was thus often an emotional one, conditioned and limited in many ways. It took the form of nationalism. . . . But nationalism was and is inevitable in the India of my day. . . . It is still one of the most powerful urges that move a people, and, around it, cluster sentiments and traditions and a sense of common living and common purpose. While the intellectual strata of the middle-classes were moving away from nationalism, or so they thought, labour and proletarian movements were deliberately drifting towards nationalism. The coming of war swept everybody everywhere into the net of nationalism. . . . Old established traditions cannot be easily scrapped or dispensed with; in moments of crisis they rise and dominate the minds of men, and often, as we have seen, a deliberate effort is made to use these traditions to rouse a people to a high pitch of effort and sacrifice. Traditions have to be accepted to large extent and adapted and transformed to meet new conditions and ways of thought, and at the same time new traditions have to be built up’ (pp. 44-5).9 ‘Every people and every nation have some such belief or myth of national destiny and perhaps it is partly true in each case. Being an Indian I am myself influenced by this reality or myth about India, and

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I feel that anything that had the power to mould hundreds of generations, without a break, must have drawn its enduring vitality from some deep well of strength and have had the capacity to renew that vitality form age to age’ (p. 47). Perhaps in the same vein he says that Hindu nationalism was a ‘natural growth from the soil of India’ (p. 293) India and Muslim nationalism was abetted by the British government as a bid to divide the nationalist movement led by the Congress. The growth and development of the Muslim League, he says, is an unusual phenomenon (p. 418) and started in ‘1906 with British encouragement’ to keep the new generation of Muslims away from the National Congress. Later he adds that the Hindu Mahasabha was the counterpoint of the Muslim League but relatively less important. The Mahasabha was in fact as aggressively communal as the League but would cover it up with some vague but familiar nationalist terminology. He thought that the communal attitudes of the Muslim League was no less difficult and unreasonable than that the Hindu Mahasabha and British polices were designed to encourage and emphasise these differences against the Congress. While Nehru was simultaneously, discovering, imagining and forging an India of his ideas, India also becomes the metaphor for Nehru’s own quest for a meaning and purpose in politics. It ripened as he elucidated the significance of nationhood to his audience. He addressed thousands of public rallies; he did this incessantly as he got involved in political activity and electoral campaigns in the 1920s in the United Provinces, and in the 1930s all over the country. He was travelling to and speaking in remote villages. He would talk about other far away regions of India to his audience and while doing so would be acquainting each part with the other. He discussed their shared problems as he learned of them himself on the road. He found that often the only unifying element across regions was mythology and folk lore. There would occasionally be some people who had been on pilgrimage and knew of those other places in India and rare individuals who had fought wars (including the WW1) in faraway lands, but few had travelled far even through India. ‘India with all her infinite charm and variety began to grow upon me more and more, and yet the more I saw of her the more I realized

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how very difficult it was for me or for anyone else to grasp the ideas she had embodied. . . . Though outwardly there was diversity and infinite variety among our people, everywhere there was that tremendous impress of oneness, which had held all of us together for ages past, whatever political fate or misfortune had befallen us. The unity of India was no longer merely an intellectual conception for me; it was an emotional experience which overpowered me. That essential unity had been so powerful that no political division no disaster or catastrophe, had been able to overcome’ (p. 52). These are uncommonly dreamy visions for a man in the heat and dust of politics. It was not as much the material unity of idea, language, food or dress or even of communication and transport, as much as his hope and vision for unity. None of that emotional charge can be seen in the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore, leading Indian intellectual of that period, positioned himself aloof from the surge of nationalism, against its jingoist variety and coercion of the individual. India, he felt did not even have the basis for it, given the ‘physical repulsion, one for the other that we have between castes’ (p. 95).10 In an introduction to Tagore’s lecture on nationalism (delivered in Japan and USA between 1916-17) E.P. Thompson says, ‘Tagore was the founder of anti-politics. . . . For Tagore, more than any other thinker of his time, had a clear conception of civil society as something distinct from and of stronger and more personal structure than political and economic structures’ (p. 14).11 Instead Tagore urged his fellow countrymen to set about awakening the minds of people ‘reforming and renewing their own society – agricultural improvement, social welfare, education, overcoming the barriers created by caste and religion by their own efforts’ and not depend on petitioning their British rulers. He also made a generalized representation of Indian history, its civil society and continuity but with strong reservations about the mind-numbing passivity created by the caste system through which people had lost the power to combat aggression and exploitation. In an essay on the ‘Cult of the Charkha’ in 1925 he said, ‘So in India, during long ages past, we have the spectacle of only a repetition of that which has gone before’ (p. 100).12 B.R. Ambedkar, major intellectual and later prominent political leader of the schedule-castes, was almost bitter and preferred to position himself outside mainstream nationalism, dominant religion and against

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other major nationalist leaders. From Annihilation of Caste to Riddles of Hinduism he was preoccupied with dissecting the roots of the ideological system that created a social impasse in India. He found it in the Hindu religion as it had grown into a system of social control. He describes it as a gradation of castes forming an ascending scale of reverence and ‘a descending scale of contempt – a system which gives no scope for the growth of the sentiments of equality and fraternity so essential for the growth of a democratic form of government’ (p. 25).13 For a good part of his life he actually tried and in fact the well spring of his book Riddles in Hinduism is a desire to reform Hinduism, to bring about a social reform he thought was a necessary foundation of a modern nation. The introduction to Riddles begins thus,‘This book is an exposition of the beliefs propounded by what might be called Brahmanical theology. It is intended for the common mass of Hindus . . . and to lead them to the road of rational thinking’ (p. 49).14 He scrutinizes the misconception that Hinduism is an eternally unchanging religion and order (sanatana) from Vedic times, looks at the dramatic shifts in the accepted social order as human settlements evolved, the myriad changing jatis as sub-castes, questions the static meaning of dharma as custom or tradition (outside an understanding of the evolving context) and through it all, highlights the control that brahmanical theology exerted on the minds of the masses. It is this theology which took the form of the hierarchy of the caste system. But his most powerful intervention by far was his 1936 lecture ‘Annihilation of Caste’, in which almost at the beginning he puts the issue firmly in the centre, To quote,‘Social reform in India has few friends and many critics. The critics fall into two distinct classes. One class consists of political reformers and the other of the socialists.’ Some in the National Congress recognized the importance of social reform and birth of the National Congress was followed, two years later, by the founding of the Social Conference 1887 by M.G. Ranade. The agenda of the reformers was limited mostly to the rights of women and social practices of the upper-caste Hindus and not the need for a more egalitarian structure of society. For a few years they met at the same venue and time annually. Ambedkar says that soon the two wings developed into two different parties that could not agree on the priority of the agenda. While the faction that prioritized political reform supported the National

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Congress, the other faction maintained that social reform was a priority. Over a decade of hostile relations followed, and the fortunes of the social reformers ebbed as leaders presiding over the social reform conference ‘. . . lamented that the majority of educated Hindus were for political advancement and indifferent to social reform’ (pp. 211-12).15 Hostility against social reform turned to enmity under the leadership of Tilak who lead the opposition to it till ‘Social Conference vanished and was forgotten’. Even its limited agenda vanished and so did the understanding that the political constitution of a modern nation must stand on an appropriate social organization. The socialists on the other hand, assumed that the economic basis of inequality was the most significant one and all power flowed from economic power. Whereas Ambedkar held that in society ‘Religion, social status and property are all sources of power and authority, which one man has to control the liberty of another. One is predominant at one stage; and the other is predominant at another stage. That is the only difference’ (ibid., p. 230). After all, the economic reforms desired by the socialists cannot come about without the seizure of power by the working class and that cannot occur in the absence of a feeling of equality, fraternity and justice. ‘Men will not join in a revolution for the equalization of property unless they know that after the revolution is achieved, they will be treated equally’. Wherever such revolutionary changes have occurred in the twentieth century, this fundamental socio-cultural ideal has pre-existed among the compatriots. In India such preconditions do not exist among the working classes according to Ambedkar since,‘the caste system is not merely a division of labour but a division of laborers.’ The culture of the strong beating down the weak has to be replaced by one of associated life where each individual is free to and able to develop his/her capabilities. Much of social reform is essentially a change in notions, values/ideals and attitudes towards other people and material objects. But, if education is limited to the advanced castes alone, how can the capacity to alter that hierarchical social structure develop and gain momentum? Lower classes have been disabled to resort to direct action (collective and mass resistance that compels social change by creating a crisis) by the caste system. ‘They do not think out or know the way to their salvation. They were condemned to be lowly: and not knowing the way to escape, and not having

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the means of escape, they become reconciled to eternal servitude, which they accept as their inescapable fate’ (p. 274). Moreover, in this milieu, those few who do break the mould, do so against all odds, but often end up imitating the old elite both to seek social mobility, recognition and acceptance. Ambedkar eventually resigned from the position as Law Minister he held in Nehru’s cabinet over intense bitterness created against the Hindu Code Bill which was meant to give basic rights to Hindu women. Opposition to the bill brought together the full might of the conservative right wing within and outside the Congress. Their wrath fell upon Ambedkar and brought the issue into the parliamentary spotlight. Only Nehru seemed to stand by Ambedkar then on the Bill or other social reforms. From the vantage of hindsight it appears that major intellectuals and political leaders of the national movement saw what they wanted to see in the Indian roots, just as they do in present times. Their agenda shaped their thoughts. Besides, as most leaders (except some like Ambedkar) came with property and upper-caste pedigree, they were inclined to be quite partial to their inherited heritage as an amalgamated package.

Representation and Electoral Politics Right wing or left wing forces can be recognized only in the context of the national liberation movement. The consensus against foreign domination grew steadily when larger number of people were drawn in through the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Right wing, as was discussed in the preface, is commonly understood to represent social and political forces that seek continuity with the historic or existing social order and hierarchies. The right at that juncture came to exist as a political organization to represent a socially conservative section that sought political independence but to reconstruct a very substantial continuity with a reimagined past of an ideal ‘Hindu nation’ (interrupted one thousand years ago). It was an urge to power, for some upper-caste Hindus to dominate political and cultural spheres completely once again. ‘Let us fix our gaze steadfastly on our

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past, which was great, and the future, which is glorious, and above all live in the present as men. . .’ said K.M. Munshi (a most enterprising agent in the political spectrum whose name will crop up many times) in his presidential address to the Akhand Hindustan Conference in February 1942.16 He was urging his audience to hold fast to their splendid cultural heritage. The details of this future project were to be assembled by the leadership on the go. Much of the early articulation of nationalism began as a rather fledgling project of the new social elite, often well educated or educated abroad but who had grown up under the colonial rule. They sought increasing power to determine local level policy. They sought political power in the colonial frame through greater representation in local administrative and legislative bodies. The national movement grew more coherently in the decades that followed the founding of the INC in 1885 and matured. Within the INC, a shared understanding arose that this Independence was to be engineered as a more, rather than less peaceful transition, to a rule by the social elite with concessions to the depressed castes. Its arguments against colonial rule were framed in terms of the drain of wealth and poverty of India made famous by the Dadabhai Naroji thesis. Hence freedom was sought for national prosperity and alleviation of poverty not for radical change in social relations. The new nation was to be ruled under a constitution modelled on the British one. The INC’s position was in a sense left of the colonial centre when it began to raise concerns about draining of wealth out of India, famines, poverty, tax burdens, demanding welfare for the people and representation in government. The decades that followed the formation of the INC were transformative. Sarkar says that this period of vast changes ‘witnessed perhaps the greatest transition in our country’s long history’.17 From a condition where the British found dependable allies in zamindars, princes, urban notables, where regional diversity and identities prevented the idea of a united Indian people and where the INC represented a tiny minority of educated urban and rural notables. The situation was transformed in 1936 when INC became the largest organization of the people representing almost all sections and regions. In the 1930s Kisan Sabhas (Farmer’s Associations) and trade unions grew under its umbrella to become a force. The INC became a massive

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organization covering many regions and sectors. Gradually it was able to generate enough mass pressure to compel the British to withdraw from India in the period after the WW2. Within 60 years the situation was unrecognizable. It was in this period that different versions of Indian nationalism were formulated, articulated and in competition. An elective principle for local municipal government had been introduced under an 1892 Act to involve capable Indians in local urban government. Morley-Minto Reforms also known as the Indian Councils Act of 1909 was ground breaking in the history of Indian politics. The most important aspect of the Act was the increase of the native representation in the Legislative Councils. The Act of 1909 extended that principle of representation further and beyond the few cities. The Act increased the strength of the Supreme Legislative Councils significantly. The Indian Council Act 1909 granted Muslims two to four seats in each provincial legislature based on the principle of separate election. This representation was apparently made on the basis of a representation to Lord Minto by Muslim men of property and influence led by Aga Khan.18 The Act, however, provided only for the right to raise resolutions and ask supplementary questions and the reformed councils remained mainly advisory bodies. Eight years later in 1917, the British Government announced that its policy in India was to be that of increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration, the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible governance in India as an integral part of the British Empire. That was followed by an inquiry led by the Secretary of State, Edwin S. Montagu and the Viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford. The results of the inquiry were published in 1918 in their report on Indian Constitutional Reform. The Act of 1919 was enacted by the British Parliament as a step towards the fulfilment of the objectives that conceded a little more power into the Indian hands. The Act initiated a ‘sort of responsible government’ in the provinces.The Act also introduced diarchy in the provinces. Matters of administration were divided first between the centre and the provinces and then the provincial subjects were further bifurcated into the ‘transferred’ and ‘reserved’ subjects. The ‘transferred’ subjects were to be administered by the Governor with the aid of the ministers responsible to the Legislative Council which was composed mainly of elected

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members but with enough nominated members to keep control. Thus, responsible governance was sought to be created in a limited sphere. The ‘reserved’ subjects were to remain the responsibility of the Governor and his Executive Council, which was not responsible to the Legislature. The British government was gradually responding to the increased pressure from the Indian elite by gradually including them in affairs of administration. The intentionally divisive separate electorates continued and were extended in the centre and states and also provided for Indian Christians, Sikhs Anglo-Indians and Europeans. Depressed classes received representation by nomination. Gallagher succinctly sums up the change that these reforms brought about when at the centre, the Government in India and the powers of the Raj were increased, tightening the grip over all key policies, while in the provinces more and more authority was entrusted to Indians. This directed much of Indian political energy and action to the provinces, down to local levels. By placing the new provincial administrations upon greatly widened electorates, it also gave the Raj a ‘further range of collaborators, selected now for their mastery of vote-gathering’.19 With opportunities opening for representation and exercise of state power, contending visions of nationalism grew along with their organization. General elections (2.8 per cent of population based on a property qualification) were held in British India in 1920 to elect members of provincial councils and Imperial Legislative Council (ILC). The ILC in turn had a Lower and Upper Chamber called the Central Legislative Assembly and Council of States. Over half the seats at all levels were contested. As can be expected, the 1920s proved to be a critical period of political mobilization and competition for representation.

Who did Indian National Congress Represent? The core of the Congress leadership comprised of men from Bombay and Calcutta who had first come together in the late 1860s and early 70s while studying for the Indian Civil Services (ICS) or law in England. They fell under the influence of Dadabhai Naroji who was then settled in England as businessman-cum-publicist.20 Later, local associations came up in Calcutta, Poona and Madras followed by attempts at coming

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together at an all India level. Eventually only the attempts of A.O. Hume met with sustainable success when, ‘72 largely self-appointed delegates’ who tended to be ‘Anglicized in their personal life and highly successful in their professions’ met for the first session of the INC in Bombay in 1885. By then the railways had made it possible to travel in reasonable comfort and meet annually at different locations throughout the country. The early years, twenty at least were spent almost entirely in making moderate demands through speeches and petitions very much in the mould of their rulers. Soon they were asking for greater representation of educated Indians (considered to be natural leaders) as elected leaders of chambers of commerce, universities and so on in provincial and imperial legislative councils. The economic issues raised were almost throughout, derived from the famous Naroji treatise of the impact of British rule since growing poverty and famines provided the material conditions on which such demands could be made. Demands such as reduction in unfair tariffs, excise duties, home charges, military expenditure, land revenue, suffering caused by forest administration, Indian coolies abroad and salt tax, reflect the wider interest represented by the elite in the early Congress. ‘One of the main objectives of the founders of the Congress was to seek legitimacy as representatives of Indian aspirations. This was necessary in order to unite the scattered and fragmented elements in Indian society and also to impress Calcutta and London that the Congress represented more than a ‘microscopic minority’ and was not just a ‘ramshackle coalition’ (p. 21).21 The pressure to articulate national aspiration, opinions and avoid differences over contentious problems must have been considerable because both matters of social reform within Hinduism, the dominant religion and relations between the two major religious communities, the Muslims and the Hindus were avoided. In 1987-8 the Congress decided not to discuss any subject which either Hindus or Muslims ‘unanimously or nearly unanimously opposed’.22 Speaking about that same property owning ‘middle’ class from where the bulk of INC leadership came, almost 50 years after the formation of the Congress, Nehru said with immense clarity and without ambage,‘The present for me and for many others like me was an odd mixture of medievalism, appalling poverty and misery and a

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somewhat superficial modernism of the middle-classes. I was not an admirer of my own class or kind and yet inevitably I looked to it for leadership in the struggle for salvation; that middle-class felt caged and circumscribed and wanted to grow and develop itself. Unable to do so within the framework of British rule, a spirit of revolt grew against this rule and yet this spirit was not directed against the structure that crushed us. It sought to retain it and control it by displacing the British. These middle-classes were too much the product of that structure to challenge and seek to uproot it’ (p. 49).23 When the economic foundations of the colonial rule changed, from the mercantile days of the East India Company to the consolidation of the Industrial Revolution in England, the interest of rulers changed quite markedly. The Industrial Revolution had developed and expanded industries in England and they wanted Indian markets for their products. They needed to extract land and tax revenues so as to invest in infrastructure, railways, and telegraph. British rail companies were guaranteed return on investment by the British government in India. Railways and roads were making it possible to transport raw material and commodities back and forth. Eventually as banking and finance developed in India, in later phases it also made it easier for foreign capital to flow into the colony in mining, plantations, shipping, etc. The managing agency system was an organizational format that enabled this ownership and control to remain within British and European hands. The need to increase land revenue and taxes had expanded the regions under taxation, venturing into tribal and forest regions gradually, squeezed the masses and antagonized them. The exclusion of native business men, by the administration, from lucrative contracts and opportunities in favour of British business men aroused the ire of the property owning class as well. Exclusion of the educated from jobs and even promotions to the higher administrative levels aggravated their grievances. A white supremacy type of racism added to the fire of discontent and intensified the native sense of humiliation. All this created very fertile ground for the INC and for other expressions of ‘nationalism’. But the pillars of the Congress were not likely to support radical programmes or violent mass agitations since they had connections not just with the wider class of professional intelligentsia but with propertied groups of landholders, commercial magnates and the

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Bombay industrialists; for that reason perhaps it was accommodated and as will be seen later, not banned like communists. When some concessions were obtained through council reforms, Congress leaders along with some other leaders were getting elected to local, imperial councils and savouring power. The moderate position was often tight rope walking particularly as mass mobilization accelerated. With rising zamindari rents, raiyatwari revenues, taxes and tariffs and the occurrences of periodic famines, things on ground were getting much worse. Criticism of the Congress for both, its techniques of petitioning the British and its leadership by mainly the English educated elite, was increasing in the Indian language newspapers. This created a fecund environment for more extremist movements which took different forms, but the common theme was rejection of moderate and passive methods. An assertion of Hindu revivalism began to take shape with the use of religious festivals and symbols for mass contact. There was talk of self-reliance, self-help, education in Indian languages, constructive village work, swadeshi through handicraft and local industry, swaraj through both passive resistance and revolutionary terrorism as means to gain freedom. The Partition of Bengal in 1905 into a largely Hindu west Bengal and a largely Muslim east Bengal gave Hindu revivalism its first major platform. The resistance that grew was replete with religious-emotional resonance of severing the motherland to render the (land owning) Hindus a minority in east Bengal and the west Bengali Hindu middle-class outnumbered in a province that included Bihar and Orissa. Protests, riots and boycott of British goods and schools (called Swadeshi movement) began which ultimately led to the reuniting of Bengal six years later. It was an early taste of triumph. Throughout all this, the superb intelligence network of the British government was aware, nor was the response indifferent. For the rising tide of organizations and associations for Swaraj their policy response was twofold, one, to gradually increase concessions and participation to appease moderates, and two, to divide and sustain their rule. Divisions along lines of caste and religion that existed, were suitable tools to enhance differences. From 1901 onwards, a population census was conducted every decade. Among other things, its purpose was to classify castes on the basis of ‘social precedence as recognized by native public opinion’. This led to jostling for caste consolidation, emergence

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of caste patrons and pressure for caste recognition to obtain official favour, or for education, jobs and other opportunities for upward mobility. The engineering college in Punjab for example had three out of 20 open seats for Hindus, the rest were reserved for Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and agriculturists. Caste movements grew both as means to rise higher in the caste hierarchy, a phenomenon often referred to as ‘Sanskritization’ and against it in the form of assertions of the lower caste against Brahmin control over Hinduism. This tendency was enhanced by electoral politics. Concurrently, communal tensions also began to grow as a reflection of conflict over government favour, representation and opportunities for jobs. Most such communal aggregations were led by property owning elites within each religious group. By most historical accounts communal riots were rare before 1880s. Their frequency increased after 1920s culminating in the blood bath that accompanied the partitioning of the subcontinent along Hindu-Muslim majority lines in 1947. The period from 1920 to Independence laid the groundwork of representational politics in India. The small but growing tribe of early factory workers in the cities was usually drawn from the small peasantry or ruined artesian classes and fell into sectarian or caste groupings in their new competitive urban habitats. Class based movements with modern ideology took long to grow among factories and establishments while their capitalist owners remained loyal to the British government till the 1920s for economic reasons (this aspect will be in focus in Chapter 4). Feudal trimmings thrived in one-third of India that constituted the princely states; these princely states were specially cultivated to remain loyal to the colonial rulers. Thus the basis of social divisions was varied and extensive. In the beginning INC began and remained most closely associated with the small number of (literacy in English was one per cent and in vernacular was less than ten per cent of the population and all of them were mainly from the Brahmins and other upper-caste) educated middle-classes, followed by landed property classes, bankers and merchants. Old aristocracy and royalty, secure in their opulence were scarce if any in the INC and absent in the national movement, their political preferences were clear.

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INC: Swimming with Hindu Revivalism, Sidelining Social Reform The Hindu revival movements in different regions, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, owed their existence largely to a new self-consciousness that grew out of a new conjunction – western education, new institution of election, representation, technology of railways, telegraph and experience of racism. Jaffrelot says the elite across Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab were dealing with the question ‘Who am I?’ ‘The first expression of Hindu nationalism emerged in the nineteenth century as an ideological reaction to European domination and gave birth to what came to be known as neo-Hinduism’ (p. 6).24 Western interest in the history and culture of the subcontinent had produced literature that supported the view that an ancient civilization existed largely in continuity. In fact, British Orientalists argued that Sanskrit of the Vedic Age was the font of the Indo-European family of languages and this view gained currency. Inflow of conquerors, traders and people from the central, west Asian neighbourhood had been a recurring feature well before Alexander. The historical periods and chronology were marked by the western scholars. For want of an equivalent indigenous scholarship, this history of India was embellished with mythology and lore in a curious manner by Hindu revivalists, often depending on the western material at hand and quoting British administrators as historical authorities. A reading of the collection of extracts from texts written by various luminaries of Hindu nationalism like Dayananda Saraswati, Lal Chand, H.B. Sarda, Malaviya, Sarvarkar and Golwalkar edited by Jaffrelot is a revelation about the nature of history telling and ideology that guided it (one will return to it later), the leadership and its audience.25 It appears that the version of Hinduism from which the more aggressive revivalist movement spread was such that it charmed the upper-caste property owning men very much, so much so as to leave an undeniable stamp on popular discourse to this day and the young national movement itself. Hindu religious systems are different from the Semitic; they do not constitute a single historically evolved religion with a founder, ecclesiastical organization with branching sects.26 Since the Hindu

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religious system itself does not enjoin a set of universal core principles, obligations, congregations, and a moral code and has no single book of belief, it is wide open in aspects of theory and multiple interpretation, so that much of it was quite enchanting to the occidental mind for its appearance of openness. In practice it had become rigidly patriarchal and hierarchical, creating a social order through a pyramid of castes with their elaborate rituals, customs, and inter-caste relations, quite incompatible with any modern notion of liberalism for all those who were constrained and subordinated by it in daily life. After the upheaval of 1857, variously called – the first Battle of Independence by nationalists and Mutiny by the Imperialists, Queen Victoria had proclaimed that the British government would, in the administration of India, pay due regard to the ancient rights, usage and customs of India. The lesson the British seem to have learned was that India can be ruled best so and they kept their word. By most accounts it appears that religious reform movements or movements to question old hierarchies of caste and gender in society from within, were also swept aside largely. Such movements had minor achievements to their credit, except in some regional pockets in the south and marginally in the west. So, by the end of the nineteenth century the British government did not interfere much nor did indigenous movements thrive. The reasons are located in two developments, firstly, the strength of the Hindu revivalist movements that led to strong politico-religious identities did not question traditions or social hierarchies, and secondly, preoccupation of the Congress with political reforms until Gandhi somewhat expanded the social agenda with his Harijan mission. Electoral seats were based on religion: Hindus, Muslims, Christians and later, an attempt was made to divide the seats between caste Hindus and untouchables (which led to Gandhi’s fast and Gandhi-Ambedkar accord). For the colonial rulers the politicized religious identity became a disingenuous means of control, they could be deferentially abstaining from interference with customs and at the same time use it as a justification to equate custom with religious bigotry, communalism and irrational nature of the vast majority of natives. Why did reform movements not survive? In its history and evolution Hinduism was quite unlike what Engels describes of Semitic

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religions like Christianity,‘The history of early Christianity has notable points of resemblance with the modern working-class movement. Like the latter, Christianity was originally a movement of oppressed people: it first appeared as the religion of slaves and emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of all rights, of people subjected or dispersed by Rome’.27 Those early days of Christianity are described as one of development of a religion which was to become one of the most revolutionary elements in the history of humankind. Such a parallel, of a mass movement that spread from region to region as a basis of a more egalitarian society, against oppression, cannot be found within Hinduism (except perhaps in smaller breakaway cults Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism). In fact, there is evidence of its early use to dominate different regions, belief systems and people for their eventual inclusion within the Hindu hierarchy. Historians explain the process by which the invention of iron and the ability to clear large scale forests for agriculture through the Gangetic valley changed the society of the early Vedic age Aryans.‘In a well established agricultural society, when families come to acquire resources that they are unable to exploit on their own, they usually procure labour power by force of arms and perpetuate its supply by force of law and custom. To this they add the compulsion generated by religion and ideology.What is unique in the case of ancient Indian society is the fact that these different elements of compulsion, physical and ideological, were interwoven into a social texture called the Varna system’ (p. 315).28 A long history of social subjection of many people accompanied territorial expansion in the early and later kingdoms. This became an extraordinarily stable system while enriching its upper-castes. The only arrivals who were not eventually and completely absorbed into the Varna system were the Muslims. So, unless one looks for and cherry picks the egalitarian and emancipatory elements in the Bhakti movement there is little but insubstantial evidence of reformative impulse even in the centuries preceding colonial rule. Bhakti movement was largely against priests as intermediators and religious rituals as overheads. The movement is said to have originated in medieval south India and spread to the east and west from about the eighth to eighteenth century ad. About the Bhakti movement, Doniger says it was more a religious lifestyle than a sect, a major force for inclusiveness with its ‘antinomian attitudes

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towards pariahs and women, yet the violence of the passions that it generated also led to interreligious hostility’ (p. 338).29 The closest parallel to the Bhakti movement in Europe could be the Protestant movement. Other scholars like Pechilis30 and Pollock31 are of the opinion that the Indian revivalist religious movement was not unified by monotheism, reform, or rebellion against brahmin orthodoxy as such, but was a reworking of the central themes of the Vedic tradition. Introduction of new practices like communal singing and service, also including within the Vedic traditions hitherto excluded groups, the impulse seems to be purely spiritual and rarely socially or politically transformative. There were, of course, different voices in the Bhakti movement and some like Kabir do stand out for their rebellion, but the thrust seems to be one of continuity. Much earlier too, in the subcontinent, there were new religions like Buddhism, Jainism and later Sikhism that built congregations of believers irrespective of caste, but they got marginalized over a period of time. None was to dominate the Brahmanical versions of Hinduism. It was this version of stratified, ritualized, upper-caste, male dominated Hinduism that was to become the archetype and later springboard of both Hindu revivalism and nationalism in the late nineteenth century. Representation of the masses from election to election meant the Congress could not extricate itself from the ethos of Hindu revivalism surrounding it even if it wanted to. While it had assiduously decided to bury Hindu-Muslim differences by its 1887-8 resolution it’s largely Hindu members relied upon Hindu symbols and traditions to stir people. Leaders like Tilak, Aurobindo Ghose, Lajpat Rai and many others claimed that it was the only way, and perhaps it was, given the social backwardness. Historical myths, gods, festivals, and mass participation in festivals was encouraged as well as used to spread a nationalistic zeal. The hectic use of Hindu symbolism could not have enthused Muslims but must have succeeded enough with the majority for it become endemic. ‘ The disquieting fact was that so many Congressmen of stature were so closely identified with revivalist tendencies’ (p. 24).32 Congress leaders including Gandhi came to be identified closely with cow protection movements sponsored by Hindu organizations like Arya Samaj, Shuddhi Sabhas, and Hindu Sabhas. This Hindu symbolism of cow protection with foot soldiers roaming

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the countryside continued despite repeated outbreaks of tension and conflicts over the issue in the UP, Bihar areas where a large number of Muslims lived. One need not stretch one’s imagination to understand the impact of the cow protection zeal with the hindsight of just how much the livelihood of minorities and Dalits and consequently rural economies suffered on account of its revival yet again, after 2014.33 Having found rapid success in rallying masses using religious symbolism, the Congress sought conservative orthodox counterparts in the Muslim community to make alliances with. The Khilafat movement provided one such opportunity. Gandhi remarked that ‘the best and only way to save the cow is to save the Khilafat’.34 Khilafat was a pan-Islamic movement (1919-24) against western destruction of Islamic zones of power and influence, particularly the conquest of Turkey, the seat of the Ottoman Empire. It began in Turkey, the seat of the Ottoman Empire during the WW1 with Sultan Abdul Hamid II at the centre. He was the last of the sultans to exercise effective power. He sponsored the movement to save his empire from attack and dismemberment by western powers. Being a caliph, the Ottoman sultan was nominally the supreme religious and political leader of all sunni Muslims across the world. However, this authority was never actually used. The movement is viewed by many historians today as both obscure and out of touch with reality of the twentieth century. This alliance of conservatives served the Congress ill. Customising religious appeal to different groups with conservative leaders rallying around, either for cows or Khilafat or both, set the stage for another kind of nationalism challenging the hegemony of the Congress variety. It made a bridgehead for and gave credence to claims of organizations like Hindu Mahasabha (founded in 1915), RSS (1925) and All India Muslim League (AIML) (1906) that there existed politically distinct religious communities. Irreconcilable differences created between them were generated gradually as a strategy for elections and representation. This version of nationalism, which is expediently called communalism was simply an afterclap of competition set in motion by expanding opportunities. Disaffection for the Congress among Muslims found firmer footing as British opened access to levers of power and influence in administration and electoral politics. Competition with Hindus, who formed an over-whelming majority, would be to their disadvantage

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in every way for they lagged in mercantile enterprises, education and had largely avoided the westernizing process. They had lost an empire, privileges and suffered the brunt of repression at the hands of the British in the decades after the 1857 uprising and had often withdrawn into memories of past magnificence. Antagonism to the west only increased after the WW1 which resulted in dismantling the remains of pan Islamic grandeur with the defeat of Ottomans in Turkey. It did not take long, by 1917 episodes of rioting were being reported. The courts felt these went far beyond attempts to stop qurbani (animal sacrifice) and were deemed to be deliberate acts of engineered conspiracy to stir up religious passions. By the mid-1920s HinduMuslim riots had become more widespread and gruesome than ever before but Congress, caught up in the representation game did not introspect. It blamed the colonial rulers for the cataclysm.‘By the time the Congress strategy was modified in the mid-1930s and its leaders were awakened to the reality of a communal monster, the opportunity of forging independent links with Muslim masses was lost’ (p. 25).35 Another significant process seems to have got submerged in the Hindu revivalism of the late nineteenth century and representational politics of early twentieth century – social reformers within the Hindu fold. Historians used the bitter debate within educated Hindu public opinion, about Age of Consent Act of 1891 (against child marriage) to mark the turn towards ‘Hindu revivalism’. The progressive Brahmo Samaj had lost its influence in Bengal and Ranade’s impulse for reform was stonewalled by Tilak in Poona. The reformists were hindered even in marginal reforms. The government finally accepted only one of the proposals of reformists, which was to increase the age of consent from ten to twelve. This act had created a storm of protest in Bengal and Maharashtra, ironically the same states that had led the social reform movements earlier. Two famous observers of colonies noted it and commented,‘Frankly conservative and obscurantist sentiments mingled here with the nationalist argument, put forward most notably by Tilak, that foreign rulers had no right to interfere with religious and social customs.’ They had also noted that Hindu orthodox groups in the same period seldom hesitated to plead for legislation against cow slaughter’.36

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Defence of tradition gradually became respectable in India as it got endorsement from without. It even became fashionable as the cult of the exotic orient spiritualism and metaphysics. The ancient Aryan mystique was constructed in the west under the influence of many like Max Mueller and the Theosophical movement of Anne Besant. It was echoed in India both as a sophisticated, intellectualized version of Hindu revivalism espoused by the emergent middle-classes in drawing room chatter and as a tool used by political agents for mass mobilization with religious idiom. It became laden with nationalist rhetoric. With such an exciting appeal it could be propagated without detailing socio-political objectives, programmes, and processes for the future nation. Inside Bengal religious revivalism it found reverberations in Bengal’s literary renaissance. Bankimchandra Chatterjee, leading figure of that renaissance was one of the early university graduates (graduating in 1858), the son of a Deputy Collector of Midnapur who went on to become a deputy collector of Jessore himself. He wrote copiously, poems, articles and at least thirteen novels in Bengali.37 He wrote moral-fiction, allegorical fables. His poem Vande Mataram uses the imagery of nation as Mother Goddess in the Shakti tradition which depicted her as Durga. It became immensely popular during the Swadeshi movement sparked by the Partition of Bengal. It remains the national song. His novel Ananda Math which contains the hymn Vande Mataram, depicts a sanyasi army fighting the British. No sanyasi army could defeat the British. Censure of the early version of the novel made him turn the sanyasi army against Muslim rulers to keep it in publication. In his predicament as a colonial subject, he seems to have turned more completely to a belief that nothing could save India from the British clutches except reformed, regenerated and purified Hinduism. It is not clear what the role of the lower caste and women would be in this reformed Hinduism. Such was his impact among his contemporaries and admirers that Aurobindo Ghosh says of him ‘he created a language, a literature and a nation’. His poem Vande Mataram, the imagery of nation as mother goddess and the sanyasi army have endured. Neo-Vaishnavism, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Aurobindo Ghosh and Vivekananda follow in that tradition. For example, Aurobindo says,‘It was in religion first that the soul of India awoke and triumphed.

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There were always indications, always great forerunners, but it was when the flower of the educated youth of Calcutta bowed down at the feet of an illiterate Hindu ascetic, a self-illuminated ecstatic and “mystic” without a single trace or touch of the alien thought or education upon him that the battle was won. The going forth of Vivekananda, marked out by the Master as the heroic soul destined to take the world between his two hands and change it, was the first visible sign to the world that India was awake not only to survive but to conquer’ (CWSA, vol. 8, p. 62).38 In their quest for the Hindu archetype, mystic forays and ecstasy of self-illumination they tended to be indifferent to social reformers for various reasons but most commonly for being elitist and inspired by ‘western models’. In Maharashtra, Tilak was more aggressive and busy stonewalling social reformers, like Gokhale and Ranade against western models. The Arya Samaj reform movement was the only one to take root in Punjab and western UP and its membership became half-a-million strong by 1921, but mostly among urban property owning classes. It focused on removing socially harmful Hindu practices like child-marriage, taboos on widow remarriage, idolatry, ritualism, superstition, caste while aggressively asserting the superiority of Hinduism over all other religious systems. Arya Samaj eventually also split over issues of meat eating and English education. The puritanical, conservatism of these movements in Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab were dissimilar only in degrees, they were all positioning themselves as Hindus and superior to other faiths, distant from syncretic traditions of the subcontinent. These movements were mirrored by Muslim revivalism led by religious conservatives, leading to confrontations not just with Hindu revivalists but also between various Muslim sects. Both forms of religious revivalisms occurred in the context of restricted job opportunities, competition from British interests in business activities and new electoral opportunities for self-advancement. And all this religious revivalism had regional variations while being liberally mixed with antipathy towards ‘others’. Considering the competitive nature of Hindu and Muslim nationalism, historians say that in the Urdu/Hindi belt of northern India a sophisticated composite court culture had developed, and elite and

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non-elite shared a common day-to-day language and culture, but it is right here that competition between Hindu and Muslim arose earlier than in other parts.39 That there is a close parallel between the growth of nationalism and communalism is a view shared by many historians of modern India. Communal groupings were one of the main types of collectives formed for the purpose of enhancing power in the context of competition. There is ‘. . . insufficient appreciation of the historical struggles that have gone to produce specific nationalisms and nations. . .’ (p. 3). And ‘Everywhere in the world the formation of modern nationalism has been propelled by contradictory forces. Communalism was a manner of coming together for social, political and economic interests among the elite and its use by them of a shared religion to expand their own power over the group’.40 Fuelled by competition for representation, a sense of religious community was becoming more widespread than ever before. Indian Muslim League was an early bird, in 1915, the Hindu Mahasabha was formed; the RSS was created in 1925. Between, 1923-7, there were 112 serious communal disturbances, that left 450 people dead and 5000 wounded according to official records. Prior to that such disturbances were not unheard of (in 1890s for example, the attempts to consolidate a Hindu community out of numerous jatis and biradris and dialects, cow protection and Hindi-Urdu divide by the elite had already resulted in unprecedented riots) but they were not as frequent. The trigger of these sporadic riots was found in expansion and consolidation of colonial rule, increasing taxes and legal framework to control colonial citizens, put simply, as a result of ‘the right of the state to intervene where it had not intervened before’.41 But by all accounts, in the early part of the twentieth century the nature of communal confrontation had changed. The backdrop to this transformation and escalation of communal relations was continual constitutional reforms by the wily British, they were increasing representation of Indians in local government while weaking the INC by opening cleavage between groups. All of it was occurring through a medicine that Indian delegates were begging for- elections. First the Morley-Minto Reforms and then ten years later the Montague-Chelmsford reforms. While the first one granted separate electorates to Muslims and greater representation in provinces

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where they were a minority, and the second, increased the number of elected representatives in the Legislative Assembly and Legislative councils at the centre and provincial levels respectively. This set the scene for the 1920s. Many Muslim religious leaders began working to spread awareness and develop Muslim participation on behalf of the Ottoman Empire. Muslim religious leaders also attempted to organize a national war of independence against the British with support from the Ottoman Empire. This added a new dimension to the communal problem in India. The Hindu revivalist groups saw the pan Islamic Khilafat surge (which had brought orthodox mullahs into Indian politics on a large scale) as consolidating the position of Muslims within the subcontinent as well. 1920s thus became a decade of increasing communal violence both as a consequence of Congress/Gandhi decision to support the Khilafat movement and join it with the Non- cooperation movement and then withdraw the Non-cooperation Movement suddenly. ‘The fact that entire movement collapsed when Gandhi called it off also reveals its own basic weakness – there was ample combustible material in the India of 1919-22, perhaps even at times an objectively revolutionary situation, but nothing at all in the way of an alternative revolutionary leadership. The masses had been inspired by the vague vision of Raj, had interpreted it in their own diverse, sometimes near revolutionary ways, but they looked up to the Mahatma alone for guidance’ (pp. 225-6).42 Gandhi had also made it clear that he was willing to lead only a controlled mass movement and not a class struggle or social revolution. The years that followed were of deeply anti-climatical because of the soaring expectations that had preceded it. When the national movement ran out of momentum and direction, unprecedented communal riots followed. The Muslim League had already been established in 1909 and was revived and at its Lahore session of 1924 it raised the demand for full provincial autonomy to preserve Muslim majority areas from Hindu domination.The Hindu Mahasabha was revived in this period and its two rival factions, the reformist Arya Samaj and conservative Sanatan Dharma Sabha formed a common front although both had a largely north India presence. By 1925, the RSS was formed in Nagpur. Communal organizations were useful

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in elections, as on both sides they bolstered the process of division. To add to the big fissures, there were emerging tribal and caste movements. Although nationalist leaders were critical of the slow pace of constitutional reform for a more responsible and representative government, the developments of the 1920s seemed to echo the reservations of the more sober Montague and Chelmsford. They had declared deep divisions in Indian society, poor education and great ignorance as unsuitable basis of more rapid expansion of democracy. ‘How quickly and violently the ignorant portion which is far the largest portion of either great community, responds to the cry of religion in danger has been proved again and again in India’s history’ (p. 15).43 Yet no major leader was willing to contemplate the cost of haste in constitutional reform with no social reform. The Congress got internally divided among those who supported the Gandhian call to concentrate on constructive rural work and others who wanted to participate in Council elections that followed the Montague-Chelmsford reforms. There were tactical issues too, since reforms did increase representation significantly through elections at the provincial and central level, it would have been an opportunity missed to the advantage of their rivals. The dissenters formed a separate Swaraj Party to contest elections. By 1920s, Gandhi was taking up two, not one issue of social reform, untouchability (acknowledged to be the great scourge of Hindu society) and Hindu-Muslim harmony. And it was through the 1920s that increasingly the two versions, secular, democratic against religious nationalism were voiced, in clearcut opposition to each other. The Congress was advocating the former, more modern form of nationalism. Nehru went further than most other Congress leaders in his quest for modernity and in Discovery of India positions the whole basis of the involvement of the INC in the national movement at a great distance from the communal version. The basis of that involvement came from the desire for the economic betterment of the masses. In 1891, six years after its formation the INC had responded to a telegram from General Booth and declared that the ‘sad condition of fifty to sixty million half-starving paupers constituted the raison d’etre of its existence’ and

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successive resolutions of the Congress bore testimony to their concern.44 The economic explanation of nationalism found full expression in the famous Karachi resolution of the Congress in 1931.

Who did the Hindu Mahasabha Represent? Not mutually exclusive sets apropos to the INC. In Bengal, reform and Hindu revival were both led by the social elite who (usually associated with the British administration) had earlier converged around the Brahmo Samaj. In Punjab too the Arya Samaj attracted upper-caste urban elite but here they were involved in trade and commerce. These merchant classes had become very powerful and played the role of money lenders to the peasantry, slowly appropriating their land when peasants could not pay back loans. This phenomenon accelerated towards the end of the nineteenth century, probably as a result of increase in land revenue. Since the British revenues in India were highly dependent on land revenue, they introduced in 1901, the Punjab Alienation of Land Act, protecting peasants from such transfer of land and thus antagonized the elite. The British antagonized the Hindu elite again, when in 1906 Lord Minto assured a Muslim delegation of separate electorate. This assurance did not materialize till 1909 in the form of Morley-Minto constitutional reforms but word got out. In Punjab (where the Hindus were a sizable minority, Muslims were 51 per cent and Sikhs 7.5 per cent of the population) and Hindu Sabhas were often organized under Arya Samaj leadership, to protect what Lal Chand an Arya Samaj leader, called ‘purely Hindu interests’. They became eager to make common cause with other Hindu organizations that they had differences with earlier, for example with the orthodox Sanatanis who had broken away from Arya Samaj over its opposition to idolatry, caste system and exclusive Brahmin priesthood. The Sanatanis had developed a stronghold over United Provinces (UP) the cauldron of Hindu orthodoxy and had formed a Hindu Sabha under Madan Mohan Malaviya. The Hindu Sabha movement spread beyond Punjab and United Provinces into Bihar, Bengal, the Central Provinces, Berar and the Bombay Presidency. Some of these regional branches sent delegates to Haridwar for the foundation of the All India Hindu Sabha or Hindu Mahasabha in

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1915. Their internal differences, however, dissipated their energy. It was revived only in the 1920 in the context of an opportunity and new perceived threat. Like the elite among Hindus, the Muslims too were also looking for lost glory. Nehru says that the search for cultural roots had led middle-class Muslims to Islamic history and to the periods when Islam was a conquering and creative force in Baghdad, Spain, Constantinople, Central Asia and elsewhere. There was also the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, which brought Muslims from various countries together. But all such contacts were limited and did not really affect the general outlook of the Indian Muslim, which was confined to India. After all, the Mughal Emperors in India recognized no Khalifa or spiritual superiors outside India.45 But the projection of a panIslamic movement with roots and support far and wide outside India would have alarmed some (indeed the Muslim Ummah is a internationalism absent in Hindu fold) and in addition created opportunities for others. Some opportunity which had already existed came in the form of increased possibilities of a political career and privileges. Danger was quickly perceived and projected. Congress under Gandhi had supported the Khilafat movement to create a united front with the Muslims who had remained largely outside the national movement thus far. This was a strange attempt to connect to the Muslim masses through Muslim clergy and elite (that considered the ‘Khalifa’ in Turkey as a religious and political leader of the Muslim world) not with the masses directly. Religious fervour excited by the entry of clergy/ulema into politics, talk of a Jihad and pan-Islamic aims of many leaders, speeches were meant to rouse Muslim masses. It is curios though that Congress under Gandhi was reaching out to the Muslims masses through their elite and clergy while he was doing just the opposite for the Hindu masses. His Hinduism was based on gradual reformism, universalism and did not leave any space for orthodox Hinduism. Perhaps a tactical error, for all of it was an easy target. It was used to project the revival of an aggressive Islam by Hindu conservative groups. The uprising of the Moplas in Malabar (Muslim peasants against largely Hindu land owners) in 1921 that occurred soon afterwards, was projected by the Central Khilafat Committee and used by conservative Hindu

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associations to spread fear. On both sides Hindu and Muslim leaderships made an escalating use of religion as a mobilizing call for political gains, ‘In north India the revival of electoral politics was accompanied by progressive deterioration of relations between the Hindu and Muslim communities’.46 The first tipping point perhaps, as historians both Indian and foreign are in agreement about causalities. Gordon says, ‘In a society where the influence of religious and social norms was so pervasive it is misleading to exaggerate the importance of communal catch-cries and to assume that any particular political body enjoyed a monopoly of nationalism’.47 The period was soon marked by a confused medley of interests and group formations at various levels – local, regional, personal and political. While the non-cooperation movement had heightened and pushed national awakening further than ever before, the unity of forces it had cobbled, fell apart after the agitation subsided. The Congress itself was embroiled in a long struggle between rival factions for control over the organization when it contested the elections to the imperial and provincial legislatures for the first time in 1926. A Swaraj Party had been formed within the Congress in 1922 (for election and supervising work in the Legislature) in opposition to Gandhian boycott of Legislative Councils. To these factions was added the opportunism of other Hindu groups that sought to align themselves with the Swaraj Party and the drifting away of the Muslims from both the Swaraj and Congress Parties towards separate electoral alliances. In its early phase before 1922 the Hindu Mahasabha was not an all India organization in any real sense, it had a distinctly urban, north Indian flavour and was concentrated in large trading cities like Lahore, Allahabad, Kanpur, Benares, Lucknow. Its branches in Bihar, Bombay, Madras and Bengal were not as active. The Mahasabha tried to create common platform by advocating adoption of Hindi and Devnagari script, cow protection and such issues (very few issues that Hindus across India could agree to besides cow protections and temple protection) on which there was a possibility of agreement. In 1924 it was still confined to the big cities. The growth of the organization was sporadic and uneven and firmest only where the communal riots were fiercest. It was weakest in the south and east where it was confined to big cities and supported by brahmins (Madras) struggling to create a platform against lower caste mobilizations and agitations. Madras

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Hindu Sabha was composed of Tamil brahmins, some who (active in the Swaraj Party) were threatened by the rise of Justice Party (non-brahmin) which planned to control temple properties and endowments through the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Bill. In Maharashtra too, the Hindu Mahasabha was confined to brahmins, mainly Chitpavan variety seeking to re-establish their status as it was under the Peshwa rule. Here too like Madras, the leaders of the Swaraj Party presided over the Hindu Sabha. Most Brahmin politicians in the Maharashtra were satisfied with controlling the Congress and through it local bodies. Later, when non-brahmin movements started asserting themselves through local government bodies (like in Nagpur) some of them turned to Mahasabha and similar organizations. In Nagpur the Hindu Sabha was active under B.S. Moonje, a Chitpavan Brahmin, and later in 1925 the RSS was formed, out of this grew a militant Hindu movement distinct from the Mahasabha tradition. Prior to 1920 the Mahasabha was in fact, working as a lobby within the Congress and the majority of its leaders were members of the Congress and its conferences were conducted in conjunction with the annual Congress sessions. It was only in 1920 that the Congress tightened its constitution to keep other organizations out of it. This cut the close connections between the Hindu Sabhas and the Congress at the district level but informal relations continued. The space for aggressive Hindu nationalism was eventually filled by the leaders from Maharashtra in western-central India. The roots lay deep there. In this part of the subcontinent an orthodox Brahmin dynasty (Peshwas) had ruled directly or collected taxes from much of the region that is now called Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh through the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Maratha kingdom, as it was called, had existed on foundations made earlier by Shivaji a lower caste warrior who was crowned king, despite the reluctance of local Brahmins. In the eighteenth century the armies of Marathas had held out against the Mughals for decades, till the Mughal strength in the Deccan region and eventually even in north declined. The Marathas also developed a navy that stymied the ambitions of Arabs and Portuguese along the western coast. The reign of the Peshwas, as the subsequent Brahmin rulers who assumed power after Shivaji died, ended in their defeat in the third Maratha War of 1818

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and annexation into the empire of East India Company. It is not altogether surprising then that a forceful brand of Hindu nationalism was reimagined and a full fledged organization RSS devoted to promote it was shaped in this region. The relationship between the ancient regime and the new organization will be discussed later. V.D. Savarkar who was to become a pivotal leader of the hardline variety of Hindu nationalism was of the same Chitpavan Brahmin caste as the Peshwas. He started out as a revolutionary nationalist, spent many years in a jail in Andaman Islands and returned to the mainland with a safer agenda of promoting a fiery brand of Hindu nationalism. He was the president of the Hindu Mahasabha from 1937-44 and wrote the Essentials of Hindutva to define the principles of Hindu nationalism. In his formulations, Hindus are the exclusive inheritors of Hindustan because only they regard Hindustan as both their holy land and the land of their ancestors. As the president of the organization, he travelled all over India to promote Hindu Sangathan –‘a campaign to organize and mobilize support for upper-caste Hindu political leaders who oppose Congress and Muslim leaders’ (p. 71).48 Note, that the earlier version of Hindu nationalists was happy to function within the Congress. In the decade preceding Partition, Savarkar raised the rhetoric against Muslims calling them anti-nationals, at the same time condemning the Congress. By 1941, he was urging Hindus to militarize, to create a militia and to enlist as Hindu nationalists in the Indian Army. There were close ties and exchange of human resources between the Mahasabha and RSS and other Hindu nationalist fronts. In fact, the Mahasabha was the electoral front of the RSS till the RSS spawned a new electoral front called the Jana Sangh after 1947. So, on the one hand, it continued its high rhetoric against Muslims, and on the other, Hindu Mahasabha became a serious political contender in elections. Even after Independence, in its 1952 election manifesto while it declared that it stood for an Independent India, Mahasabha was not at variance from Savarkar’s idea. It repeated them and only added and recognized the threat from the then sizable CPI. It wanted, ‘. . . establishment of a Hindu Raj in Bharat with a form of government in accordance with Hindu conception of polity and economy. . . . It is the idea of Hindu Rashtra alone that can make people residing all over Bharat and speaking different tongues united in

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common purpose. . . . The Hindu Mahasabha is not wedded to any ism. It does not believe that classless society is ever possible. So long as society is based on division of labour, existences of classes with varying interest is inevitable. The Hindu Mahasabha does not believe in class war. It believes in the national coordination of class interest to the mutual benefit of all’ (p. 98).49 The details of that Hindu nation are foggy but replete with celebrated ideas of Hindu culture, Aryan womanhood, national pre-eminence in the world, spiritual solutions, class coordination, legislation in accordance with Hindu ideals, and against communism, secularism and even liberal democracy.

And Who did the RSS Represent? The RSS chose to focus on building the core organization till 1947. In 1925, when the Hindu Mahasabha was at the peak of its power under leaders like Madan Mohan Malaviya and Lala Lajpat Rai, the five who went forth to form the RSS were all members of the Mahasabha. They were B.S. Moonje, Babarao Savarkar (brother of V.D. Savarkar), L.V. Paranjpe, Hegdewar and B.B. Thakkar. The idea that was carried forward, into what became the RSS, was K.B. Hedgewar’s in Nagpur (in Maharashtra).

Why did they Create a Separate Organization? The aim appeared to be creation of a cadre with sustained indoctrination for Hindu ideology, possibly against Muslims, weapon training, military skills, with rituals of oath taking and daily physical drills.50 In other words, a militia. Developing organizational ability in its cadre was an added feature as the RSS evolved. It is also worth noting that all founders except one to date, are Maharashtrian Brahmins. All top leadership of the RSS, thereafter and before, had the ‘Brahmin’ pedigree indicating the grip of a caste over the organization. 70 years after its formation Rajendra Singh the fourth Sarsanghchalak (the chief ) of RSS from 1994-2000, was a Kshatriya. He was the first and only non-Maharashtrian non-Brahmin chief of the RSS. Observers of the RSS suggest that it was a move to increase the footprint of RSS in north India at a critical stage in its expansion. Possibly he shared caste

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based social and cultural networks with north Indian upper-caste Hindus. Hindu nationalism, as one knows it today in India, was invented in present day Maharashtra, the crucible of an earlier, relatively large ‘Hindu’ kingdom while it’s spiritual and literary fountainhead was Bengal. The British too had acknowledged that by 1806 there were only two powers in India, British and Maratha. The kingdom eventually, as mentioned earlier, came to be ruled directly by brahmins. They had enormous social prestige, were the only literate and numerate caste and were important in administration even before they took over the direct rule from the less than capable sons of Shivaji. This is quite uncommon; brahmins have acted as priests in other regions, landowners, advisors and men of learning and administrative skills but rarely acted as kings and warriors. In his book Discovery of India Nehru also refers to that period in a relatively long section titled ‘Aurungzeb Puts the Clock Back, Growth of Hindu Nationalism, Shivaji.’ He suggests that the bigotry of the last of the major Mughal emperors Aurangzeb (an austere puritan) upset his subjects on all sides thereby wrecking the equilibrium of the empire, dragging it into wars with local leaders and kings. The most significant of them were the Marathas. ‘Over the widespread domains of the Mughal Empire there was ferment and a widespread growth of revivalist sentiment, which was a mixture of religion and nationalism. The nationalism was certainly not of the modern secular type nor did it, as a rule embrace the whole of India in its scope. It was coloured by feudalism, by local sentiment and sectarian feelings. . . . Hindu nationalism was a natural growth from the soil of India, but inevitably it comes in the way of the larger nationalism which rises above the differences of religion or creed’ (p. 293).51 This had obviously become the rather mainstream understanding of the origin of HinduMuslim polarization since even Nehru had also adopted it. The acknowledged re-inventor of Hindu nationalism as Hindutva is V.D. Savarkar. His formulation comes about a hundred years after the Marathas were defeated. It was to become the identity of the new Hindu nation. Throughout the early period, construction of history and folklore within the RSS affirmed that the awareness of HinduRashtra revived with Shivaji’s rule and consolidation of the Maratha

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confederacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. For his invention Savarkar borrowed some elements from founders of Arya Samaj and Hindu Mahasabha and added the concept of the sacred territory of Aryavarta as described in the Vedas. With that came the notion that Hindus were descendants of Vedic fathers who had occupied Aryavarta since antiquity and Sanskrit was their language. Territory, race, religion, language was to be the basis of Hindu nationalism. A derivative of Sanskrit, called Hindi, was to be the language of the nation. Majority community embodied the nation because it was the oldest and the largest. Minority religions that originated outside India must adhere to a national ‘Hindutva’ culture. Hedgewar met Savarkar to discuss the project. Ultimately the former was to do the extensive groundwork, his strategy was to form local village and town branches (shakhas) which were maintained by volunteer preachers (pracharaks) dedicated to grass root work to improve Hindu society. Young men would gather around these preachers and participate in rituals that involved martial arts and ideological lectures. The RSS beginning was modest and limited to brahmins in Nagpur, eastern Maharashtra but its growth was the work of remarkable competence. According to Kanungo, under Hedgewar, quality, rather than quantity was important and he interviewed every aspiring member intensively and selectively admitted only some. He would prefer young schoolboys in the age group of 12-15 years, to shape their minds through a regime of physical, ideological training. They would be taught to be personally loyal to him and become future missionaries of the RSS. Physical training included training in the use of commonly available weapons like lathi, sword, javelin, and dagger, prudently avoiding a gun culture. ‘An extremely close relationship developed between Hedgewar and his first group of recruits’ (p. 45).52 The shakha programme started in 1926 but the organization did not have a name, symbol or hierarchy. On Ramnavami day in 1926, the name Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was selected, carefully neutral and in tune with the nationalist flavour of the times. A symbol, the saffron flag was chosen that purportedly belonged to Ram, and was said to have been used by Shivaji. The flag which was also supposed to be the symbol of the real guru. The mythology was complete with Shivaji and Ram a

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mythological north Indian god-king. Linking it to the real time guru was important as well and completed the obligation to God, country and leader. A prayer was composed in mixed Hindi and Marathi to be sung at every shakha meeting along with the utterance of a few slogans like ‘Rashtraya Guru Samarath Ramdas ki jai’, ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’. Prominent Hindu leaders were invited to training camps to perhaps impress upon them the discipline and capabilities of the militia of the young recruits. Lifetime oaths of loyalty to organization and ideology began in 1928. Six Hindu festivals were selected for celebration at the shakha level. Gurudakshina, where disciples offered voluntary donations to Guru out of gratitude, was instituted as a tradition. At the first camp in 1928 a sum of Rs. 84 was collected. This was a reaffirmation of the hoary tradition of Guru-Shishya. The disciple stayed at a venerated Guru’s residence gratis and owed him total obedience, in exchange he was trained. In the hierarchy a stern principle of‘follow one leader’ is maintained to this day. Hedgewar was elected the supreme director for lifetime. Total obedience at any stage under any circumstances without any hesitation was and continues to be the requirement from the students/ disciples. This evoked and resembles the traditional Hindu joint family system headed by a patriarch. Worship of Hanuman (mythological figure in the Ramayana who was an embodiment of enormous talent, but followed Ram without an ego) and rituals were part of the early days of cultural training. This aspect of idolatry was diluted as it expanded in the north under pressure from the Arya Samaj which was averse to idolatry and had a strong presence in Punjab and western UP. Hedgewar used two strategies to expand the RSS simultaneously; one was association and networking with other organizations and the second, focus on universities, start branches in universities and find suitable recruits among the youth. Hedgewar associated himself with the Congress, attended the 1928 Congress session in Calcutta but was reluctant to join the Satyagraha launched by Gandhi in 1930 and recommended that RSS stay away. Later he was persuaded to join the Satyagraha. He was jailed for nine months along with other Congress leaders and he used the time inside jail to build networks with Congress leaders. Similarly, relations with Hindu Mahasabha were deeply symbiotic; he invited prominent leaders like Savarkar and Moonje to

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RSS functions and provided volunteers for the Mahasabha session. This was primarily to showcase the value of trained, disciplined cadre.53 The Mahasabha, lacking in its own trained youth power, passed a resolution lauding the activities of RSS in 1932. It began talking of the urgent need to spread it over the country and its leaders actively helped its spread it in the Punjab, Sindh and UP. Later however, the RSS did not support the Mahasabha efforts to form a political front, relationships soured between them by the end of the 1930s. The RSS stayed out of direct politics as a rule till 1951 (eve of the first general elections), and then formed the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (who had much experience from the Hindu Mahasabha) and Deendayal Upadhyaya at the helm. Its first university shakha was set up in Banaras Hindu University with the help of Madan Mohan Malaviya and the successor to Hedgewar was recruited from that university. The RSS started with only five people in 1925 and by 1937 had grown to 30,000 in Central Province (CP) and Berar with the active support and patronage of rulers of princely states like Raja Laxmanrao Bhonsle of Nagpur, Raja Raghojirao Bhonsle of Baroda and their statesmen like Sir Chitnivis, Hon Tambe (former Governor of CP and Berar), Sir Morpant Joshi, Raobahudur Kelkar. The animate and intimate relationship between the RSS and the princely states is the subject of some interesting historical research.54 With support from such high places, 14 years later in 1939 there were 500 branches and 40,000 members. By the next year, 1940, they claimed to have 700 branches and 80,000 members. The RSS had branches in all regions except Assam, Orissa and Kashmir. By 1947 there were six lakh volunteers! These accounts of membership are unverified and remain so into present times, but by these accounts they grew 2000 times in ten years. What was sustaining such a phenomenal expansion? It probably did not occur through volunteer contributions and gurudakshinas alone. They were growing by several means including donations from supporters and well-wishers. Secondly, the communal atmosphere was getting vitiated so rapidly that it was feeding into volunteer support for militant Hinduism both in terms of men and money. The RSS was snowballing. In 1930s, the growth, expansion and activities of the RSS were

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already on the radar of the British government. Historians of this period agree that the home department and intelligence reports judged it as communal in character. The government’s confidential reports say that the Dussehra celebrations by the RSS in Nagpur in 1932 was a very significant feature of that region.55 One thousand volunteers, in uniform, headed by Moonje marched. In attendance were the Bhonsle king’s descendent (a scion of deposed royal family) and V.D. Savarkar. The address by Hedgewar was deemed to be provocative and objectionable. The government issued orders prohibiting its employees from participating in RSS activities. The Congress also followed by restraining its members from participation. Before he died in 1940, Hedgewar nominated Golwalkar as his successor, superseding other seniors. His choice was likely guided by the need to avert pressures from and avoid bickering among Mahasabha and other Hindu organizations with which RSS veterans had connections. While Hedgewar was mainly an organization man, Golwalkar was an ideologue first and an organization man later. He defined Hindu cultural nationalism in We or Nationhood Defined. Which has a more extreme view of Hindu hegemony. Tactically shrewd, Golwalkar avoided any direct conflict with the government during the WW2. He withdrew from all politics, disbanded the RSS military wing in compliance with a government order. He did not endorse the Mahasabha call to enroll Indians for the British army. Instead he focused on the possibility of Hindu-Muslim riots and of a possible Japanese invasion with characteristic shrewdness. Both events offered opportunities. The RSS did not participate in the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1940-1 and Quit India Movement of 1942. Bombay home department’s report also says that the Sangh had kept itself within the law and refrained from taking any part in the August 1942 disturbances. Golwalkar also shifted the focus of RSS from paramilitary activities towards cultural interventions. The RSS propagated the view that although they were sympathetic to the anti-British movements they wanted to strengthen their organization and not languish in jail when Hindus were most in need of protection. This proved to be a tactical master stroke. This position in fact did strengthen the organization and its hold over the Hindu community. By 1943, RSS claimed it had 15,000 branches and two lakh members. The

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government estimate was that that it had 26,000 members in British India excluding the princely states. Indicating perhaps their main support base was inside the princely states or that RSS figures were exaggerated for effect. Confidential reports of the Home Department, as early as 1932, exhibit concern about activities of the RSS and suggest that its policy seems to be to wait until an appropriate time to intervene came. Reports also mention that in future it could be a menace in times of communal disturbances.56 Similar reports commenting on the secrecy and communal motives of the RSS from other provinces were available in the 1940s. While the British government in India was keeping a watch over the RSS, its growth was a tool available to the British to smite the Congress with just as the growth of Muslim League was. The confidential reports proved to be accurate. As the communal climate vitiated, the RSS cadre took an active part in violence though officially it never sanctioned or acknowledged it. This remained its steady strategy. The RSS justification for its members said that it was an act of self-defence to protect Hindu life and honour throughout northern India. During the partition they also involved themselves with organizing evacuation from west Pakistan and relief services among Hindu refugees particularly in the north. This established their image as saviours of Hindus, and the RSS expanded even more rapidly thereafter. Strong organizational capacity and adroit tactics of the top leadership helped, and adequate financial support fortified it throughout. After M.K. Gandhi’s assassination some of the goodwill washed away. There were reports and investigations regarding the link of some princely states (Bharatpur, Gwalior) to the plot and the involvement of Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS. The places mentioned in the governmental investigation, where the accused held meetings and where the conspiracy was perhaps discussed, were almost entirely located in Maharashtra. Newspaper reports also indicated the likelihood of such support from princely and feudal elements. More detail was available only much later after the Commission of Inquiry into the conspiracy to murder Mahatma Gandhi also known as the Kapur Commission submitted its report in 1969 (more about that later). On 4 February 1948, after Gandhi’s assassination the RSS was declared unlawful.

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In a communique by the government dated 4 February the government explained,‘. . . to root out the forces of hate and violence that are at work in our country and imperil the freedom of the nation . . . the Government of India have decided to declare unlawful the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. . . . [I]n several parts of the country, individual members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity, and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunitions. They have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect fire arms . . . the cult of violence sponsored and inspired by the activities of the Sangh has claimed many victims. The latest and the most precious to fall was Gandhiji himself. In these circumstances it is the bounden duty of the government to take effective measures to curb this re-appearance of violence in a virulent form and as a first step to this end, they have decided to declare the Sangh as an unlawful association’.57 [Quoted in The Wire] Following the ban, they suspended their usual activities and meetings. Soon, they met prominent personalities within the Congress and outside, to help lift the ban followed by direct correspondence with leaders like Nehru and Patel. In a communication Golwalkar pleaded that the RSS was innocent and charges were unfounded. In September 1948, Golwalkar raised the bogey of communist threat and requested Nehru to ensure an atmosphere in which the RSS would be able to help the government to fight the threat. Nehru was not impressed, he maintained that the RSS was a greater threat than the communists and they had the blood of Mahatma Gandhi on their hands. ‘we have had enough suffering already in India because of the activity of RSS and like groups. . .’58 the RSS continued lobbying with other ministers, collecting signatures (nine lakh), and ironically launched a Satyagraha to lift the ban. The ban was lifted in July 1949 just a year-and-a-half after the assassination, despite the seriousness of the charges in the communique by the government quoted above. G.D. Birla a big industrialist, considered to be close to Gandhi, often his host in Delhi, was one of the mediators. This was the strength of influence the RSS had come to wield among the political and capital owning classes in India within 20 years. It is obvious that the machinations in Delhi, the

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seat of power, had already come to acquire a doubtful nature within months of Independence. In the years after Independence, RSS had to reposition itself in a parliamentary democracy where secularism was protected by the Constitution. After some internal debates RSS launched a political party to participate in parliament and elections, loaned its trusted people to work for the new party called Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS). Thereafter it spawned affiliates like Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), etc. In all cases the RSS provided training and its trusted and dedicated workers.59

Doctrines of the Far Right: Savarkar and Golwalkar India’s far right has many similarities with such movements wherever they exist in the rest of the world. Here perhaps they have been able to obscure their inegalitarian views easily by pro-Hindu tradition postures, they can baffle the casual observer by projecting a purely cultural nationalism against socialism. In May 2002, L.K. Advani, the Home Minister of the first far right of the BJP government, paid rich tribute to V.D. Savarkar and named the new airport in Andamans after his idol. This was perhaps the first time that the BJP publically and explicitly acknowledged its chief ideologue. Savarkar (1883-1966) is a complex personality, reportedly with messianic ability to influence people especially young ones. Hedgewar is said to have met him in Ratnagiri before he started building the RSS in Nagpur. With him, the centre of Hindu nationalism shifted to Maharashtra. Sarvarkar spent 27 years in jail, first in Andaman island and then in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra. He was sentenced for taking part in a plot to assassinate Curzon Wyllie, associate of Secretary of State in London. In Ratnagiri he wrote a book Who is a Hindu? it was first published anonymously in 1923. In Andaman jail, he is said to have met Khilafatists who convinced him that they were pan-Islamists, not nationalists, more organized and coherent than Hindus. Not a believer himself, he began to propagate an ethnoreligious nationalism. A nation according to him had a territory, racial features and

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common culture. By defining Indian Christians and Muslims as all of a common race but converted a few generations ago, he offers the possibility of reintegrating them into the Hindu fold. Cultural rituals, social rules and language were defining features of a nation. Sanskrit, he claimed as the origin of all Indian languages and so, along with Hindi, must be the national language. Geographically the Hindu nation included people who live in the area east of Indus river, between the Himalayas and Indian Ocean. He fashions an ancient Vedic past in which the Aryans came and inhabited the fertile land of Indus and numerous (seven) rivers. Then he attributes this Aryan habitation and its great culture to ancient records in the Rig Veda and its myths. He builds a golden age of Hindus under Lord Ram. Aryans knitted themselves into a nation unified from Himalayas to Ceylon under this king.‘Nothing makes self, conscious of itself, so much as a conflict with non self ’, Savarkar says while describing the impact of Muslim invasions. That becomes the defining moment of Hindu consciousness in his narrative, and remained the talisman that RSS took to heart with great benefit. Savarkar writes, ‘But as it often happens in history this very undisturbed enjoyment of peace and plenty lulled our Sindhusthan, in a sense of false security and bred a habit of living in the land of dreams. At last she was rudely awakened on the day when Mohammad of Gazni crossed the Indus. . . . That day the conflict of life and death began. . . . Nothing can weld people into a nation and nation into a state as the pressure of a common foe. Hatred separates as well as unites. . . . Religion is a mighty motive force. So is rapine. But where religion is goaded by rapine. . . . Day after day, decade after decade, century after century the ghastly conflict continued and India single handed kept up the fight morally and militarily. Moral victory was won when Akbar came to throne and Dara Shukoh was born. Frantic efforts of Aurangzeb to retrieve their fortune, lost in the moral field, only hastened the loss of military fortune on the battle field as well. At last Bhau [Shivaji], as if symbolically, hammered the imperial seat of the Mughals to pieces. The day of Panipat rose, the Hindus lost the battle but won the war . . .’ (pp. 92-3).60 Having manufactured a ‘self ’ against a ‘non-self ’ he coins the term Hindutva, a contrived sense of unity of Hindus across sects and regions throughout the subcontinent as they resisted Muslim rule. ‘This one

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word, Hindutva, ran like a vital spinal cord through our whole body politic and made the Nayars of Malabar weep for the sufferings of the Brahmins of Kashmir . . . no people in the world can more justly claim to get recognized as a racial unit than the Hindus and perhaps the Jews’ (pp. 93-4). The non-Hindus are different, they may have inherited the land, a substantial part of the culture but their fatherland is not their Holy land. Their loyalties are eternally divided. Savarkar was not a religious fundamentalist who distorted his religion for a political goal. He was a practicing atheist and nationalist. He wrote on the Revolt of 1857 too, a book called The First Indian War of Independence published in 1909 which reads as a manifesto and retelling of the events of history so as to harness passions of Hindus and Muslims alike against the British rule. By 1923 he had changed his mind and written Hindutva. Hereafter, he simply perverted history to create a story of historical wrongdoings for political purpose.61 He used it quite systematically to spread hatred and spirit of revenge in pursuit of a cultural and political hegemony for Hindus over Muslims. In his presidential address to the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937, Savarkar declared, ‘India cannot be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main, Hindu and Muslims, in India’ (p. 26). He spoke of cultural, religious antagonism between the two over centuries.62 What made him turn? When in October 1939 Congress asked its ministers in provinces to resign, the same month Savarkar met the Viceroy of India (Lord Linlithgow) in Bombay and pledged his cooperation to the British. The Viceroy’s report to the Secretary of State for India, Lord Zetland says: ‘The situation, he (Savarkar) says was that his Majesty’s government must now turn to the Hindus and work with their support. After all, though we and the Hindus have had a good deal of difficulty with one another in the past, that is equally true of the relations between Great Britain and the French . . . Our interests were now the same and we must, therefore, work together. Even though, now, the most moderate of men, he had himself been in the past an adherent of a revolutionary party, as possibly, I might be aware (I confirmed that I was.) But now that our interests were so closely bound together the essential thing was for Hinduism and Great Britain to be friends, and the old

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antagonism was no longer necessary’.63 It’s equally unclear what made him befriend the British at this juncture. Some scholars attribute his transformation to his years in the Cellular Jail of Andaman where he was interned in 1911. Evidence suggests that his spirits and his health broke down completely and very quickly. He was making mercy petitions by 1913. From the early days, opposition to the Congress brand of nationalism from the far right was not just quite grim and dogged but crafty. This was a trait that successive leaders of India’s far right have displayed abundantly. Golwalkar (1906-73) became RSS chief in 1940. He was attracted to monastic life as a youth and had joined an ashram in Bengal. Like Savarkar he requested religious minorities to pledge allegiance to Hindu symbols of identity and keep their own religion to a private sphere. Indian identity is equated with Hindu culture. All religious minorities were called mlecchas (those who do not subscribe to social laws described by the brahmin system and dictated by Hindu religion). Hindu nationalism thus develops into ‘upper-caste racism’ according to Pandey64 (p. 252). Unlike Savarkar, Golwalkar emphasized the racial unity aspect of a nation and not the territorial aspect, he rejected the theory that a nation is composed of all those who for some reason happen to live at a time in the country. He invoked and echoed Adolph Hitler. ‘We repeat in Hindustan, the land of Hindus, lives and should live the Hindu nation-satisfying all five essential requirements of the scientific nation concept of the modern world. Consequently, only those movements are truly national as aim at rebuilding, revitalizing, and emancipating from its present stupor the Hindu nation. Those only are nationalist patriots, who with the aspiration to glorify the Hindu race and nation, next to their heart are prompted into activity and strive to achieve that goal. All others, posing to be patriots and willfully indulging in a course of action detrimental to the Hindu nation are traitors and enemies to the national cause or to take a more charitable view if unintentionally and unwillingly led into such a course mere simpletons, misguided, ignorant fools’ (p. 117).65 The RSS pays obeisance to these gurus as it remains the motherboard of a Sangh Parivar and a political party whose Prime Minister

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(PM) and leaders swear by the Constitution of India today. This amphisbaena like structure and a crafty will to power have served it well. This is by now the unacknowledged strategy of the entire far right establishment. Resentment against the Muslims is positioned besides hostility against communism. Golwalkar viewed Muslims as hostile elements within the country, a far greater threat inside the country than aggression from outside. Writing about the situation after Partition he says, ‘All the crores of Muslims who are here now, had en bloc voted for Pakistan.’ Even the creation of Pakistan is a threat to the Hindu nation because the Muslims have plans to expand all over India, a plan they have not given up for twelve hundred years, and Pakistan. Kashmir where they hold one-third of the area and their attempts to infiltrate Assam are proof of that. The only agenda of the Christian missionaries is to convert people. The RSS has not budged on this view. Commenting on the choice of western type of parliamentary democracy and its result he says, ‘It has given rise to all sorts of unhealthy rivalries and forces of selfishness and fission’ (p. 133), such as,‘A serious failure of democracy in our country is the growing, menace of communism which is a sworn enemy of democratic procedure. In a bid not to be left behind the communists in their economic appeal to the masses, our leaders are only making communism more respectable by themselves taking up the communist jargon and the communist programmes. If the leaders imagine that they will be able to take away the wind out of the communist sail by such tactics they are sadly mistaken. They also feel that economic development is the only defence against communism. It is the constant dinning into the ears of the masses of the promise of higher standard of living thus raising their expectations at a time when they cannot possibly be satisfied, that is aggravating the sense of frustration and paving the way for popular discontent and chaos. Nowhere do we find the appeal to higher sentiments like patriotism, character, and knowledge; nor is there any stress on cultural, intellectual and moral development. It is only in such imbecile and despairing minds that that seeds of communism strike root’. Communism is adversary number two after minorities like Muslims and Christians’ (p. 133).66 ‘When faith goes communism comes; man does not live by bread

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alone. He must have a faith to live by and die for. Without such a faith life loses its direction and meaning and man begins to drift. He feels lost. It is an impossible state of being. Till the rise of science, Christianity provided the necessary faith for European life. But science made mincemeat of Christianity. It blasted the Christian concepts of time, space, life, and the world. However, Europe lost one sheet anchor but gained another. It lost its faith in religion but gained a new faith in science. Indeed, science became its new religion’ (p. 134).67 He and the RSS were guarding Hindu civilization against such a pass. In Golwalkar’s lifetime communism was a major threat to his worldview perhaps more so than Islam and he was very suspicious of it. He describes the Gandhian socialist movement ‘Bhoodan’ as ‘reactionary’, because it begins with the view that land belongs to the tiller which is the communist view and movements such as these would pave the way for communists as the people would want to go further in the direction of redistribution trusting the communist approach. About economic inequality, he said that some felt that economic disparity would lead to the growth of communism, but this was not the real cause. The idea of dignity of labour should be imbibed instead, it was the disparity in dignity that created hatred, and this was a recent perversion that had entered our life. In Hindu philosophy there is no high or low in one’s ‘karma’ or ‘duty’ and every work is the worship of the same Almighty. ‘Socialism is not a product of this soil. It is not in our blood and tradition. It has absolutely nothing to do with the traditions and ideals of thousands of years of our national life. It is a thought alien to crores of our people here. As such it does not have the power to thrill our hearts and inspire us to a life of dedication and character. Thus, we see it does not possess even the primary qualification to serve as an ideal for our national life’ (pp. 137-8). A mob of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers rushed in to topple Lenin’s statue in Tripura as they made their first inroad to state power. On 5 March 2018 chanting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai!’ saffron clad men felled the statue of the Russian communist revolutionary. The act was repeated at another site and the head used as a football. It had been a spectacle imminent on their agenda. Indeed, Golwalkar thought that we should reject the ‘isms’ of the west, ‘It would be sheer bankruptcy of our intellect and originality if

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we believe that human intelligence has reached its zenith with the present theories and ism of the West. Let us, therefore, evolve our own way of life based on the eternal truths discovered by our ancient seers and tested on the touchstone of reason, experience and history’ (p. 138).68 The sum of Savarkar and Golwalkar’s views is the sum of the far right position. A position that Hindu society can by and large, quite easily get used to. It can adjust clearly to more and more inequality and exclusion as a way of life making a far right position more and more unobjectionable.

The Organization and Project of RSS, Where did its Funds Come from? As an organization of the far right, RSS deserves far more attention. The last chapter will examine its frontage and strategy in more recent times. But its early days are no less impressive for speed and efficiency of growth. In its founding days back in 1925, Hedgewar, often declared that the strength of Hindu society would come from and through the RSS; the organization was made to carry out that supreme task. The organizational structure he created sustains RSS to this day. It is like a pyramid. At the top is Sarsanghchalak (supreme director, not elected but selected) who is assisted by an Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha. The country is divided into geographical units’ zones, states, divisions, districts, cities and blocks. Every level has a clearly defined leadership. The shakhas are at the bottom comprising of not more than 100 male members usually swayamsevaks in a locality. These are divided into six age groups below 7, 7-11, 12-16, 17-25, 26-39, 40 and above. The shakha has a meeting every day. The RSS maintains an office where the shakha meets. The pracharak (preacher/teacher) is an RSS whole timer who lives in the office, and the RSS claims he lives very simply and only on the funds collected by the shakha. He is the backbone of the organization and is required to do multiple jobs as needed by the organization. The successful pracharaks rise in the hierarchy. The office also serves as a guest house for visiting members who may come to the town and cities for education and jobs for a temporary period. The membership drives are focused on recruiting

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teenage boys who are interested in sports and an alternative culture and are perhaps easy to mould. Around this and the personality of the pracharak (preacher), his oratory and story telling the young boys are kept attached to the RSS. Common observation of rituals, lectures on dogma, participation in physical training, dialogue conducted in a standardized format, are all designed to indoctrinate a sense of discipline and brotherhood. The RSS has not only spread through local shakhas but also through numerous affiliates in diverse social and cultural activities. After creating an affiliate, the RSS appoints a few trusted pracharaks in key posts of the new organization. Almost every affiliate has the post of a general secretary and organizing secretary occupied by the RSS. Trusted sympathizers are appointed to the ornamental posts. The hierarchical line of control and command in the organization is maintained throughout. The members are taught not to ask questions, simply to follow the instructions. Paradigm is suchna ke elawa sochna nahin hai, do not think beyond the given instruction or information.69 Periodic camps that include members from different regions further unite and enforce bonding and commitment. It is thus organized on the lines of a para military force in the service of a cause decided by the supreme leader. Who would benefit from such an elaborate authoritarian organization, committed to a Hindu rule and available on command? The early route of the RSS suggests that it was not associated with the popular freedom movement, instead it was committed with and preoccupied in building cadre. It had a rather narrow exclusive ‘Hindu upper-caste’ appeal to begin with. Unlike the Congress it did not participate in the election process. But, it was never short of funds to build the organization. The organization also grew very rapidly. What were the sources of its funds in the days leading up to the partition? Was the RSS design of idealizing and building up princely states in the Hindu imagery pure expediency?70 There is little hard evidence about RSS funds then, as now. Some funds must have come from volunteers in the form of guru dakshinas, and by their own admission that is the only source. But it is unlikely to form the bulk. Substantial support is likely to have come from some of the princely states sympathetic to them. And circumstantial evidence does suggest that it would be so. Many characters like K.M. Munshi, M.M. Malviya who

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straddled the western educated and Brahmin world of privilege did use their association with the Congress to build powerful and wealthy connections within and outside the princely states particularly in the bureaucracy. K.M. Munshi, advocate at Bombay High Court, fellow of Bombay University, president of Sahitya Sansar and creator of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, is the subject of a fascinating study where his close association with Maharaja of Baroda, Sir Sayaji Rao Gaekwad of Baroda, Aurobindo Ghose, M.K. Gandhi and Hindu Mahasabha are described.71 He served as an advisor to many princely sates in the 1940s and was in the princely state of the Nizam in Hyderabad at the time of the army action in 1948. He will figure again in the 3rd Chapter in the context of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). Here it would suffice to add that V.D. Savarkar, Dr B.S. Moonje (founding member of RSS) and he were staunch allies. While the Maratha Empire was the last to be annexed and many others which were more threatening were annexed earlier, many smaller (Mysore, Kashmir, Baroda, Travancore) princely states were allowed to continue independently, with British residents keeping a watchful presence.The vision of a ‘Hindu nation’ with traditional social structures projected by the RSS overlapped with that of these princely states. Particularly the remains of the Maratha empire, later a confederacy which had exercised an influence up to the north and south of India had relatively fresh memories of great power. Just as the right wing after the French revolution looked back to the king and aristocracy so did the RSS harness that memory. Post the uprising of 1857, the British policy was consistently calibrating their alliances with princes and feudal elements – ‘breakwaters in the storm’ as Viceroy Canning had described them even during the mutiny. The new policy involved concessions to native rulers like abrogating the doctrine of lapse, returning Mysore which they seized from Tipu Sultan to its Hindu ruling family after fifty years. In 1881, durbar pageantry and public school type education for sons of princes and talukdars was introduced. Feudal paraphernalia and autocracy were encouraged to flourish in over one-third of India. A few states like Mysore, Baroda, and Travancore did introduce reforms and evolve administrative standards on par with or even better than British India, some were also active in social reform. But for the most part, princely

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states remained in social, cultural and political backwaters; petty despotism which did not have to grapple with legal forms and civic right. This had been developed in the neighbouring British India. It was only the development of the State Peoples Movement from the 1930s that united these secluded states with the national mainstream. It is unlikely that many of these petty kings and princes, India did not view the RSS as a useful political and cultural force in a changing world that threatened their privileges swiftly. Their world view was not dramatically different nor could they have ignored the import of religion and hierarchy that the RSS endorsed. As mentioned earlier, Bhonsle, descendants of the king of Nagpur would preside over special RSS parades. Sarkar says ‘. . . if the Indian proletariat was far from being an unequivocal bearer of any modern ideology, the same comment seems to apply even more to the emerging Indian capitalist class’ (p. 54).72 Of the major business communities only some sections of educated Parsis began to get westernized. Guajarati ‘vaniyas’ and Marwari business magnates remained very orthodox in religious matters. A social reform movement developed among the Calcutta Marwaris only in the twentieth century, at least two generations after their Bengali fellow citizens. Only the ambivalent social reform movement Arya Samaj managed to win some support among business groups. Despite the long term objective contradiction between the development of national bourgeoisie and colonial, political and economic structure, Indian business groups remained overwhelming loyal to the British Raj till 1920s – often for entirely pragmatic reasons. So they could well be sympathetic to the RSS since it suited their cultural and social views very well while being non-confrontational with the British. Their preferences were described quite vividly by Motilal Nehru in the letter he wrote to his son Jawaharlal Nehru (2 December 1926) complaining bitterly about the proliferating communal hatred and ‘The MalaviyaLala gang aided by Birla’s money are making frantic efforts to capture the Congress’ (p. 63).73 The same industrial magnate Birla, would later mediate the lifting of the ban on the RSS after Gandhi’s assassination. But the support base of the Congress at least in its initial years was somewhat different, it did not include in large proportions, the

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princely class discussed above. The composition of delegates to the Calcutta session of INC on 1886, noted the entire reported absence of the old aristocracy, the so-called natural leaders of the people. It also admitted that that ryots and cultivating classes were insufficiently represented, while minor money lenders and shopkeepers were absent. However, higher commercial classes like bankers and merchants were well represented and about 130 of the delegates were landed proprietors of one kind or the other. The early Congress was associated with the rise of the educated, professional middle-class and the English educated elite. 455 of 1200 odd delegates, at the Allahabad Congress in 1888, declared themselves to be lawyers, 57 teachers, and 73 journalists. Half of the delegates were educated professionals of some kind. The princely states, under the umbrella of the states peoples movement drew closer to the national movement only between 1937-9 voicing concerns about civil rights, responsible government but making small demands. In 1939, Nehru presided over its Conference in Ludhiana. Gandhi, however, remained more rigidly non-interventionist suggesting that although the Purna Swaraj ideal would include them, for the present the Congress could only extend moral support and sympathy but not its organizational support. The state people’s movement, however, gathered momentum through local pressures and left wing forces within the Congress were involved, particularly in Mysore, Orissa, Hyderabad and Travancore. In the Muslim dominated Hyderabad state, the Congress policy of non-intervention and lack of support to local movements for responsible government gave Hindu communalist forces an opportunity to enter. The Arya Samaj and Mahasabha began to campaign against the tyranny of the Nizam and the Ittahadul-Mussalman. The Mahasabha was simultaneously denouncing Congress interference in Hindu princely states to support local demand for responsible government. The state Congress began a parallel, secular and effective Satyagraha independently from INC from October 1938, demanding a responsible government and its own legalization in Hyderabad. In the meantime, a powerful Vande Mataram, agitation backed by Hindu communal organizations developed among Osmania University students. The RSS was building up a sizable communal force in the Muslim ruled state. The Congress led movement was called off by the central leadership on the grounds that

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it could get mixed up with Hindu communal agitation. This left the local Congress leadership confused. The scale of massacre that followed the interventions of the Indian Army in 1948 to force the Muslim ruler’s accession to India is the subject of the Sunderlal report commissioned by the Nehru government (recently made available to public in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library). In it is a graphic description of the vitiated communal atmosphere and its penetration into army personnel that led to 27,000-40,000 deaths.74 Penetrating the India army was also an early agenda of the RSS towards which they had started military coaching academies. It is worth noting that K.M. Munshi was the agent general of Hyderabad from January to September 1948 during the period when the army action took place and some press reports described him as the Trojan horse in the siege of Hyderabad.75 To have been dispatched to Hyderabad at such a sensitive time implied that Munshi had the necessary support from high places within the Congress. He was also a member of the Constituent Assembly. This can be seen as another example of the quagmire in Delhi soon after Independence. Kings and princes had deep networks with the priestly and administrative cohort of Brahmins who in turn were the core support group of the RSS. These were old associates in creating and preserving their own political, social and economic pre-eminence. They had felt threatened, first by the arrival of British as conquers and expansionists. Having made peace with the British rule they were now threatened by the Congress expansion and its republican agenda. They were instinctive allies.

What Happened to the Peasant, Tribal other Class Based Left Wing Movements? The early left-wing was a faction within the national movement which sought to combine nationalism with social justice, clearly articulating the position that freedom from colonial rule was for creating an egalitarian society. Gradually, its system of inquiry, articulation and agenda went on to become closely allied with Marxism. The Congress represented, right, centre and left in its early days. Socialists and communists also took cover under its awning in the

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1920s. The fate of its social reform agenda, as Ambedkar has so effectively pointed out, was completely marginalized until Gandhi injected the rural development, humane treatment of untouchables and the Hindu Muslim issue in the 1920s. The Congress leadership, however, remained dominated by property owning classes, upper-castes almost entirely, despite its declarations in favour of the toiling masses. Its ability to harness peasant and some tribal mobilizations was quite significant once Gandhi took charge of its agenda. Gandhi played that seminal role of linking the masses to the Congress – some peasant and tribal uprisings made links with the Congress only because of him. Folklore about his saintliness had travelled far and wide, by word of mouth among the unlettered, so that he was an object of veneration among them. But in its composition and leadership the lower strata was under represented so far. Those who stayed steadfast to issues of social justice also became a minority. The Congress soon came to represent a new form of that old constellation of power and privilege, large representations of urban, professional classes who had roots in the old landed classes and accommodated aspirations of new education and professions. Some of them remained in opposition to the kind of Hindu revival described earlier, which exemplified if anything, a call to return to old glory and timeworn Hindu socio-political-economic caste hierarchy. But it certainly was not clear what proportion of Congress leadership at the centre and states was unfaltering in its opposition to Hindu revivalism. Such was the nature of the Congress canopy. In that sense the right was at the centre in India and in power in most regions by the 1947. In India, the left of centre took the contemporary political shape of communists only in the latter-half of the 1920s. It was far behind the Congress. The coming together of communists occurred under challenging circumstances (Chapter 4 has more to say about their turbulent arrival). The ranks of the left first grew out of the national movement. It was made up of people disillusioned by the collapse of the non-cooperation movement. These revolutionaries, labour and peasant activists were aware of developments across the world and were most particularly inspired by the October 1917, Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

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In 1920, M.N. Roy, Abani Mukherji, Mohammad Ali and Mohammad Shafiq formed the Communist Party of India (CPI) at Tashkent. Berlin also emerged as a centre for other Indian revolutionary groups turning to Marxism. Eventually links were set up with groups in Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Lahore. By 1922, S.S. Dange was bringing out a weekly called Socialist from Bombay. For a while Indian communist groups tried to work within the nationalist mainstream. A panicky British government jailed prominent communists in the famous Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case in 1924 which followed trials after a series of conspiracy cases. Nevertheless, in a defiant rebound, an open Indian Communist Conference was promoted by diverse groups. It was held in Kanpur in 1925. This was to lay the foundations for the left front with ambitions to unite workers in Bombay and peasants across India. Eventually it took the form of a united CPI. A communist cadre of about 50 in 1926 constituted the CPI, compared to 30,000 communist cadres in China at about the same time. Left leaders and their ideology played a prominent role in promoting awareness of international developments, of anti-imperialist solidarity of socialism, and the need to combine nationalism with social justice, in the national movement. Some revolutionary militants across India like Bhagat Singh also found their way to socialism. Young leaders in the Congress like Nehru and Bose were deeply influenced by the left. The start of the left movement was forty years after that of the Congress. Ironically its influence within the Congress grew in the 1930s just as the support and grip of Indian industrial and commercial capital on the Congress increased. In those decades, as the Congress got fully committed to electoral politics by 1937, formation of popular ministries in the provinces was a major Congress victory from such heights that there was no going back and the grip of rich donors strengthened. These electoral compulsions amplified strains between the Congress left and right wing. Sarkar says ‘. . . the advance and consolidation of the Congress organization meant also the assimilation and curbing of more elemental and potentially radical lower-class outbursts. The Congress . . . while fighting the Raj was also becoming the Raj. . . . This was not just the question of party organization throttling lower level spontaneity; what was involved was the gradual establishment of a kind of hegemony

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(never absolute or unqualified . . .) of bourgeois and dominant peasant groups over the national movement’ (p. 254).76 Tensions within created a wide space for an independent left challenge, heightened the need to form trade unions, kisan sabhas, independent communist and socialist groups. The British tried various strategies, against this rising tide of radical nationalism, mainly outright repression of communists but no less the old tricks of divide and rule. Across all schisms Hindus, Muslims, tribal, dalits and so on, the possibilities were many in Indian society. That was a permanent interruption to the consolidation of a left position. The British were also now subtly promoting Gandhi over other radical leaders. Communists were much feared both by the British and the growing capitalist class in India. As the number of strikes increased, often under the influence or direct leadership of communists, a counter offensive was launched by the capitalists and the government. Muslim pathans were employed by mill owners as strike breakers in Bombay, leading to communal riots in February 1929. This was followed by bills like the Public Safety Bill and Trade Disputes Bill which gave the government some powers to arrest, and ‘ban strikes under some circumstances’. The top leadership of the unions was rounded up and arrested, and a long conspiracy trial followed in Meerut. They also arrested British communists helping to organize Bombay and Calcutta workers. The trials continued for four years and heavy jail sentences brought international attention to the situation. There were fears of communists infiltrating and joining armed forces with peasant uprisings specially the one in Gujarat (Bardoli) and influencing youth militancy. The might of the British Empire weighed in to thwart the left and once again the property owning class joined forces with the British government towards a common interest. The communists struggled in India, not just against the combined colonial state and capitalist repression but they were also thwarted because of their complex relationship with the Congress. In the early days they followed a ‘struggle and unity’ approach since Congress had both a lead and far greater presence in the national movement. Any direct fight against the Congress would have weakened the national movement. But pro-zamindar and capitalist stances of the Congress

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increased in the 1930s as its dependence on the upper-class increased. This made it increasingly awkward for the left to stay with the Congress. Eventually in the Depression years after 1929, the bargaining position of labour declined and strikes became infrequent. The situation changed only as the effects of the global Depression ebbed after 1934 but industrialists still tried to keep wages down. A series of strikes erupted again and the left forces converged to form a Red Trade Union Congress (RTUC) of the communists in 1935 and rejoined the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) of the Congress Party to create a common front. A Labour Board was set up to explore further unity in the labour movement and to work within the Congress. They were also pursuing a collective affiliation of trade unions and peasant organizations with the aim of converting it into an ‘anti-imperialist people’s front’ for a more radical agenda, calling for a Constituent Assembly elected by universal suffrage. A student’s left wing, the All India Students Federation, Progressive Writers Association, and Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA) became supplementary organizations to bring about a radical consciousness among people through mass contact, debate, literature and art. When Nehru became the President of the Congress again in 1936, his Lucknow address called for an alignment with progressive forces of the world against fascism and imperialism and also for socialism in the scientific and economic sense. This is thought to be the high point of Left influence on the Congress. It also laid the basis of the propeople socio-economic programme in the Congress manifesto. Both his books Glimpses of World History and Discovery of India offer insights into the profound impact of Marxism and the October revolution on anti-colonial movements and vision of the way forward. Nehru remembered his tryst with the modernity again in his first speech in the Constituent Assembly on 13 December 1946 and moved the Objective Resolution. This proclaimed India as an independent sovereign republic guaranteeing its citizens justice, social, economic, and political, equality of status and opportunity. He invoked the great past of India as well as the French, American and Russian Revolution.77 As the WW2 came to an end, the CPI had become the third largest party in India after the Congress and Muslim League albeit

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much smaller than either. This was despite British repression and persecution since the 1920s and it’s own mistakes. It was legalized in 1942, (after being proscribed in 1934), as USSR was by then allied with the west against the fascists. It grew on the basis of its unions, Kisan Sabhas, cultural interventions particularly through IPTA and participation in many popular struggles like Tebhaga share croppers movement in Bengal, Telangana peasants insurgency, Punnapra-Vayalar revolt in Travancore, Warli movement in Thane, Maharashtra, Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946 in Bombay, to name only a few. The membership of the Communist Party grew to about 60,000 at the time of Independence.78 Membership seems to have grown from 60,000 to 100,000 as recorded at the time of the second party congress in February 1948.79 That figure is one-sixth of RSS membership at the same time. Moreover, CPI was not in a position to provide unified national leadership in 1947. They were struggling to spread their own roots, strengthen their organization, develop an audience that understood what it stood for and improve their own understanding of vastly different regions, classes, castes in India and their local needs. Only much later could they develop a coherent local, national and international party programme. The working class remained at odds with itself, they would gather with the red unions in huge numbers for work related demands but return home to vote for their caste and religion in the local elections. A schism in consciousness, which remains to be bridged. For some thirty initial years, during which it held two party congresses, the CPI functioned without a party programme or a clearly formulated statement of policy or tactical line. That happened only in 1951. Despite this, in India’s first general elections (which it decided to participate in after some internal confusion and conflict) it emerged as the main opposition party with 3.3 per cent of the vote share and 16 out of 489 Lok Sabha seats. The sheer scale of the problems faced by peasants and workers brought the CPI into the Parliament. What were the coercions of electoral politics in a liberal democracy? Ambedkar cautioned that India was going to become a ‘mere political democracy’, it was going to enter a life of contradictions. In politics it would have equality and in social and economic life inequality.80 Could such a contradiction sustain? The journey of communists in India will be described later.

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Shifting Political Economy of India, Electoral Politics, and Augmentation of the Right Wing within Congress Although the first cotton, jute mills, the first coal mine were established and railway lines were laid out way back in the period between 1850-5 (much of it through British enterprise) the transition to industrial economy was slowing down by the end of the nineteenth century. Instead, India was becoming an exporter of cotton, jute, tea, and some food crops and an importer of British manufactured goods. Two world wars and the Depression in between, changed the economic landscape of India very rapidly. The war of 1914-18 created demand for factory goods made in India to support the war effort and as exports from Britain and Europe fell. Iron, steel, jute, leather cotton and woollen textile mills expanded capacity. The shortage of heavy industry and machine tools slowed down the expansion. Up to the late 1920s India took about 11 per cent of British exports, including 28 per cent of Lancashire textiles. But the war did weaken and divert British industry to war needs and promoted industrial development within India. Subsidiary foreign manufacturing firms arrived in India along with foreign controlled Indian limited groups; collaboration with Indian business groups represented a change in the structure of British interest in Indian manufacturing and finance. The forms in which India transferred remittances to UK also changed. By the end of the WW1 British interest controlled at least half of industrial production in India but this began to change and by the time of Independence it was less than 5 per cent. In 1923, the Government had accepted the recommendations of the first Fiscal Commission and given tariff protection to selected industries in India, this seems to have helped Indian industrialists. The Depression caused a sharp drop in Indian export of raw material and cash crop exports fell. Simultaneously there was also a drop in import of textiles. The burden of Home Charges rose in pounds – the large amount that India paid for the cost of British rule from UK. Slackening the older forms of colonial ties opened opportunities for India capitalists, textile mills, and jute mills. Steel production increased and spread in India, benefitting from falling prices of

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agricultural inputs. The efforts of the Indian capitalist class to expand their interests in manufacturing, commerce and finance came into frequent conflict with the British capitalists. Their location in the national movement remained ambivalent, navigating between militant labour movements and the need to avoid conflict with British interests and for government support, permissions and protection. But by the end of the 1920s, there also seemed to be an altered understanding more widely shared among the larger capitalists at least. As their mutual correspondence and speeches made in trade and mill associations suggest, they were beginning to feel the need for self-government with control over finance, currency, fiscal policy and railways, which would more directly support their interests. They found in the Congress such a future possibility, as Congress influence grew. So while they had been largely indifferent to the non-cooperation movement of the 1920s they become more involved in the Civil Disobedience that followed in the 1930s.81 Global depression brought about deteriorating working conditions in the factories and lower income for the peasants. Some estimates suggest that per capita income declined in the 1930s. Concurrently, population growth accelerated after 1921. It was estimated to be 306 million, and rose to 389 million by 1941. When mill owners tried to pass on the burdens of Depression and competition (now from Britain and Japan) on to workers with wage cuts, large and successful strikes broke out in different parts of India, particularly in Bengal, Madras and Bombay. The Bombay textile mill workers strike under the Girni Kamgar Union was the most massive and successful. On the one hand, was the growing interest of the capitalist class in the Congress as a vehicle of their cause, and on the other were, the increasingly militant and well organized working class organizations. The contradictions of capitalism were now embodied in the Congress. Electoral politics dictated that they needed the funds of the capital owning classes and the votes of the working class concurrently. On the constitutional reform front, a group of seven MPs from Britain under the chairmanship of John Simon was sent in 1928 to study the working of the constitutional reforms of 1919 and make recommendations. No Indian was appointed to that group. Prospects

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for unity of all major political groups seemed likely after the commission (Simon Commission) was announced, many political groups decided to boycott it and form an All-Party Conference to draw up a Constitution for India by Indians.82 The Constitution being framed by the All-Party Conference was drafted mainly by Motilal Nehru and Tej Bahadur Sapru, popularly known as the Nehru Report. Then there were developments that reflected the growing clout of communal parties in the 1920s. These emerging agreements between political groups were arrested and reversed under pressure from Hindu communal organizations in Punjab and Maharashtra. Jinnah’s attempts to create an understanding also proved futile and instead there was a clear parting of ways after 1928. The Hindu right wing organizations played a twofold game; they backed the interests of the princely states at the expense of the nationalist cause, while their representatives and allegiants within the Congress were supporting the nationalist cause. The British had tried to cultivate the princely states as a wall against the nationalist movement. The question of their paramountcy was the subject of speculation in the Nehru Report. Princely interests were protected by an amendment guaranteeing all titles to personal and private property; the amendment was moved by Madan Mohan Malviya and accepted by the Nehru Report. Sumit Sarkar says, ‘The most formidable and oppressive strongholds of feudalism lay in the Princely states . . . these had already witnessed spontaneous local peasant outbreaks’ (p. 341).83 However, Gandhi repeatedly asserted the helplessness of the Congress and expressed the hope that princes would be persuaded to behave as trustees of their subjects and right-wing Congressmen remained either silent or like Malviya and Bhulabhai Desai began assuring the princes of their paramountcy. When Bhagat Singh was hanged in March 1932, the anger of the more radical left nationalists intensified. They felt that nothing was done to save him by the nationalist leaders. The Karachi session of the Congress that followed, was marked by moderate left leaning resolutions on civil rights and agrarian reforms to assuage the left sections. Nonetheless there was no real challenge to the Gandhian control over the organization or his preference for mass instead of class-based

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politics. Walchand Hirachand Papers (Walchand Hirachand Doshi was a avant-garde industrialist and a nationalist close to INC) are often quoted to show that after the resolution at the Karachi session prominent industrialists circulated a note in FICCI, sharply attacking the Karachi resolution for ushering in a government on the Russian model. No alternative leadership emerged, outside or inside the Congress to challenge the Gandhian control, even during the 1930s, despite the pressures from industrial labour and peasantry. The inability of the Congress to deal with their distress was patent. The left remained a fragmented force under various forms of repression. Besides, it had as yet, a narrow base among the masses of people. Few, if any of its own members, had any exposure to theoretical Marxism, political developments abroad or experience of mass-based work in rural India where most of the population lived. Absence of the culture of egalitarianism let alone any semblance of socialist consciousness in India, was a wall they faced (more about the teething troubles of the left in Chapter 4). The left did grow as mentioned earlier, but was no match for the Congress or the RSS. Within Congress too, the right wing was consolidating its positions (in persons such as industrialists like Birla and Thakurdas and political leaders like Vallabhbhai Patel, Bhulabhai Desai, B.C. Roy, Rajendra Prasad, Rajagopalachari and many others). The right tightened its grip but was doing so very deftly, allowing the party to continue with the radical presidential addresses of Nehru in 1932 and 1936. The Congress could, therefore, carry on giving verbal assurances, announce programmes to gather votes of the expanding electorate and gather support necessary for mass participation. The position of most of the top leadership of the Congress also tilted towards the right in a multifaceted advancement. It is explained not only by their own general class predispositions, but also by the need for election funds and by the rise of left forces within the Congress youth, in the country and internationally. Historians cite the declining participation in actions like Gandhian Satyagrahas, controlled mass action and rural construction in favour of a more militant peasant and labour movement at this juncture. To it was added the fear among the older leaders of loss of influence to left leaning, young and more charismatic leaders like Nehru and Bose within the Congress. Since the 1920s, the entire processes of fighting elections, funding

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elections and the profits of ministry making had begun to change the Congress itself. It did very well in the 1937 elections, winning 711 out of 1585 Provincial seats, with absolute majority in five provinces out of eleven and a near majority in Bombay. Nehru remained their biggest vote catcher for three decades thereafter. Congress ministries took office in UP, Bihar, Orissa, CP, Bombay and Madras, NWFP and with some assembly maneuvres, and floor crossing in Assam as well. The Constitution provided limited power to these ministries but nevertheless opened even greater avenues to state power compared to the past. The Congress was not without rivals; competition with other political forces particularly the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League remained a concern. Over a period of time, outmaneuvering them and balancing diverse interests of class, religious and caste based communities became a distracting preoccupation. Attracting contributions from propertied classes, the basis of election funds became another preoccupation. In the electoral competition party funds were never more than adequate and gradually propertied men who could finance their own campaign were preferred over activists and militant members as candidates. Consequently, this alignment with property and mercantile capital grew as did wealth of the class. Corruption inevitably made its appearance as access to power and patronage systems multiplied. Along with it came inner party jealousy and ever sharper rivalry. Once in power, these Congress ministries, given their limited resources and power, found it difficult to deliver any substantial benefits to people. Soon Congress was battling with unrest of the people they represented in provinces. This rule also led to many complications and compromises. Their rule also increased alienation of Muslims. Some historians have marked this period, between 1937-9 after the 1937 elections, as seriously damaging not just to the left within the Congress but also communal harmony. It is also linked to the revival of the Muslim League, which had an even more right wing stance on socio-economic issues. Congressmen had been active in the Hindu Mahasabha and only after December 1938 a resolution was passed in the Congress Working Committee barring dual membership. Meanwhile the leadership of the Hindu Mahasabha had passed on to more militant leaders like Savarkar who declared that Hindus were a nation historically and Hindu nationalism was not an aberration. Para military

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communal forces grew on both sides like the RSS in Maharashtra, and Khaksars under Allama Mashriqui in 1931 in Punjab and Razakars under Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (MIM) a theocratic party founded in 1926 in Hyderabad. By 1940 when Golwalkar took over the leadership of the RSS, it claimed to have a cadre of one lakh trained persons. In 1942 it is estimated that there were many more Khaksars.84 As a resilient relationship between Indian capitalists and Congress right wing emerged, Gandhian ideals also seemed increasingly impractical and irrelevant for remaining in power. After Independence, adoption of the mixed economy as an idea, of state planning for public sector led industrialization; without wholesale nationalization or attack on private property was a direct product of this association.85 The Bombay Plan was an evidence of the cohesion in the class and grip on the Congress. Its signatories included the leading industrialists, some economists and bankers. The capital owning class wanted the state to invest in heavy industry, infrastructure and long gestation, lower profitability sector and kick start the national economic development for them and no more, which the state did after Independence86 stone walling both, comprehensive state control of the economy for development and state control over the capitalist class itself. In 1930s, these reconfigurations within the Congress led to a fundamental rightward shift affecting its attitude towards labour, zamindari and land distribution issues. Leadership of mass organizations then shifted to the left. The left ranks comprising of the socialists, Royists, and the as yet illegal CPI, which worked within the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) grew in increasing opposition to the Congress. They managed some valuable achievements by keeping up the pressure to shift popular debates and consciousness to the left, on domestic as well as international issues. This caused apprehension not just among the right wing of the Congress but also among socialists like Jayaprakash Narayan, Minoo Masani, (whose enthusiastic and dubious role in the 1970s will be the subject of some consideration in the 3rd Chapter) and N.G. Ranga. Communists did received some valuable support from leaders like Nehru and Bose. At the Tripura session of the Congress in 1939, the party witnessed its sharpest internal struggle over the issue of Bose’s decision to stand again for party president. Despite Bose’s victory and support for him

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from the left wing within the Congress and other sections, Gandhi maneuvered a divide and forced Bose to resign. The next president was Rajendra Prasad a firm Gandhi loyalist. The Congress was recaptured by the right wing and thereafter the ability of the left to resist the anti-labour and anti-peasant policies of the provincial Congress ministries was compromised only by the necessity to maintain a united front in the national movement with the Congress. Indian business groups gained immensely from war contracts, more so in the WW2 and remained largely loyal to the British war efforts. They did experience relatively short lived panic at the possibility of the Japanese invasion and loss of Asian business and domestic property. This was probably the predominant anxiety and reason why around the time of the Quit India Movement of 1942, the Indian business class supported the movement to quickly push the British out. While WW2 was raging, and the British were amidst a dire survival struggle, the Quit India Movement was to be the last anti-British mass mobilization of the Congress. Mass arrests and imprisonments followed; this added a badge of patriotism and wiped out their poor record of running ministries substantially. Mass arrests of Congress leaders left the field open to the far right who had not participated shrewdly. Non-participation of the communists in the Quit India wave (under Soviet influence which was also at war) marginalized them in the upsurge of patriotic fervour that swept the sub-continent. For the CPI, combat against European fascism had a far higher priority than the precise timing of Indian Independence. At the end of the war the British were exhausted and broke and for India some form of self-government became inevitable. Asia too was rife with anti-European-imperialism fervour and weakened by the war. The exact form of self-government was to be the subject of future negotiations with the British Government, Congress and the Muslim League.

M.K. Gandhi, the Man, his Mark, Assassination and what the Trial Revealed The complexity of M.K. Gandhi the thinker and leader, is quite remarkable. His ideas and writings are so copious and varied that they

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are hard to summarize. Besides, that is not the purpose of this book. He cannot be understood outside the formative milieu, his own social, cultural and class circumstances as a child and based on his speeches and writing alone. Summarily, it can however be said that his agenda was marked by deep economic conservativeness, some social conservatism as well but profound secular convictions. Somehow, his mass appeal outstripped that of any other contemporary leaders. Where did he imbibe the skills for leadership, mass organization and appeal? His family was well connected; they were Diwans (prime ministers) in the petty kingdoms of Kathiawar and its surrounding region in Gujarat since his grandfather’s days. His grandfather was prime minister in Porbandar and occasionally in other states. Historically, Kathiawar had been a refuge for many religions – Muslims, Jains, Parsees, Christians, the majority being Hindus. Some communities mingled socially others did not; there was a tacit tolerance. When Gandhi’s father, Karamchand Gandhi went to serve as premier in Rajkot, his brother took up the post at Porbandar. In Rajkot his father had defended the king against an overbearing British resident and had served a small detention. The family had a reputation for integrity and was considered to be beyond bribery or intrigue. Premiership was considered the natural privilege of the family. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869. While his father was Diwan at Rajkot, Mohandas studied in a prestigious school, played cricket, tennis and other games but was indifferent to academics. His father was a man of politics though not formally educated, his mother Putlibai (the fourth wife) was religious. A devotee of Vishnu, she frequented temples and took him along, prayed daily and fasted often. Her attitude to religion for inculcating ethics was to leave a mark as was his father’s grasp of politics. Gandhi went on to use a humanized religion in political work with considerable flair. The family (the father having passed away) decided to send him to study law in England and return to assume premiership.This decision was taken despite massive disapproval of their community, the Bombay wing of which boycotted them, for a period. Three vows had been imposed on him by a Jain guru of his mother: not to touch meat, woman or wine. Gandhi left his home for England, a shy young man, barely able to converse in English. The three vows set him up poorly for

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meeting a substantially different society. Adjustments between two extremely different worlds would shape his basic attitude, towards holding his own and seeking resolution in conflict. If one looks at the background and his journey then it is evident that he travelled a way forward and away from his extremely conservative, socially privileged family in an old fashioned feudal, princely state. Gandhi had worked in South Africa from 1893 up to his return in 1915, as a lawyer. There, for the first 13 years of the 21 years, he used the usual moderate technique which was to file petitions and prayers against racial discrimination. For the Indian merchants he represented, it was a totally new method. Then he organized three passive resistance (Satyagraha) campaigns against de-recognition of non-Christian Indian marriages, tax of three pounds on ex-indentured labourers, compulsory registration and passes for Indians. These laws affected Indians of all provinces and of all religions including Christians in South Africa adversely. His reputation had sailed back to India and spread to various provinces while he was still in South Africa. He was quite famous by the time he returned. In Sabarmati Ashram in 1915, 13 of the first 25 inmates came from Tamil Nadu – something inconceivable then for any other Indian leader. Sarkar says, this experience made Gandhi potentially much more of an all India figure from the beginning of his work in India than any other politician like Tilak or Lajpat Rai.87 His life experiences had also convinced Gandhi of the necessity and possibility of HinduMuslim-Christian unity. Non-violence and Satyagraha were a deeply felt and worked out philosophy which revealed considerable originality. For him the search for truth was the goal of human life and no one could ever be sure of having found the ultimate truth, hence use of violence to enforce one’s own partial understanding of truth was sinful. Gandhi’s use of non-violence was not dogmatic nor without practical and political adjustments. His philosophy and its essence was internalized only by a very small group but enabled him to appeal, launch and control mass participation. Another essential aspect of Gandhi’s appeal lay in his vague economic ideas; he felt the real enemy was not the British domination but the whole of modern industrial civilization (at least that is his position in book Hind Swaraj, 1909). This rather obscure position would be

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reconstructed by him into a practical programme of khadi, self-help, self-sufficiency, swadeshi and rural reconstruction in India to changes that were neither remarkable nor unsettling for the status quo. This ambiguous position possibly resonated with property owning classes and did not concern rural masses who were themselves still living in pre-industrial state. Just as Gandhi cannot be understood outside his own background, he cannot be understood outside of the context of the culturally regressive and socially backward forces he was battling against in India. The varied forces he was trying to align with and make bridges between, multiple castes, regions, religions differences in society. His long leadership of the national movement had apparently only one singular overarching purpose, to preserve unity in the struggle. He was incessantly carrying the old with the new, making no violent breaks with tradition, bridging differences to forge a unity where it did not exist at all. In addition, like all leaders, he would need to maneuvre within to retain his own personal grip over the Congress even without holding any of its offices. In his appeal to treat religious minorities as equals, campaign against untouchability, living in a Harijan colony, inclusion of women, including peasants, workers in the movement against colonialism, he was a force of change, an agent of the unfinished social reform and well ahead of the culture of early twentieth century India in general and of the Congress too. On the other hand, in his grasp of the economic basis of exploitation, class interests, the role of science, medicine and the role of religion in preserving status quo and inequalities, he seems very conservative almost antiquated. He often seemed to be trying to restore a mythical, golden past of self-sufficient, self-governing villages, indigenous knowledge systems where everything and everyone had a place and a role. He was far removed from the political understanding and possibilities opening up across the world in early twentieth century. He was unimpressed and even horrified by the impact of industrial revolution on social relations, unenthusiastic about mechanization; he saw the speed and intensity of work on one hand, unemployment on the other. He had visited the working class localities in England and formed his

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own opinion about the dangers of industrialization both in England and in her colony. But he did not apprehend it or articulate it as a danger of capitalism, only as the horror of industrialization. Nor did he examine the possibility of organizing industrial production on a different basis in India. He simply rejected science, modernization, industrialization, redistribution and socialism. This blindsiding occurred despite the example of countries around him which had already stepped away from capitalism. Perhaps he thought the violence necessary to destroy the old system and establish an alternate one was inordinate and it actually terrified him. He did write about his quite valid fear that violence would brutalize society, while contradiction between the means and ends of violence would cause change to become unsustainable. Instead of reconciling himself to the contradictions and facing the new world, he chose to retreat and recommended a return to the past, tiny scales of production in rural cottage industry, voluntary poverty or simplicity of consumption needs, high mindedness and a trusteeship system where the rich held the wealth for the good of the rest. No major revision in his philosophy or recommendation as to how India could sustain itself in a new world occurred till his death, half way through the twentieth century. Considering how much he wrote and revised his position on other issues, it is possible that Gandhi continued to believe that it was possible to ‘go back to the future’ rather than grapple with the unknown and new in matters of political economy. However, given the abysmal level of literacy, social backwardness, grip of religions orthodoxy and appeal of (the far right) Hindu version of nationalism, Gandhi seems to have found a way. He got ahead of them for a while. He had made his road based on an instinctive understanding of what was possible for the masses to envision and for him to communicate at that juncture of history. Shrewd tactician, he was selective and applied what he thought was socially feasible, committing himself to unifying without creating too many rifts that could hamper the complicated objective of winning independence. Unity could not be preserved eventually but it was not for want of trying on his part. That he could persuade millions to follow him in India (rather than give that space to the far right) was the unequivocal power of his appeal, an appeal, which Nehru (who disagreed with his economic vision) realized and even his critics then understood only too well. His

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critics today, particularly some to the left seem to argue that had he not been around the left would have done better than it did. Facts seem to indicate that the far right would have succeeded earlier, more easily. Today one tends to forget the social environment and historical circumstances in which Gandhi laboured. These can best be gauged from the horrific circumstances of his assassination. Gandhi was shot dead in daylight, surrounded by people, in the national capital Delhi, on 30 January 1948, by Nathuram Godse. An abortive attempt had been made on his life 10 days earlier on 20 January 1948 when a bomb exploded at a wall in the compound where he offered prayers and Gandhi knew that it was a widespread conspiracy.88 That did not alter his schedule, or travel or his position against communal hatred and riots. The assassin as it turned out, was an accomplice of many others who had hatched the plot in Maharashtra. Godse had connections with both the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. Hindu organizations of the far right had gained much traction in the decade preceding the Partition so as to conceive and conduct such a bold operation. By the mid 1920s communal riots had become frequent. As communal antagonism preceding and following the Partition grew, suspicions, rumours, and propaganda gained momentum and Mahatma Gandhi became its target. Nehru was to say in 1948, ‘Communalism resulted not only in the division of the country, which inflicted a deep wound in the heart of the people which will take a long time to heal if it ever heals but also assassination of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi’.89 The news of his assassination brought widespread condemnation for the RSS. Large scale arrests of functionaries including their supreme leader Golwalkar followed the ban on RSS. The RSS suspended its public activities in the shakhas for a while. After his release in August 1948, Golwalkar then chief of the RSS started a correspondence with Nehru and Patel to get the ban lifted. He protested that the RSS was innocent but that did not carry weight so he began a correspondence to suggest that the RSS could help the government in containing the communist menace, that if the government power and organized cultural force of the RSS could combine they could eliminate the

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menace.90 When Nehru was not willing to trust them, the RSS carried out a signature campaign and soon collected nine lakh signatures; they also formed a committee to create a sympathetic public opinion under the chairmanship of J.B. Kriplani (a veteran CSP leader, and a critic of Nehru, and at later date ally of RSS in anti-emergency movement of 1970s). The RSS then organized a Satyagraha in December 1948 where 60,000 volunteers were arrested. The Satyagraha was called off in January 1949 and Golwalkar resumed negotiations with the government. G.D. Birla, a big industrialist, was one of the mediators. The ban was lifted in July 1949, just a year-and-a-half after the assassination of the father of the nation! One of the conditions of lifting of the ban was that the RSS should have a written Constitution, function in the open and remain a cultural organization. The assassination meanwhile left Nehru in no doubt that the far right was planning a seizure of power. He wrote in his fortnightly letters to chief ministers (February 1948) ‘. . . it would appear that a deliberate coup d’état was planned involving the killing of several people and the promotion of general disorder to enable the particular group concerned (RSS) to seize power’.91 He urged chief ministers of various sensitive states to be vigilant, to develop intelligence sources. He was dismayed that a number of Congressmen were attracted to this fascist and Nazi mode of thought and practice. Based on a reading of his letters, historians say that ‘such was Nehru’s sense of danger and urgency that it is difficult to locate a single fortnightly letter to the chief ministers in which he did not highlight the issue and urge continuous vigilance in the first two and a half years of his prime minister ship’ (p. 27).92 His anxiety made him convert the first general election campaign into a crusade against communalism, travelling 40,000 km, addressing about a tenth of India’s population. Eventually the far right group including the Hindu Mahasabha, Jana Sangh, and Ram Rajya Parishad (RRP) won 10 out of 489 seats and polled less than 6 per cent of the vote. But it took a massive effort of leadership, force and state apparatus.93 Electoral illusions aside, the might and appeal of the far right was no mean thing in India at that point or afterwards. According to scholars like Noorani, the main ideologue of Hindutva, Savarkar escaped conviction in the Gandhi assassination case only very narrowly. The law requires that the evidence of an

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accomplice to the crime must be corroborated in all material respects by independent evidence. Savarkar was acquitted only because the approver Digamber Badge was not deemed an independent witness. Savarkar’s role did not have independent corroboration. The Judge Atmacharan accepted Badge as a truthful witness.‘He gave his version of facts in a direct and straight forward manner. He did not evade cross examination or attempt to evade or fence with any question’ (p. 4).94 Badge’s version was that on 17 January, he went with assassin Nathuram Godse, and accomplice Narayan Apte to Savarkar’s home and he heard Savarkar, while bidding them farewell, say, Yashasvi houn ya (be successful and come back). On the way back, Apte told Badge that Savarkar had predicted that Gandhiji’s hundred years were over - there was no doubt that work would be successfully finished. Godse had hailed Savarkar in the court as ‘most faithful advocate of the Hindu cause’. The two had known each other since 1929. Therefore, Savarkar came under a heavy cloud of suspicion. The day after the assassination his house was searched and kept under surveillance. He was arrested on 5 February 1948 and on 11 March served with a warrant of arrest the charge being participation in a conspiracy to kill Gandhi.95 And this was not the first time that Savarkar was accused of masterminding an assassination or goading a young man to do it. Savarkar denied any relationship with the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi. Both Godse and Apte were hanged, the rest transported for life, Savarkar was acquitted of the charge of conspiracy to murder; after his release he moved closer to the RSS. When the RRS chief Golwalkar was released in July 1950 he sent him a wire of congratulations. In turn, many years later in 1963, Golwalkar acknowledged his debt to Savarkar’s Hindutva, written forty years earlier. The Kapur Commission (1970) inquired into the trial and the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi. The report reveals that all the accused were Mahasabha members loyal to Savarkar.96 All except one were of the same region, caste and were closely associated, that is Maharashtrian Brahmins. Bombay, Pune, Gwalior and Hindu Mahasabha and Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan, Savarkar Sadan and Bombay Dyeing House are the locations and place names that crop up in the conspiracy. It is clear that money was not a problem for Savarkar and he lived in relative luxury, he was allegedly funded by some noted industrialist in Bombay

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by the name of Gulabchand Hirachand, and that the proprietor of Bombay Dyeing, Charandas Meghji was another possible source of funds for the Mahasabha and the conspiracy. Some holy man (Sanatani) called Dixit Maharaj was associated, and he used to purchase weapons from one of the accused during communal riots. One or two years after Savarkar’s death his personal bodyguard spoke up. Later he also spoke before the Kapur Commission and gave evidence to support the strong connections between all the accused and Savarkar. He had not testified in court, if he had, Savarkar would have been convicted (p. 132).97 The Kapur Commission was set up 17 years (22 March 1965) after the assissination following an episode which was the early release of Gopal Godse (brother of the assassin and one of the accused) from prison. The release was arranged by the then Congress home minister. A meeting to felicitate Gopal Godse was held in Pune on 11 November 1964. Speaking on the occasion, G.V. Ketkar, a former editor of Kesari spoke, saying that Nathuram Godse used to discuss the pros and cons of his plans to assassinate Gandhi with him. This was reported in the media and it led to an outrage in the Parliament. A suspicion grew and a realization that the truth behind the assassination had not come out of the trial. Justice Kapur’s finding are broadly destructive of any other theory except that the conspiracy to kill Gandhi was hatched and executed by Savarkar and his group and that, membership of the Mahasabha and RSS was overlapping. There were more revelations in a biography of Savarkar that came out after his death. In an interview to Frontline in 1994 Nathuram’s brother Gopal Godse said that all four brothers were in the RSS, they grew up in the RSS rather than at home. Nathuram was an intellectual worker in the RSS, but, in his court testimony he had claimed that he wasn’t associated with the RSS to protect the organization and its chief.98 Among other things, a re-reading of the Kapur Commission Report today is a reminder of the scale of tragedy unleashed in 1947 with immense law, order, and psychological ramification in the days that followed. It is also a reminder of the penetration of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS, their role in fanning communal insecurity in an unsettled society, besides fanning antagonism, in fact, hatred for Gandhi’s cause. There were attacks on Gandhi allegedly in 1934 in Poona, in 1944 in

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Panchgani and Wardha and an attempted derailment of the Gandhi special train in the Pune-Kalyan section. All these are located in Maharashtra and the members of the same Hindu Right groups were involved. The conspiracy was hatched in Poona and in Bombay in 1947 in which some Maharashtrians with close connection to the Hindu Mahasabha and one 20-year-old Punjabi called Madanlal were involved. Perhaps the law and order machinery were compromised in difficult times as well, for little else can explain the laxity with which the confessions of a co-conspirator Madanlal were treated. He was arrested after the bombing incident on 20 January 1948 and confessed. The lack of critical coordination between Delhi, Bombay and Pune police centres are noticeable. How much of that was the result of a generally unsettled administration and how much was out of sympathy for the far right will never be clear. The report mentions the role of the princely states in supporting and funding the far right in Alwar, Gwalior. All of it culminated in the brazenness of the final assassination, ten days later in an open prayer ground, in the national capital. It happened despite heightened security arrangements. The inquiry centre’s on the misgiving that there was possible prior information about the conspiracy and dereliction of duty if not outright sympathy for Godse’s cause. This was not just among sections of the population in Maharashtra but perhaps even in the bureaucracy and police. The examination of witnesses took 162 days and for the convenience of those cross examined, the Commission sat in Bombay, New Delhi, Dharwar, Poona, Nagpur, Baroda and Chandigarh. One of the people examined was Jayaprakash Narayan (more about him in Chapter 3) for he had made public statements soon after the assassination in 1948 that Congress ministers patronised the RSS and officials within the administration sabotaged attempts to unearth the conspiracy. These were reported in by the Times of India (TOI) on 12 February 1948 and referred to by the Kapur Commission.99

Conclusion The nation was defined, born with two simultaneous afflictions, first and foremost of colonial domination within a steel frame of all India administration, second a rather premature opportunity for competitive

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electoral politics midst circumstances of social regression into religious revivalism. Both Gandhi from South Africa and Savarkar from the prison in Andamans, returned to India around the same time but with diametrically different ideas and appeal. In the decades before Independence, both visions struggled for ascendency. With Gandhi’s assassination one vision was physically liquidated. Were there many hundreds of thousands of torchbearers of his vision in his party who went on to inspire many more? What happened to the even more radical political forces? In 2020 and looking back, one knows whatever forces lay behind his assassination, were never rooted out. They grew, spread, overtook, and triumphed by the end of the century. Why? An attempt has been made to pursue some of the answers in events and conjunction of forces that helped them, at least those that can be identified more definitely. This will be taken up in the next chapter.

NOTES 1. E.J. Hobsbawm (1990), Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2. Bauer Otto (1996), ‘“The Nation” in Mapping the Nation’, in G. Balakrishnan (ed.), Verso in Association with New Left Review, London: Verso. 3. M.K. Gandhi (1997), Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. A.J. Parel, Cambridge University Press, published in South Asia by Foundation Books, New Delhi, pp. 48-9. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. E.M.S. Namboodiripad (2010), The Mahatama and the Ism, New Delhi: Left Word Books. 7. S.H. Rudolph and L.I. Rudolph (1987), Gandhi: The Traditional Roots of Charisma, Hyderabad: Orient Longman. 8. E.M.S. Namboodiripad (2010), The Mahatama and the Ism, op. cit. 9. J. Nehru (2010), The Discovery of India, Gurgaon: Penguin Books. 10. Rabindranath Tagore (1992), Nationalism, Kolkata: Rupa & Co. 11. Ibid. 12. S. Bhattacharya (1997), The Mahatma and the Poet, New Delhi: National Book Trust.

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13. Bhagwan Das (2010), Thus Spoke Ambedkar, vol. 1: A Stake in the Nation, New Delhi: Navayana. 14. B.R. Ambedkar (2016), Riddles in Hinduism, New Delhi: Navayana. 15. B.R. Ambedkar (1936), Annihilation of Caste, New Delhi: Navayana. 16. M. Bhagavan (2008), ‘Princely States and the Hindu Imaginary’, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 881-915. 17. Sumit Sarkar (1983), Modern India 1885-1947, New Delhi: MacMillan India Limited. 18. D. Kooiman (1995),‘Communalism and Indian Princely States’, Economic and Political Weekly, 26 August 1995, pp. 2123-33. 19. J. Gallagher (1973),‘Congress in Decline: Bengal, 1930 to 1939’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 7, issue 3, May 1973, pp. 589-645, https://www. cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/congress-in-decline-bengal-1930-to-1939/3ED0336C84046763FE4F55CBFDA4AA74. Accessed on 4 April 2022. 20. S. Sarkar (2014), Modern India, Noida: Pearson. 21. M. Hasan (1991), Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, New Delhi: Manohar. 22. Ibid. 23. J. Nehru (2010), The Discovery of India, Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India Pvt. Ltd. 24. C. Jaffrelot (2007), Hindu Nationalism, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 25. Ibid. 26. R. Thapar (1991), ‘Communalism and the Historical Legacy: Some Facets’, in K.N. Panikkar (ed.), Communalism in India, New Delhi: Manohar. 27. K. Marx and Engels (2008), On Religion, New York: Dover Publications Inc. 28. R.S. Sharma (1980), Sudras in Ancient India, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 29. W. Doniger (2015), The Hindus, New Delhi: Speaking Tiger. 30. Karen Pechilis Prentiss (2014), The Embodiment of Bhakti, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 10-16. 31. Sheldon Pollock (2009), The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California, pp. 423-31. 32. M. Hasan (1991), Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, New Delhi: Manohar.

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33. A. Dillon (2019),‘Free Pass For Mobs’, 19 February 2019, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/19/a-free-pass-formobs-to-kill-india-urged-to-stem-cow-vigilante-violence https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/18/india-vigilante-cowprotection-groups-attack-minorities#. Accessed on 4 April 2022. 34. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, ‘Speech on Khilafat’, 26 January 1921, vol. 19, p. 283, Wardha: Gandhi Sevagram Ashram. 35. M. Hasan (1991), Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, op. cit. 36. K. Marx and Engels (2008), On Religion, New York: Dover Publications. 37. B. Chatterjee (1994), Bankimchandra Chatterjee: Essays in Perspective, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. 38. Complete Writings of Shree Aurobindo (CWSA, vol. 8, p. 62) https:// incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-synthesis-of-the-systems#p. Accessed on 4 April 2022. 39. G. Pandey (1990), The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Sumit Sarkar (1983), Modern India 1885-1947, New Delhi: MacMillan India. 43. M.M. Malaviya (1918), A Criticism of Montagu-Chelmsford Proposals of Indian Constitutional Reform, Allahabad: Leaders Press. 44. J. Nehru (2010),The Discovery of India, Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India. 45. Ibid. 46. R. Gordon (1975), ‘The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915-1926’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 1452013. 47. Ibid., pp. 145-2013. 48. L. McKean (1996), Divine Enterprise, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 49. Ibid. 50. A.G. Noorani (2019), The RSS: A Menace to India, New Delhi: Left Word Books. 51. J. Nehru (2010),The Discovery of India, op. cit. 52. P. Kanungo (2002), RSS’s Tryst with Politics, New Delhi: Manohar. 53. Ibid. 54. M. Bhagavan (2008), ‘Princely States and the Hindu Imaginary: Exploring the Cartography of Hindu Nationalism in Colonial India’, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 67, no. 3 (August 2008), pp. 881-915.

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55. P. Kanungo (2002), RSS’s Tryst with Politics, New Delhi: Manohar. 56. Government of India (1932), Home Department, Political File no. 18/10, 1932, National Archives of India, New Delhi. 57. P. Kulkarni (2019), ‘History Shows Just How Patriotic RSS Really is’, The Wire, 7 October 2019, https://thewire.in/wp-content/ uploads/2015/11/Rss-2.jpg. Accessed on 4 April 2022. 58. Speeches and Writings of Jawaharlal Nehru 2, vol. 4, pp. 42-3. 59. W.K. Anderson, S.D. Damle (1987), The Brotherhood in Saffron, New Delhi: Vistaar Publications. 60. C. Jaffrelot (2007), Hindu Nationalism, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 61. A.G. Noorani (2002), Savarkar and Hindutva, New Delhi: Left Word. 62. Savarkar (1949), Presidential address, All India Hindu Mahasabha session, Ahmedabad, 1937, in V.D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, Bombay. 63. A.G. Noorani (2002), The RSS, A Menace to India, New Delhi: Left Word Books. 64. G. Pandey (1993),‘Which of us are Hindus?’, in G. Pandey (ed.), Hindus and Others: The Question of Identity in India Today, New Delhi: Viking. 65. C. Jaffrelot (2007), Hindu Nationalism, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Kanungo, W.K. Anderson and S.D. Damle (1987), The Brotherhood in Saffron, op. cit. 70. M. Bhagvan, ‘Princely States and the Hindu Imaginary’, The Journal of Asian Studies, op. cit. 71. Ibid. 72. S. Sarkar (2010), Modern India 1885-1947, New Delhi: MacMillan India. 73. A.G. Noorani (2019), The RSS: A Menace to India, op. cit.. 74. M. Thomson (2013), Hyderabad 1948: India’s Hidden Massacre, 24 September 2013, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24159594 75. M. Bhagvan (2008), ‘Princely States and the Hindu Imaginary’, The Journal of Asian Studies, op. cit. 76. S. Sarkar (2010), Modern India 1885-1947, op. cit. 77. Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. 4, pp. 737-62. https://www.constitutionofindia.net/constitution_assembly_debates. 78. G.D. Overstreet and M. Windmiller (1959), Communism in India, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 357.

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79. P. Bidwai (2015), The Phoenix Moment, Noida: Harper Collins. 80. Constituent Assembly Debate, vol. 11, pp. 972-81, proceedings of the Constituent Assembly of India in 11 volumes. https://www.constitutionofindia.net/constitution_assembly_debates 81. S. Sarkar (2010), Modern India 1885-1947, op. cit. 82. C.F. Andrews (2017), India and the Simon Report, Routledge Revival Oxon and NY. 83. S. Sarkar (2010), Modern India 1885-1947, op. cit. 84. Roy Jackson (2010), Mawlana Mawdudi and Political Islam: Authority and the Islamic State, London: Routledge. 85. Purshottamdas Thakurdas, ed. (1945), A Brief Memorandum Outlining a Plan of Economic Development for India (2 vols), London: Penguin. 86. V. Chibber (2003), Locked in Place: State Building and Late Industrialization in India, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 87. S. Sarkar (2010), Modern India 1885-1947, op. cit. 88. Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, vol. II, p. 750. 89. Speeches and Writings of Jawaharlal Nehru, Coimbatore, public speech 1948, second series, vol. 6, p. 25. 90. P. Kanungo (2002), RRS’s Tryst with Politics, op. cit. 91. Government of India (1985), J.L. Nehru; Letters to Chief Ministers, 5 February 1948 vol. 1, p. 57, distributed by Oxford University Press, New Delhi. 92. M. Mukherjee (2011), Communal Threat and Secular Resistance, Presidential Address 11-13 February 2011. 93. Ibid. 94. A.G. Noorani (2002), Savarkar and Hindutva, New Delhi: Left Word. 95. Ibid. 96. Government of India (1970), Report of Commission of Inquiry into Conspiracy to Murder Mahatama Gandhi, New Delhi. 97. A.G. Noorani (2002), Savarkar and Hindutva, op. cit. 98. A. Rajagopal (1994),‘Interview with Gopal Godse’, Frontline, 28 January 1994. 99. Ministry of Home Affairs (1970), Report of Commission of Inquiry in to Conspiracy to Murder Mahatma Gandhi 1965-9, Also known as the J.L. Kapur Commission Report, http://www.sacw.net/article2611.html.

CHAPTER 2

Left Turn at the Top 1969-76

In India we have too long sought individual salvation. Perhaps that is why as a country we came to grief. We now realize that there cannot be salvation for the individual without social salvation. –Indira Gandhi Whenever the ruling classes see that the working class is using this Bourgeois democratic system to further its class interest in order to weaken and defeat the ruling class, they throw away their democratic masks and show their true faces. We harbor no illusions that we can in this way carry out a basic social revolution. –E.M.S. Namboodiripad

Introduction The decade, 1915-25, was critical for establishing the far right in Indian politics. Chapter 1 discussed how the opening year brought the inception of the Hindu Mahasabha with a north Indian presence. The Mahasabha was clearly looking at the past for inspiration and espoused an ultra-conservative, socio-economic agenda. In the closing year, RSS was set up in central-western India with pan-Indian ambitions of a similar inspiration. They were fellow travellers sharing resources during the period colonial rulers were attempting some devolution of power, primarily to counter the surge of nationalism. Participation in provincial elections created both context and new opportunities for a coming together of far right interests. Some strategic decisions of the Congress like linking Khilafat (a rather reactionary pan-Islamic movement against dissolution of the Ottoman Empire) to the non-cooperation movement in 1920 gave the Hindu right a fastener to latch their anti-Islamic rhetoric on to, just

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as it would 80 years later in the post 9 November 2001 scenario. When once again a political foray by expansionist, imperialist powers into West Asia acquired the language of religious war, warfare spanned decades, attacks on one country after country, it was called a ‘clash of civilization’. The far right in India was quick to use this opportunity to circulate Islamophobia as it had 80 years ago. More about that later. Chronologically, in India, the next major development, came in the decade 1967-7, developments which proffered a momentous opportunity for enlarging the political ambitions of the far right. As a reminder, in the ‘Preface; Note to the Reader’, organized political far right is defined and distinguished from the right. It represents collectives who have faith and interests in continuity of, religious tradition, prevalent social hierarchy, cultural privileges of various sorts, permanence of existing or possibly more, unequal property distribution. Surplus extraction follows from such privileges. The far right will, therefore, intensify inequality and preserve it with militia and force if needed. Indian political consciousness was in arrested development to begin with, given the historical absence of people’s participation in governance and peoples movements, except at the micro level in some regions. Authoritarian hierarchies of kings, their bureaucrats, generals, upper-castes and propertied classes had always dominated those below them unconditionally and justice to common man was bound to their goodwill if any. Laws that governed property and civil affairs were tied up with custom and tradition or religion entirely, till colonial times. Leadership in all mainstream political parties, including the Congress, eventually came from a dominant class with a shared history. Right leaning predispositions were inevitable and pervasive. In Congress however the right was differently nuanced, given the quality of its top western educated leadership. There were among them, a few exposed to ideas and functioning modes of powerful, modern, western nations like Britain and America. To add, they established an engagement with and concern for the economic effects of colonial rule in their country’s economy. As the agenda of unity (essential for Independence) was articulated it came to include welfare of the masses who gradually participated in the national movement in huge numbers. After Independence, the Congress strove to place its agenda and action within the framework of liberal, secular democracy. Under Nehru, Shastri

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and Indira Gandhi’s leadership, this framework got interwoven with contemporary ideas of socialism, self-reliance, industrialization, non-alignment, secularism but this was by no means the majority position within the Congress as Chapter 1 has shown. As long as Nehru lived, opposition was marginal though not absent by any means. His tenure was preoccupied with building new institutions, defining political boundaries between states, and building national unity for the future. The far right was less focused on the details of the future than on the past. The Hindu formations of the far right (both Hindu Mahasabha and RSS) spoke a lot about historical wrongs inflicted by Muslim rulers for a thousand years. The loss of privilege, tradition and hierarchy of the traditional elite was projected as the loss of the Hindu masses. The last chapter described how RSS was founded in 1925 in Nagpur, cultivating a legend around the regional kingdom of Shivaji; then as their ambitions and capabilities grew, they embraced Ram a mythological God king who had a subcontinental footprint (Shivaji was a regional hero of the western-central parts). The far right was electorally less successful in the early years but systematically infiltrated other spaces – cultural, social, bureaucracy and political organizations including the Congress. The modern tools, printing press, telegraph, railways, telephones, and later TV, etc., were of great use to them as they were to all the other political players at that point. Shared class interests of many of the elite helped to create networks for the RSS across India just as new technology helped build stronger organizations to augment their efforts. When organizational rules prevented members of the Congress from dual membership of other organizations like the Muslim League or RSS, the rule was followed in letter. Obviously, it could not prescribe its members from religious obligations, nor from love of inherited property, traditional privileges, and power or from wanting to enhance these. It could not prevent them from being sympathetic to the agenda of the RSS or to support it circuitously. Repeatedly and conveniently the excuse would be that the activities of Muslims inspired by the Muslim League need to be countered and this went on till the Partition of the subcontinent and found new excuses for old animosities after Partition. It worked effectively among other things in establishing a

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Hindu majoritarian consciousness, hardening communal positions (Hindu against Muslim) within and outside the Congress, the road leading to the Partition was paved with their efforts as much as it was by the Muslim League if not more, since they represented the majority and had the obligation of taking minorities along. By 1947, they had become a potent player in India, as saviours of Hindus in the blood bath of the Partition. In the socio-cultural field it worked through temples, schools and social work of relief and rehabilitation in the post-Partition chaos. They continued such useful socio-cultural activities like fish in water long after Independence. For the political project they formed a front called Jana Sangh. The Jana Sangh remained insignificant in the electoral system in the 1950s only because of the stigma attached to the RSS after Gandhi’s assassination. But public memory is famously short. During 1967-77, it became clear that the ambitions of the far right had lifted. Change of leadership at the top of RSS was one reason. A clear, long run plan to participate in the democratic process, to acquire political clout in the government to forge a Hindu state had become operational. Functioning out of several educational, cultural and religious fronts they had been around now for over forty years. They had become creators and curators of ‘modern’ India’s memory of its ancient civilization and the wrongs it had suffered, simultaneously becoming a strident souvenir of the fragmentary, unfinished job of modernizing India. In the last chapter it was seen how the project of social reform was resisted throughout the national movement, by interested groups within the Congress as well. After Independence it appeared as though even Nehru’s position on secularism and socialism was a minority one. As the first Prime Minister, Nehru’s grip on the Parliament was more a result of his stature, reputation, liberal style of discussion, direct rapport with the people and relationship with Gandhi rather than his ability to persuade many other Congress leaders to share and commit to modern, progressive, socialist vision for India. His stature insured his dominance but could not produce a wider persuasion. Indeed, the decade, which followed Nehru’s passing away, is in many ways, a testimony to his unseen loneliness. After him, from without and within the Congress, people joined

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forces against what was broadly to be referred to as the Nehruvian idea of India. The services provided by the far right in joining those forces were considerable. As fault lines appeared within the Congress, it became an opportune time for the well poised RSS to grasp at the possibilities.

Nehru to Indira Gandhi: And Why a Sharper Left Turn Became Necessary for Her Soon after Nehru’s passing away, some weakness of the state led, heavy industry model of industrial development appeared. Food, employment and wage goods scarcity were manifest, something, early critics of the heavy industry model had cautioned against. In a largely poor country food inflation is deeply unpopular. His opponents got their first foothold in pervasive food shortages. What follows here is a rendering of events and developments till Indira Gandhi became the PM; they are drawn mainly from Mrs Gandhi’s recollection in 1980.1 This has been chosen because most other accounts, from the left and liberal right, of this period largely ignore what she had to say about her own position and circumstances. She was widely discredited for the Emergency rule she proclaimed, and forty-five years later, it is still fashionable to disparage her. Hardly any need has been felt to reexamine what happened and why she might have done what she did in the larger context of electoral politics. This was her view on the nature of the Congress Party and her compulsions. ‘This big conflict has always existed since the Congress is a party of many opinions. Its members vote for various resolutions because they are popular. But many MPs don’t have faith in them. The so-called bosses of the party were the ones more to the right; they took most of their ideas from the west. That is why the Nagpur resolution could not be implemented, or any other land reform. We kept on passing resolutions, but it seemed impossible to implement them’ (p. 80). In Mrs Gandhi’s telling of the past, the Nagpur session Congress in 1959 was an important pivot. It had adopted the resolution on cooperative farming which prescribed joint cooperative farming as the future model for Indian agriculture. She remembered the difficulty in

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passing that resolution. Somehow the impression was created and spread that implementation meant land would be taken away from the peasants. Disinformation was launched to the effect that it was not cooperative farming but soviet style collective farming. This created such an adverse reaction in the Parliament and outside, that it became impossible to proceed with it. That mere cooperative farming was intolerable as an agenda is a further indication of the class composition and sway of landed classes in the parliamentary system. She recalled, she was elected President of the INC session in the same year, and in her Independence Day message on 15 August 1959 she said; in mountaineering, the higher one climbs the more hazardous the journey, the narrower and steeper the trail.‘Unfortunately, then the Congress Party seemed to refuse to climb the slope with me. People generally like to take the easier road. . . . And after all, it is faith – whatever the kind – which drives a person on. Either a religious creed or faith in an ideology. It can be to the right or to the left. But most people prefer the middle of the road. They lack that kind of drive. . . . So, it is difficult to get people moving’ (p. 79).2 The period after the Indo-Chinese war was marked in her memory by the way senior Congress leaders, even those Nehru thought were close to him like Shastri and Krishnamachari, hounded the left leaning V.K. Krishna Menon, out of the cabinet. She said that the effect it had on Nehru’s health and control over the party, was serious. Menon was a nationalist and an architect of the non-aligned movement, who was considered close to Nehru.3 It was a big blow to Nehru and at that point the Congress moved to the right perceptibly, just about none of the programmes were implemented. ‘Of course, the Syndicate had always existed, but it had never been so visible or so compact. It really emerged at that time’ (p. 86).4 It is perhaps worth noting that in the 1962 general elections Jayaprakash Narayan ( JP) campaigned for his friend Kriplani, against V.K. Krishna Menon in an exceedingly publicized election where Nehru campaigned vigorously for his candidature saying that a defeat for Menon would signal a defeat for his own policies, while JP said that the future of democracy and our spiritual values were at stake. There’s reason to pay attention to her recollections. More than one historian who has dealt with the Indo-China war has drawn attention

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to maneuvers of right political parties.5 Leading up to the war, the opposition (excluding the left) were vexed about Chinese intentions about the border. Border clashes in August 1959 had led to Jan Sangh, Members of Parliament (led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee) insist that government place before the Parliament its correspondence with China. The appearance of these correspondences (White Paper) coincided with a spat between the Defence Minister V.K. Krishna Menon and his Chief of Army Gen K.S. Thimayya. The differences between the two seem to have stemmed from the General’s concerns about preparedness for possible imminent engagement with China in terms of deployment along the north-east, weaponry and promotion of a General considered close to Nehru superseding many others. Menon apparently had no wish to buy weapons from North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) powers. Eventually the General offered to resign. The media fallout of the resignation amid tensions between India and China are revealing. While some to the Left thought that the General had unwittingly become a tool of the American lobby others thought Krishna Menon should go, particularly media that was known to be pro American.6 The White Paper itself generated heat inside and outside the Parliament about China’s cartographic war on India, about Krishna Menon’s loyalty to India in the face of a communist opponent. Heat waves of patriotism and antagonism spilled over into attacks on communist parties in India, a point that E.M.S. Namboodiripad also mentioned and which will be discussed in the next chapter. Socialists, senior Congress leaders including the then Home Minister G.B. Pant and the media were all focused against Krishna Menon and ignored the nuances of China’s claims and reasons for not recognizing boundaries drawn by the erstwhile colonial rulers. China in the post 1949 period was redefining everything about itself including its pre-colonial boundaries. They annexed Tibet in the same context. This internal obfuscation, diversion into personal attacks and anti-communist suspicions perhaps weakened India’s perception of the Chinese position in the post-revolution phase. One wonders if a more intelligent dialogue could have been conducted in a calmer atmosphere. On the one hand a series of White Papers in the Parliament had opened the affair to public eye and interested parties had raised the pitch of anti-China rhetoric in an emotionally roused Parliament and press. Calls to guard

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the nation’s honour and reject a deal with China came loudest from the Jan Sangh. In 1960, in fact just a few months before Chou En-Lai was to visit Delhi for discussions and a possible settlement. According to historians of modern India, leaders of the non-communist opposition sent a note to Nehru reminding him of the popular feelings and urging him not to surrender any territory. The signatories included A.B. Vajpayee, J.B. Kriplani, M.R. Masani and N.G. Goray, names that will reappear in the anti-Indira movement of the 1970s. The Jan Sangh organized a protest outside Nehru’s residence and then days before the visit, a mammoth public meeting warning him that if he struck a deal with China, his only allies would be communists. To prevent the war of 1962 was necessary but by then Nehru was left alone against the rising tide of resentment against China. After India’s defeat in the war there was a further weakening of his position. In 1964, the Congress met at Bhubaneswar and an important resolution was passed on democracy and socialism very much on the lines of some of the previous Congress resolutions. There were two important concepts which could yield many possible interpretations and applications. Indira Gandhi said, ‘Democracy’ was one and it was important to accommodate India’s size, so that diversity and people’s voice was heard, so that they could participate in the choice of developmental goals, and, ‘socialism’ was ‘imperative in a country with so much poverty’. These were to be the guiding lights, not just for the human reason of not allowing people to suffer but for democracy itself to work, socialism is necessary. Democracy implies equality and, therefore, it implies socialism. Socialism in India existed in a mixed economy with importance to the public sector. Such resolutions were often passed within the Congress, but it apparently did not translate into a general in-principle appreciation let alone acceptance as creed.7 What did this ideological incoherence amount to? How did it impact the lowest ends of society? It would be difficult to find a more lifelike account or interviews with the poorest across Indian comparable to the ones in the reports filed by two Swedish journalists who visited India in 1966 and returned in 1968-9 to commence sociological research. The images of mass deprivation, hunger and stagnation are unambiguous.8

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When an American journalist had asked her who would succeed Nehru sometime before his passing away, she predicted Shastri would, but was informed by an American journalist (Welles Hangen) that S.K. Patil was the favourite. Patil was known to be a right winger. In the period immediately after Nehru, there were actually two contenders for the Prime Minister’s position, Morarji Desai and Lal Bhadur Shastri. They were different temperamentally, but both perhaps lacked the charisma and perhaps even conviction required to keep up the momentum of secularism or socialism, even the ‘socialism from above, variety’ that was espoused by the Congress. The former was often described as arrogant, intolerant and an out-and-out right winger while the latter was mild, religious and malleable. Shastri did get chosen by the party eventually but struggled to establish his presence and authority. At some point then, early in her stint as a Minister in Shastri’s government, Indira Gandhi noticed the threats to both non-alignment and socialism. Anyways his tenure was too brief to offer a meaningful analysis. Shastri’s time in power was marked by unstable economic circumstances. Droughts that followed in quick succession 1965-6 caused food shortages and hoarding, black marketing characteristic of scarcity in the open market. The balance of payment situation was not strong enough to enable imports to cover food deficits and tide over the crisis. This was compounded by war with Pakistan over which US (main food donor) suspended aid. India’s food economy had come to be dependent on that aid. This was the period during which economic circumstance was so stressed that planning was suspended. Meanwhile in 1963, US and Bretton Woods institutions had already concluded that India’s economic growth was held back by the wrong policies of the government.‘The Indian economy was said to be in a quiet crisis’.9 Later the drought set off new and instant crisis (a ship to mouth was the popular description). Food prices rose, always a sensitive issue in a poor country. In September 1964, the World Bank sent a mission to India. It presented its report to the President and recommended devaluation of the rupee, reduction in import duties and higher priority to agriculture, in essence, a reversal and correction of NehruMahalanobis model. The expectation was that growth would be stimulated by devaluation and future aid was linked to these policy

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recommendations. The Prime Minister (Shastri) accepted the recommendations in principle; the Finance Minister, who was opposed to the idea resigned. Indira Gandhi reminiscenced,‘It was also said that some countries were putting pressure on him (Shastri). I think that was not fair. The bureaucracy has never been much in favour of non-alignment. They were, and many of them still are, biased in favour of western block. Shastri was surrounded by such people. . . . At some point I remember warning against the danger of the Congress party sliding away from the socialist path. I could see that policies were not being implemented and, of course, the more conservative groups had come very much to the fore after my father’s death’ (p. 92). Historians say that the Congress party was being handled by a group of old Congressmen who came to be known as the Syndicate. The group formed in 1963 consisted of K. Kamaraj, the Congress President and regional chiefs Atulya Ghosh of Bengal, S.K. Patil of Bombay, N. Sanjeeva Reddy of Andhra Pradesh and S. Nijalingappa. It was ridden with factionalism, and regionalism. They had managed to create a consensus around the acceptability of Shastri for the post of PM after Nehru, partially in the hope that he was acceptable to the majority and partly because they thought he would not defy their leadership in the party.10 Shastri did not make any major changes in the cabinet except inviting Indira Gandhi (daughter of Nehru) to head Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. He was not a swift decision maker and some problems that were emerging were allowed to drift specially the slowing economy and food shortages, problems of distribution from food surplus to food shortage states. The government did create the State Food Trading Corporation in January 1965 and initiated the Green Revolution but leadership and control were slow to come and it was only by the end of 1965 during and after the IndoPakistan war that Shastri came into his own. India acted decisively to deal with an act of invasion by infiltration and aggression, foiled it. Although USA and Britain cut off arms, food and other supplies to both countries and China declared India to be the aggressor; USSR remained sympathetic to India and discouraged China from going to Pakistan’s aid. Three weeks of war did grievous damage to both India

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and Pakistan, diverted resources to military expenditure and defence budgets began to rise. Indian government was among the first to criticise the US bombing of North Vietnam asserting her non-aligned position. Shastri, gradually set up his own secretariat with his own advisor, independent of the ministries. The secretariat came to be known as Prime Minister’s Office (PMO); it started acquiring a great deal of influence and power in the making and execution of government policy, a trend that has continued. But he died suddenly during the Tashkent Indo-Pak agreement sponsored by USSR in 1966. In the meanwhile, the Congress party, at the state level particularly, had dimmed the halo acquired during 75 years of leadership of the freedom movement. Fiercely competitive and expensive electoral politics had to push it into internal competition and down the road of venality. Such was the degree of divergence in the ideology of senior Congressmen that Indira Gandhi wrote,‘. . . although we had a majority in 1967, Mr Patil and some others were in favour of a coalition government. When asked how this was possible, they answered: ‘with Swatantra Party and Jan Sangh’, though both these parties were diametrically opposed to our secularism, our socialism and our foreign policy’ (p. 96). She was particularly worried about Morarji Desai becoming the next PM since he was so totally opposed to what the Congress stood for. In her opinion, the country would change direction radically and immediately if he were to assume leadership. She herself could not hold off some of those changes after 1977 and lived just long enough to appreciate the potency of a well-coordinated far right-wing assault, an assault that was anticipated and feared by more objective witnesses.11

Indira Gandhi Voted PM On 19 January 1966, nine days after death of Shastri, in a secret ballot, 67 per cent of the Congress MPs voted for Indira Gandhi (355 for and 169 for Morarji Desai), she was selected leader of the Congress parliamentary group and went on to became the PM. About the succession

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that was settled in favour of Indira Gandhi, Chandra says, ‘The syndicate looked around for a candidate who could defeat Desai but remain under their shadow . . . Indira Gandhi was Nehru’s daughter, had an all India appeal and a progressive image, and was not identified with any state, region, caste or religion. They also thought that India Gandhi, being inexperienced and a young woman and lacking substantial roots in the party, would be more pliable and malleable’ (p. 280).12 12 out of 14 state chief ministers supported her having estimated that her name and connection with Nehru would help win the imminent elections. Desai had insisted on a contest he felt he would win against a person he described as a ‘mere chokri’ (mere girl). Indira Gandhi described her career as an imprisonment of sorts. The journey was indeed covered in thorns. In the circumstances that India found itself economically, leadership would have been a daunting task as it was. But to be in a society where being a woman, a leader among many older, envious, disdainful, and oftentimes downright malicious men must have added to her difficulties. And difficulties rained on her. India in 1966 was facing economic problems on an unprecedented scale; severe drought resulting in acute food shortages verging on famine conditions in UP and Bihar. Politically, India was still a young nation, many unresolved problems became her lot like the official language controversy, demand for Punjabi Suba (separate linguistic state), militant Nagas seeking independence, aftermath of 1962 Chinese aggression and diplomatic isolation triggered by India’s non-alignment which the western countries frowned upon. She was truly imprisoned and sentenced to addressing these almost simultaneously. She paid immediate attention to Punjab, the state was formed and militant Nagas and Mizos were granted greater autonomy. But about the economy she was unsure, it was in recession, both industrial production and exports were in decline on top of severe food shortage. Even though she was inexperienced, and hesitated in taking decisions, implementing them, her government succeeded in dealing with distribution of food grains and preventing famine deaths, on a war footing. But unemployment was another kettle of fish. A procession of unruly agitations, bandhs organized by different sections of society followed and counter actions in police lathi charges,

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and firing sweeping north India greeted her even as she was being sworn in as PM. Sensing it as the flash point on the route to power opposition parties to the left and the right of the spectrum were actively organizing these protests. Such was their compulsion, some of them even hoped that administrative break down would create conditions for them to come to power through non parliamentary means if not via elections. Witnesses in the administration like Dhar and historians like Chandra both, say the opposition forces often did not observe even basic constitutional proprieties. In 1966, the Jan Sangh organized a fierce country wide agitation for ban on cow slaughter. The government had stood firm against it both because of its communal nature and also because it was against the interests and eating habits of low-caste Hindus and Muslims. In a macabre drama, recounted by Bipin Chandra, on 7 November 1966, a mob of hundreds of thousands, led by naked sadhus, carrying swords, spears and trishuls tried to invade the Parliament House, burnt buses, cars, looted shops, and attacked government buildings on the way, tried to destabilize the constitutional government. They surrounded Kamraj’s house with the intention to assault him. Clashes with the police led to deaths. Mrs Gandhi blamed the Home Minister, Gulzarilal Nanda, for inept handling. He, the Home Minister, was apparently a believer in the holiness of sadhus and sympathetic to the cause – earlier he had been the President of the same Sadhu Sangh. Such was the confusion and mixture of ideologies within the Congress that the same gentleman had been the leader of the Congress Forum for Socialist Action (CFSA) to spread socialist outlook, formed four years earlier in 1962, under Nehru. Such was the quality of the people in the Parliament, of political leadership, socialists and right wingers alike. And it spoke volumes then as it does today. There they were, in flesh and blood, real representatives of Indian democracy, revealed in the sunlight after the great oak had fallen. The raw material from which a liberal democracy was to be shaped being what it was, a woman less courageous would have bolted. Instead Indira Gandhi told the Parliament,‘This is not an attack on the Government. It is an attack on our way of life, our values and the traditions we cherish’ (p. 284).13 The Home Minister was asked to resign. The level of discourse and conduct inside the Parliament also suffered. Members of the opposition emboldened by the turmoil in

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the country, taking advantage of the young woman PM, showed disregard for parliamentary decorum. In other words, perhaps they became who they truly were and did not have to pretend or act under pressure of Nehru’s presence. She was often subjected to heckling and harassment, vicious, vulgar personal attacks, sexist remarks and unfounded allegations. Rammanohar Lohia (stalwart of the Indian socialists) often took the lead, never missing a chance to ridicule her. She mentioned all this in her own account. Without naming them she said that some people would deliberately almost insult her, incessantly needle her about small points, making the meeting of the executive of the parliamentary party quite unpleasant and pushing the party towards a crisis.14 One can only imagine the atmosphere in which she had to function. It is all too common a scenario faced by women in India today. In a leadership position where her main claim to the position was her ancestry, it would perhaps be worse. So, despite having won the position handsomely within the party, opponents within the Congress were constantly trying to outmaneuvre her. She had to withstand this within the party while dealing with the opposition outside the Congress, a situation likely to make any young leader suspicious and fretful. In March 1966, Mrs Gandhi visited USA, India needed wheat, financial aid and capital investment and she tried to build bridges with the US. President Johnson promised to send food and aid in dollars but later controlled its release to pressurize and humiliate. Pressure was exerted to force India to change farm policy and position on Vietnam. Feeling humiliated and coerced she resolved to find a way out of dependence on America and eventually turned away from America to align herself with USSR and within the non-aligned movement against neo colonialism. In the way she understood it, she was trying to preserve India’s political autonomy and make independent decisions. Moreover, USA, World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) insisted on the devaluation of the rupee for continuing various types of assistance to India. Indira Gandhi devalued the rupee by 35.5 per cent. She had accepted devaluation on the advice of her Secretary L.K. Jha and Ashok Mehta the Deputy Chairperson of the Planning Commission. However, the gains from devaluation did not materialize,

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in fact, the results were worse than anticipated. For this she came under strident criticism from the left and her own party. Soon, all parties opposed the devaluation when it failed to stimulate exports or invite foreign investments or flow of foreign aid. She soon realized the heavy price of inexperience in matters of economic policy (14 years later Indira Gandhi went on to admit that it was a mistake and had harmed India greatly). She also learned that she needed advisers she could trust. Congress went to general elections of 1967, as a divided, faction ridden party, its reputation blemished by political wheeler-dealers and corrupt bosses. It did badly in the northern states and its majority was reduced in the Lok Sabha, It won only 283 of 520 seats. Table 2.1 below gives it fortunes since the first elections in 1952. Table 2.1: Seats Year

Seats Won

Change

Vote Share

Change

1952

364

base year

44.99

base

1957

371

7

47.78

2.79

1962

361

-10

44.72

-3.06

1967

283

-78

40.7

-4.02

Source: Compiled by the author.

It ruled with a leaner majority. Senior Congressmen, among others, the veteran K. Kamaraj were defeated, leading to much dejection. In subsequent state elections Congress was a minority in eight states, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, and Punjab, opposition parties gained, the left in West Bengal. It was the majority party in Kerala, Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) in Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Bihar, BJS in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar, Swatantra Party in Orissa, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh, Akali Dal in Punjab. A new phenomenon of coalition governments and wild defections manifested, even from majority holding congress in states like Haryana. Unstable coalitions of all hues were formed in opposition ruled states. Tamil Nadu was an exception to this mode – stable coalition ruled there. In popular parlance the term coined was ‘aaya ram, gaya ram’ (mister come, mister go) with reference to Haryana. Table 2.2 shows how opposition was fragmented, resulting in recurrent

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Table 2.2 State Assembly Elections 1967, Congress a Minority State

Seats

INC

Bihar

318

128

190

86

Kerala

133

9

124

19

Orissa

140

31

109

23

Punjab

104

48

56

1

Rajasthan

184

89

95

8

Tamil Nadu

234

51

183

Uttar Pradesh

425

199

226

West Bengal

280

127

153

1,818

682

1,136

Total

Non Socialist Right Left Regional IndecentINC dent 29

28

14

33

71

19

15

49

8

26

3

9

8

29

9

70

0

1

16

6

20

13

138

6

55

110

14

10

37

14

2

59

47

31

212

289

201

284

150

Note: INC. Indian National Congress; Socialist– SSP+PSP; Right– BJD+ Swatantra; Left– CPI+CPM; Others– RPI mostly 1-2 seats, but in Punjab two Akali Dals (25+1); TN DMK + ADMK (136+1) There seems to be disenchantment with the Congress, but hardly any clear leaning towards an alternative. 150 Independents reinforce that impression. Source: Compiled by the author.

political instability. Tamil Nadu was stable because a clear alternative emerged there in the form of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). In West Bengal the Congress had ruled since 1947. This time the United Front – Left Front Alliance took over. It was a coalition of Bangla Congress (a breakaway group of the Congress) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) and an assortment of left groups and independents. Ajoy Mukherjee of Bangla Congress became the Chief Minister and Jyoti Basu of CPM Deputy Chief Minister. Factions within the CPM, including its chief organizer had strong reservations about becoming a junior partner in a bare majority.15 The party eventually split again over conflicts created by partial power in the state, those who exited CPM came to be identified with the Naxalite/Maoist movement and a bitter contest between Bangla Congress and CPM ensued. The state itself went through turmoil as a result. In less than three years from 1967-70, Bihar had seven governments, Uttar Pradesh four, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab three

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each and Kerala two. There were eight spells of President’s Rule in seven states. Defections for ministerial berths and benefits were rampant, nearly 800 assembly members changed party and 150 were rewarded with ministerial offices. Anti-Congress was sufficient reason to form coalitions, ideological or policy-based differences were secondary. The period that followed saw the coming together of the opposition with no common programme except the defeat of the Congress – from the the left (CPM) to the far right ( Jan Sangh). This tended to devalue democratic norms and encouraged a very cynical view of electoral and political processes with damaging consequences for governance and stability. Much pessimism about liberal, parliamentary system emerged just 20 years after Independence, it reflected among other things, low assimilation of democratic standards in India. It was as though a hothouse plant had been transplanted in ill-equipped soil. Then, when the Congress cabinet that was formed at the centre, it consisted of ideologically dissenting members from the left to the right of the political spectrum. Indira Gandhi, therefore, had her task cut out. Problems beginning with the control of the party and its revival, and coherence within the cabinet had to be accomplished under great pressure of economic downturn. Her own inexperience was compounded by the threat to her leadership from senior members of her own party who were typically older men, jealous of her and who viewed her ascent as a permanent threat to their own control. Governance, especially implementation of policies suffers if too much attention and energy needs to be diverted to guarding against in-house dissonance.

The Congress Splits The Congress split in 1969 was a result of the view that the hubris of the old Congress must give way to a new vision and strategy to address both the socio-economic crisis and disenchantment with the existing political process. Industrial unrest, unemployment, ‘gheraos’ of management, unrest in educational institutions, agitations among the lower-middle classes were becoming all too frequent. It was also imperative for the PM to establish protocol between the executive and the party hierarchy. The Syndicate had reasserted

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itself; it would not let the PM assert her position in party affairs. It also began to plot actively to dislodge her from for the office of the PM. Morarji Desai, who for so long had been an aspiring PM was egging them on. While Mrs Gandhi was cautious about splitting the party unity given its weak majority in the recent Lok Sabha elections, she could not run an effective government with active hostility from the old guard. Given the shifting sands around her and the fact that Congress itself was a heterogeneous ideological association representing sectional and regional interests, Congressmen began to coalesce into factions along left and right of centre lines. So far the Congress had presented a vague left of centre radicalism at least in assertions, intentions and some programmes. Now the left within asserted itself to capture the party on the back of growing popular disenchantment. To those, and there are many, who would say that Mrs Gandhi turned left out of opportunism the following comments made by her are meaningful since they are in fact borne out by real events that followed,‘Many choices would have been much easier for me to make so far as I personally was concerned. Even at the time of the split in the Congress, all I had to do was to go along with it. But I didn’t think it was the right thing for the country and, therefore, I stood out and this is what the people respect. At that time, I had no idea that the majority would be with us, and neither did I know how the people would react afterwards . . .’ (p. 113).16 As a leader, her anxiety about the effect of the split on the party could not have been trivial. Mrs Gandhi was not just determining her own position in the party, India’s domestic and foreign policy in a void, but midst two fiercely antagonistic superpowers. The 1970s marked the high point of the cold war. To understand what happened in India in the 1970s, the context of the cold war is essential. Serious ideological polarization in the Congress occurred around foreign affairs the first time leading to the Indo-China war in 1962, again during the ArabIsrael war of June 1967. Mrs Gandhi came out strongly against the aggressor Israel. Desai and some of his supporters, Sucheta Kriplani, Ashok Mehta and others took an active pro-west position. Again, the supply of arms to Pakistan and the Warsaw Pact, invasion of Czechoslovakia became points of deep division and contradiction. The

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latter was a major international event. Public reaction to the invasion was sharp and riven. Most of the Soviet Bloc supported the invasion along with several other communist parties worldwide. Western nations like Albania, Rumania and most importantly China condemned the attack. Many other communist parties either lost influence, denounced the USSR, split, or dissolved due to conflicting opinions. The invasion started a series of events. The passion it generated was in no small measure stirred by influential literary personalities sympathetic to liberal economic and political reforms within the Union of Czechoslovakian Writers. This revealed a crack in the communist bloc between China and USSR which created an opening for the US president Nixon to improve relations with China and he visited China in 1972. The USSR ultimately had a pact with America in the same year. The debate was out in the Indian media as well. The sharpest weapon used against Mrs Gandhi’s position in foreign affairs was that she was abiding by the USSR. She thought it was done to frighten her into abandoning friendship with the Soviet Union and non-alignment itself. Soon after the India-China war of 1962, USA had offered enormous military aid and conducted military exercises in India. But the political terms attached were such as to render India as a client state. Having struggled so long against colonial domination and for sovereignty Nehru was to decline their generous offer. However, their presence in India did increase in the shape of aid agencies and foundations of various sorts. Indira Gandhi was not likely to fall into either the Soviet or American bandwagon quickly. Memories of her family’s involvement in the anti-colonial movement was quite central to her political training. Then there were domestic differences too between her and Congress stalwarts, Desai made it clear in the Bangalore All India Congress Committee (AICC) meet that while he was Finance Minister there would be no bank nationalization. The party however voted overwhelmingly for nationalization. On 12 November she was asked to quit the Congress after news got around that rival sessions of the Congress Working Committee were in progress at her residence. Conceivably that would have been the breaking point.

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She had been looking for non-political allies, policy advisers and she eventually found one in P.N. Haksar who she knew from her London days. Haksar had been, until 1944, an active communist having arrived from London in 1942 with a message (sewn into the lining of his coat) for P.C. Joshi the CPI general secretary from R.P. Dutt. He had gone to Nagpur to spread the communist ideology among industrial workers. Haksar eventually became the secretary of the Nagpur unit of the CPI.17 He was also a family friend and had grown closer to her during university days in London. Haksar was appointed as her secretary (1967-73) and was to play a crucial role in in what Jairam Ramesh describes as ‘five-and-a-half years which witnessed great political turbulence, but which also saw Indira Gandhi emerge as a world leader in magnificent style. Haksar was her ideological anchor and moral compass in this momentous period’ (p. 91).18 This was quite an unprecedented phenomenon, to have a Marxist chosen as a principal secretary to the PM and one who had not recanted his ideology. Nor did he have to make loud declarations swearing allegiance to India! Mrs Gandhi handpicked him, a man of the left and a man of unshakable integrity by all accounts.19 Haksar urged her to forge a wide progressive alliance and project her image more assertively to the people over the heads of her colleagues in the Congress party.20 Some biographers said that he urged her to convert the battle for personal power into an ideological one and some seem to imply that it was his ideology that Mrs Gandhi began to project and not her own. P.N. Haksar took over in May 1967 soon after the poor showing of the Congress in the general elections. He helped beef up the Prime Minister’s Secretariat (PMS) with capable and loyal advisers. Also she steadily widened her control over the administration for policy coordination. On 23 May the same year, the agrarian unrest reached a boiling point in the north of West Bengal in a place called Naxalbari. It took the form of an armed uprising against the state by landless labourers, small landholders, tenants, sharecroppers. These were hailed by the Chinese newspaper People’s Daily on 5 June 1967. On the Indian side too, Chairman Mao was hailed by the leaders of the Naxalbari movement. Over the next few years the agrarian protests spread across Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Assam Punjab, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh.

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The Home Ministry was asked to study the nature of the agitations. It was traced to pervasive existence of discontent or deprivation in the agricultural sector. According to Ramesh, the report that came out was the work of Home Secretary L.P. Singh and Haksar, it was to be the basis of policy discussions that followed.21 In June 1967, AICC and Congress working committee adopted a radical Ten Point Programme which comprised social control of banks, nationalization of general insurance, state trading in import and export, state trading in food grain, public distribution of food grain, ceiling on urban property and income, curb on business monopolies and concentration of economic power, rapid implementation of land reforms, provision of housing sites to the rural poor and abolition of princely privileges. The left wing of the Congress that consisted of the honourable Gulzarilal Nanda (of the cow protection movement), Y.B. Chavan, Chandra Shekhar, Mohan Dharia and some others were in large agreement with the agenda. The Congress right subdued under Nehru asserted itself and was for the first time willing to advocate right wing policies openly. They were led on by Morarji Desai and Nijalingappa the new Congress president and other members of the syndicate who had officially adopted the TPP, but, were determined to stall its implementation. The right wing instead advocated dilution of planning, lesser emphasis on public sector and greater encouragement to private enterprise and foreign capital. In foreign policy they supported strengthening of economic and political relations with the west and America in particular. In the domestic political field, they wanted suppression of the left and protest movements especially those of the rural poor (particularly Naxalite) in order to get back the support of the rich peasants and large landowners. While the preferred alliance partners of the left leaning flanks of the Congress (Young Turks) were the Communists, those of the Congress right wing were keen to align with the Swatantra Party and Jan Sangh. In late 1969, Congress split, and Indira Gandhi gathered the majority, 220 of the Lok Sabha members moved with her to the new Party called Congress (R). The Syndicate representing the right wing of the party was left with a minority of (68) MPs. In AICC 446 of its

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705 members went over to Indira Gandhi. Bipin Chandra (historian) says that Congress (R) was by no means a leftist party, even after the split it contained a spectrum of political opinions, but it now clearly occupied the left of centre political position in Indian politics. Mrs Gandhi was the unchallenged leader of the party, the government and had popular support of the poor, middle classes, large sections of intelligentsia and ‘Her political power surpassed anything her father had ever enjoyed’ (p. 300).22 But her party did not command a majority in the Parliament; it was supported by two communist parties, some socialists, Akali Dal, DMK and some independents. Notwithstanding this vulnerability, she pushed the radical agenda forward and that is no trifling achievement. Never before or since, has such a sharp left turn occurred in policies coming out of Delhi. In February 1970, the Supreme Court invalidated bank nationalization on grounds of inadequate compensation and its discriminatory nature. A presidential ordinance was used to overcome that and revolutionize banks. After nationalization, the banks launched schemes to grant loans to small scale business, farmers and the self-employed. In August when government lost by one vote a constitutional amendment to abolish the privy purse and privileges of the princes, it used the presidential route again. This too was immediately invalidated by the Supreme Court. ‘The nationalization made Mrs Gandhi an instant national hero, leading her to fully own the socialist agenda. The radical socialists had, thus, scored complete victory. In the following years, Mrs Gandhi nationalized insurance, coal mines and oil industry; severely restricted investments by large firms under the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1969; reserved many labor-intensive products for exclusive manufacture by small-scale enterprises; tightened controls on exports and imports; nearly banned foreign investment under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973; effectively denied the firms with 100 or more workers the right to lay off workers; and severely limited the ownership of urban land under the Urban Land Ceilings Act, 1976’.23 The scale, speed and scope of her reorganization are quite unimaginable particularly in present times. But it could not have been less than radical for her time as well. More than one observer has tried to

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project the move as an opportunist, populist, serviceable move by Indira Gandhi to wrest control of the party and government. The argument was that she was not a socialist by conviction, that she had not written or spoken about her ideology. For instance, Guha writes, ‘With Mrs Gandhi one cannot be sure. She had neither read nor travelled extensively. She was unquestionably a patriot; having grown up in the freedom movement . . . she was deeply committed to upholding India’s interest in the world. How she thought this could best be upheld was less certain. In all the years she had been in politics her core beliefs had not been revealed. . . . The prime minister was, so to say, non-ideological’ (pp. 431-2).24 As a young girl studying in London after 1936, preparing to join Oxford, Indira Nehru and Feroze Gandhi (later to become her husband) spent all their spare time helping V.K. Krishna Menon in the India League, the leftist platform for India’s Independence. All progressive, anti-fascist, international causes that it supported took up their energy.‘He was to have a lasting ideological impact on both. For Feroze he was to become a lifelong infallible guru’ (p. 11).25 She travelled extensively with her father, inherited the Congress legacy and certainly, for her a more pragmatic politics was to become a lifelong preoccupation but she was not bereft of ideological exposure. By the mid-1960s she was restless with the moribund Congress, the inertia of the civil service. She even said that she wished India had a real revolution – like France or Russia – at the time of independence’.26 Skeptics also disregard the fact that it would have been so much easier for her to go rightwards in India and gradually cement her control over the party and government. Given the over-whelming social and cultural clout of the right and their obvious need of a Gandhi – Nehru name in the Congress to win elections, that would have been the pragmatic approach as well. She chose the road less travelled in India. As events played out subsequently, the right wing resistance within and outside the Congress was far from a marginal force, it toppled her. But Nehru’s daughter should have known this better than anyone else. Opportunism or even boldness was perhaps not the only force driving her. Managing agency system had been in place since colonial times, it

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too was abolished. Under the Momopoly and Restrictive Trade Pactices (MRTP) Act passed in 1969, a MRTP Commission was appointed to check the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few leading business families. Chief Minister were asked to implement the land reforms more vigorously and the fourth, five-year plan with double the outlay of the third plan was put in place after a gap of three years. Because hers was a minority government, it was frustrated by the dependence on other parties for getting legislation passed in the Lok Sabha. She was perhaps looking for an issue on which to go to the polls and when the Supreme Court refused to let her abolish the privy purses on 27 December 1970, she dissolved the Lok Sabha and called for elections in February 1971, one year ahead of schedule. The election fought later in 1971 was with an agenda decidedly for expanding state control over the banking system, against monopoly capital and addressing issues of poverty directly. The non-communist opposition parties Congress (O), SSP, Jan Sangh and Swatantra soon formed a grand alliance; Jayaprakash Narayan was involved in developing that alliance. They had no perceptible, common ideology or positive programme but concentrated their energy almost entirely on the person of Indira Gandhi.‘Indira hatao’ became the campaign slogan, personal abuse and character assassination was the main content of opposition election campaign (more about that in the next chapter). The election results validated Indira Gandhi’s leadership and programme. Her party got a 2/3 majority (352/518 seats in Lok Sabha). Chandra observes that the 1971 elections demonstrated that once national issues were raised, vote banks and politics of patronage became relatively irrelevant.27 As soon as she was sworn in, trouble broke out on the eastern front, influx of over ten million refugees from East Pakistan and disturbances assumed serious proportions. Turmoil there and strategic interests led India to intervene, war broke out with Pakistan which India won in a decisive manner but at a high cost. The cost of war led to budgetary deficit and drained foreign exchange reserves. Monsoon failed for two successive years 1972 and 73 leading to a severe drought in most parts of the country, food scarcity and inflation. This and the burden of feeding ten million refugees! Fall in power generation, economy bordering on recession and industrial recession followed as

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demand fell. This is the characteristic pattern in India; as bulk of the population is employed in agriculture; prolonged agrarian distress is the beginning of a general all around downturn. As if this was not enough, soon afterwards, in 1973, as a result of Arab-Israel war, petroleum prices increased four-fold, leading to a severe strain on foreign exchange, rapid rise of fertiliser prices and a greater economic slowdown alongwith rising unemployment which began to dent the government’s popularity. In the middle of this slowdown was an even slower pace of change towards land reforms and that belied people’s expectations about socialist transformation. Food riots occurred in several parts of the country. Industrial unrest followed and a wave of strikes occurred during 1972-3. An All India Railway strike in May 1974 lasted for 22 days; it had the effect of paralysing the economy. In 1980, looking back at the March 1971 electoral victory and December military success against Pakistan under her leadership Mrs Gandhi was to say, ‘Our troubles in India started with our great victory in the elections, and our troubles with the rest of the world started with the victory in Bangladesh’ (p. 139).28 Some people, she said, had not forgiven it. Here she was alluding to the right wing in the first case and to America in the case of Bangladesh. The American antipathy to the Awami League and Bangladesh independence was a well known pro-Pakistan position and Henry Kissinger took it as a personal setback when Bangladesh was formed. America had earlier, in the 1950s, fought a long war against China in Korea, but in 1972, was wooing Communist China and using Pakistan as an intermediary. This was the substantial background of the anti-Indira movement that followed.

Road to ‘National Emergency’: Dykes against Monopoly Capitalism and Attacks by the Usual Suspects 26 June 1975 was by all accounts a red-letter day, a ‘setback in the political evolution of India’, a state of emergency was declared in India and P.N. Dhar’s account (he was the PM’s principal secretary at that time) of what lead to the event pivots around the breakdown of the hegemony of the Congress party, growth of regional and sectional

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power groups and their single minded interest in garnering political power. General disregard of democratic norms and the constitutionally elected government of India made the situation unmanageable.29 Weak administrative capacity for policy and law enforcement, also called the soft state syndrome, made government’s work painfully difficult. In a broadcast to the nation, on the night of 27 June 1975 Indira Gandhi said: ‘A climate of violence has been created which resulted in the assassination of a Cabinet Minister and an attempt on the life of the Chief Justice. The Opposition parties had chalked out a programme of countrywide gheraos, agitations, disruption and incitement to industrial workers, police and defence forces in an attempt to paralyze totally the Central Government. One of them went to the extent of saying that armed forces should not carry out orders which they consider wrong. This programme was to begin from 29th of this month. We had no doubt that such a programme would have resulted in a grave threat to public order and damage to the economy beyond repair. This had to be prevented. The kind of programme envisaged by some of the opposition is not compatible with democracy; it is anti-national by any test and should not be allowed’ (pp. 141-2).30 Did Indira Gandhi panic? Or did she appraise the situation accurately? In her account of the events leading up to the declaration of Emergency she talked of the relentless campaign of hate, character assassination, rumours and calumny launched against her by the opposition and media in 1969 and the tremendous and unscrupulous pressure brought against her from all sides in the name of democracy. Right from the start of 1971, following her victory at the centre, the trouble began, subsided only for a while during the Indo-Pakistan war for the creation of Bangladesh, to erupt again in the most difficult of post-war times. She recalls the pressures exerted by western governments against her government on a number of occasions but especially on her for her position on non-alignment. She highlighted the economic loss in strikes and national agitations that erupted in the post-war period, that too when the economy was under deep stress. The strange silence of the Indian media about the damage of the crippling agitations, its indifference to issues of mass poverty and her government’s poverty eradication programme is also something that she remembered. Like present times, the media was owned by big business but unlike

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our times it consisted mainly of print media. Her economic policies would not have pleased them. Her observation reverberates in our times; leading up to the 2014 elections for example, there was far less media engagement with the large scale poverty alleviation and entitlements programmes of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) compared to the air time and print expended on corruption charges and disparagement. Indira Gandhi recalled substantial financial support for the opposition campaign, the large amount spent on it, its link with businessmen and others and the fact that the hand behind this campaign did not remain unseen. Does it sound painfully familiar? That hand was not considered squarely enough, understood, given a name and dikes were built against it through democratic reform, social reform, awareness and political education. In the aftermath of the Emergency, people were ever so eager to carry on with life and electoral politics as usual just like after Gandhi’s assassination in the last chapter. P.N. Dhar on the other hand was confounded by the motivation of the agents of anarchy mainly Morarji Desai, George Fernandes and Jayaprakash Narayan. While the war, two successive droughts and oil-price shock were not of Indira Gandhi’s making, life of the poor and middle classes was indeed more difficult. However, such hardships and conditions have existed in India and at times they do get worse, the scale of disturbances that just paved the way for the Emergency were unprecedented and have not happened since, in Independent India. The tumult in fact began with the split in the Congress and resounding success of Indira Congress in the 1971 general election based on the most radical left wing agenda since Independence. Parts of that agenda had been executed before 1971. Legislations of unprecedented radical nature had followed each other in quick succession, bank nationalization, Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices Act (MRTP Act), abolition of princely privileges, etc. The entire breadth of customary support base of the right wing was unfavourably affected in one felling swoop. Finance capital, merchant, manufacturing capital, the managing agency system were under siege, feudal land holdings under the threatening cloud of land reforms and the withdrawal of princely privy purses and privileges added to its anger. A large scale

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poverty alleviation programme was charted out and launched. The impact of these on the wealth owning interest groups could well be imagined.

Perils of Left Turn by Legislation Alone These were momentous legislations and need to be detailed. Before 14 of the largest commercial banks were nationalized in July 1969, commercial banking was almost entirely privately owned. 70 per cent of the country’s saving deposits were with them and they in turn were owned through interlinking directorships to large industrial and business houses. The financial system epitomized an immense concentration of capital in a few hands. Hundreds of smaller banks also existed which would often collapse causing hardship and chaos for small and medium savers. Besides, it was difficult for farmers and small businesses to get formal credit, money lenders were their only source – typical interest rates even now are 36 to 50 per cent. Big banks were nationalized then and their role since then in redirecting some credit to agriculture and small business, expanding branches and banking habits in rural and backward regions has been well documented and acknowledged. One cannot also overlook the fact that their nationalized status prevented them from being drawn into hyper speculations that caused the 2008 banking collapse and global recession in the west whatever their recent problems with Non Performing Assets (NPA) might be. In 1980, when Mrs Gandhi returned to power six more banks were nationalized, a confirmation of her conviction perhaps. The managing agency system, a tool, developed in colonial times, enabled a few controlling groups, usually foreign, to manage a number of private and public limited companies simultaneously. This process had begun to shift in favour of Indian capitalist families in the two decades preceding Independence and then more rapidly in the 1950s. A few families, through investment-cum-management companies, controlled a larger network of companies, with relatively small owner capital. In 1964, Hazari listed 20 major business groups that existed between 1951 and 57. Each had one or two managing agencies, and each of these in turn held or operated a few companies, 85-77 such

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companies each in 1951 and 1958 respectively. Much of the large industry was thus family controlled by a small owner investment; in effect the group provided or controlled the managerial cadre.31 Hazari was making a case for its abolition in a phased manner to increase professionalism and technical expertise in management of public limited companies. In 1965, he also chaired a government commission that inquired into the working of the licensing system set up in 1951 under the Industrial Development and Regulation Act (1951) to find that the system had helped the big business houses the most. Well substantiated observations of the Dutt Commission, as it was called, cemented the basis of the Monopoly Inquiry Commission and its recommendations. Eventually the MRTP Act 1969 came into effect in 1970. The MRTP Commission constituted thereafter was empowered to conduct inquiries on its own account or on the basis of directions from the Central Government. At the time of Independence, princely states constituted 40 per cent of the territory and 23 per cent of the population of undivided India. Their resources and influence were not insignificant in those early years after Independence. The heirs of the Hindu Bhonsle kings were already presiding over parades of the far right Hindutva militia of the RSS in Nagpur. By late 1970s sympathies of most other princely states (with a few exceptions) could not have been very different. The nationalization of coal mining occurred in phases – coking coal mines in 1971-2 and non-coking coal mines in 1973. With the enactment of the Coal Mines (nationalization) Act, 1973, all coal mines were nationalized on 1 May 1973. By then, numerous Indian business family interests had been tied up with coal mining for 70 years. The British monopoly over coal mining had been broken in the first decade of the twentieth century, production had risen rapidly in the WW1 and the WW2 and thereafter too legislation in the 1950s was mainly of the type that would assist and direct private business in minerals, and mining under licenses. With assistance from the National Coal Development Corporation created in 1956 to help scientific development of mines. India which had the fifth largest coal reserves, became the fourth largest producer in the world. By 1973, the entire coal mining industry was nationalized. Prominent Indian business families, many of whom were directly associated with coal mining and trade were

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affected adversely. This would provide a context to the impact of nationalization – which was reversed in 2015 forty years later, when the far right BJP government came to occupy power with a majority in the Parliament. Mineral and coal rich Bihar became the nucleus of unrest in 1973-4 because its political economy was most affected by land reforms on the one hand and nationalization of mines on the other. Both, its hefty feudal land owing class was threatened and it’s mineral and coal owning classes were dispossessed. Life Insurance had been nationalized in 1956, as a step towards protecting policy holders from unfair practices of private insurers and for expanding social security on the path to socialism.32 In September 1972, this was taken forward; the Parliament passed the General Insurance Business (nationalization) Act, ‘acquisition and transfer of shares of Indian insurance companies and undertakings of other existing insurers.’ General insurance business of 55 Indian companies and the undertakings of 52 foreign insurers were taken over. Eventually, 107 companies were amalgamated into four separate companies – National Insurance Company Ltd., Oriental Insurance Company Ltd., New India Assurance Company Ltd. and United India Insurance Company Ltd. On 22 November 1972, General Insurance Corporation (GIC) was incorporated to control and run the business of general insurance. The government transferred all its shares of the four companies to GIC turning it into a holding company. Insurance is an enormous appendage of the financial sector and general insurance more so than life insurance. This nationalized, insurance system stood in place till recently when private insurers could return. This scale, speed and direction of Indira Gandhi’s reforms would undoubtedly have angered and upset classes that were firming up their control over the industrial and financial system. The resentful set now comprised financial sector owners, industrialists, big landlords, and princes. All these classes, with considerable social clout and means, would have aligned themselves against Indira Gandhi’s government. They would begin to see great value in coming together to form a coalition against her in self defence, so to say. Her strategy of legislation was perhaps inappropriate for a parliamentary democracy like India, where the cultural, social influence and

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sway of the right was far deeper, wider and resource rich compared to the left, though not yet coherently consolidated as is evident from their performance in the post emergency government. Without a Congress cadre dedicated to grass root mobilization in support of the left turn, without mass campaign style-education of people and without preparing a fortification against the prospects of counter movements from the wealth owing class, she was a sitting duck. Besides in those days, attacks against nationalization were clothed in fears of communism and Soviet annexation. Two decades later in the 1990s (USSR broke up in 1991) these earlier fears were undressed and re-attired in the semantics of economic efficiency. In 1990 the public sector was ‘inefficient’ and almost as much media attention was paid to inefficiency discourse as had been to communist threat earlier. In the climate of cold war, it is to be presumed that the right would be supported anywhere by international powers against communism just as communists would be supported by USSR or China. This would add a foreign threat angle to a complex domestic political economy situation. As circumstances, external and internal, spun out particularly with the four fold oil price hike, the government had to go for a wage freeze and a ceiling on dividend payment by companies to control demand; it also had to grapple with controlling wholesale trade in wheat and then had to abandon it because it did not work in controlling prices of food and essential goods. To the people at large it may not have looked like a left turn with any benefits, at least not in the short run which concerned them the most. There were suggestions from within the Congress (P.N. Dhar himself ) to invite multinationals into India to benefit from their investments, technology, and capital. The press coverage of these proposals caused an embarrassment to the PM, her own inclinations did not correspond to this measure, nor did the implication that there was an American pressure on her government. Although USSR supplied India with two million tons of wheat, the situation of acute shortages was a bitter disappointment for people. Three years that followed were marked by unrest sponsored by the opposition. They had a convenient situation in which to launch an attack on her symbolically, but in effect on her left leaning policies.

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In this cauldron of confused perceptions, socialists played a very suspicious role, more about that will follow later. The communist left (now split into two main parties) could not see the forest for the trees or the distinction between their own state level rivalry with the Congress and the play of larger political forces at the centre. The 4th Chapter will dwell on them. In his account of the events Dhar, chose to highlight two episodes that marked the journey to a state of Emergency – the railway strike of 1974, and the political movement of 1974-5 led by Jayaprakash Narayan. He attributed the railway strike to the immature and peculiar nature of the labour union movement in India in the 1970s. It was marred by severe inter union rivalry, control by major political parties, and competitive strike calls. The fact that, the government was the largest employer in the country (railways employed 1.4 million people in 1974) and modelled itself as the ideal employer with generous wage settlements compounded the government’s position during the strike. Unionized labour thus became a special interest group especially because they worked for the commanding heights of the economy as the public sector was called. A railway strike for example could hold up the whole economy. And the railway unions were asserting themselves, the newly formed loco running staff union first called an illegal wild cat strike in August 1973, and to two of its demands the railway and labour minister capitulated. In November, George Fernandes an avowed socialist like JP, replaced the old leader of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation (AIRF) Union; just before this he had declared in his address to the National Railwaymen’s Union that his aim was to organize a strike that ‘could change the whole history of India and bring down Indira Gandhi government at any time by paralyzing railway transport to a dead stop’.33 He set about organizing it and a National Coordination Committee for Railwaymen’s struggle was created with Fernandes as its convener. It made an extensive list of demands. Concurrently, the opposition parties were to launch Bharat Bandh to protest against the rising prices and to support the railwaymen’s strike. The government was in no position to concede this time considering the scale of demands, the likelihood of strikes spreading to other unions, and inflationary

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pressures were already making increasing expenditure and deficit spending dangerous. Fernandes’ speeches were becoming more and more provocative. Urging the railwaymen to realize their power and ability to bring the economy to its knees and starve the people.34 Intelligence reports suggested that the threat of sabotage was not an idle one. The government used the Defence of India Rules (DIR) to declare the strike illegal, Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) to arrest the leaders and workers. This led to dissensions among the unions, CPI dominated AITUC withdrew the strike and the whole strike was called off, but only after 20 days. ‘Some 30,000 people, including Fernandes, were imprisoned. Thousands lost their jobs and were evicted from their quarters. The army was called out in several places. The government’s ruthlessness paid off. The strike was broken within three weeks. But the bitterness between the government and the union activists festered for long afterwards’.35 Government actions against the strike got adverse international press and among sections of opposition parties in India too it was criticized. Some Indian socialist leaders were connected internationally through the Socialist International. Donations came in through international socialist trade unions and the American federation of labour unions AFL-CIO. AFL-CIO, in turn, was heavily infiltrated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and backed the American foreign policy goals in the cold war, a fact that has been in the public domain for at least 25 years.36 Since then ‘Wiki Leaks tapes of the diplomatic exchanges of that period suggest that Fernandes had even applied to the CIA for funding his cause’.37 Anyway, at that time the grave state of affairs in the country gave opposition parties another opportunity to exploit; it came in the form of the Nav Nirman Movement led by Gujarat students protesting increasing mess charges to accommodate rising food prices. The RSS had spawned a student’s organization called the ABVP and half its founding members were RSS members. In 1972 papers, Anderson noted that it had become one of the largest and best organized student groups in India; it was entering a space vacated by the Congress.38 Political parties like Congress (O), Socialists and BJS (RSS political front) supported the student agitation and encouraged them

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to form ‘Nav Nirman Samitis’ to spread the movement. These same parties had simultaneously opposed mandatory procurement levy on food grains to deal with food inflation. The agitation spread, became violent leading to 85 deaths in police firing. As the momentum of the agitation grew so did their demands, culminating in a demand for the resignation of the Congress government of Gujarat, which held 140 out of 168 assembly seats. The agitation continued and the government resigned. President’s rule was imposed. JP visited Ahmedabad two days later, to congratulate the students and encourage them to get the assembly dissolved by renewing their agitation. Thus, the agitation continued at the cost of 95 death, almost a thousand injuries, loss of public and private property and what many describe as ‘unconstitutional harassment’ of an elected government. Meanwhile the opposition parties lost two assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Orissa and felt more frantic.The prospects of gaining power through elections seemed too fraught for them. Morarji Desai, their senior leader sat on an indefinite fast to press the student demand; under pressure the state assembly was dissolved. JP claimed that he was inspired by that movement. JP wrote in Everyman’s Weekly, 3 August 1974 (quoted in Dhar p. 247),‘I wasted two years trying to bring about a politics of consensus. It came to nothing . . . Then I saw students bring about a political change with the backing of the people . . . and I knew that this was the way out’. This was a strange sentiment for someone who had spent his youth in the freedom struggle and had since then acquired a national stature as a Gandhian! More about this peculiar outlook in the next chapter. In March 1974, JP came out of a political retirement to take over the leadership of the Bihar student agitation and asked for total revolution, demanding resignation of Congress government in Bihar, dissolution of assembly and urged students to put pressure on Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) to resign to paralyze the government. He told them to gherao the assembly and government offices, set up parallel people’s government all over the state and pay no taxes. When the Bihar government did not fall, JP decided to go beyond Bihar to organize a campaign against corruption and demand removal of Indira Gandhi. He drew large crowds especially in the strongholds of socialists

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and Jan Sangh and among students and middle-class. His movement soon got the backing of nearly all non-communist political parties who saw in him a popular leader who would enable them to acquire credibility, as an alternative to Congress. JP used the organizational structures of these parties to confront Indira Gandhi’s government in the streets and then in the polls. Not coincidentally, in September 1974, A.B. Vajpayee a consummate parliamentarian and a moderate within the far right Bharatiya Jan Sangh read a paper in a party conference in Hyderabad that gave a call to expand the struggle against the government from the Parliament to the streets and onto all sensitive power centres of the establishment. In December 1974, the Socialist Party, adopted a resolution in their Calicut session calling for extra constitutional methods and popular action. Later in 1975, the CPI(M) in an impulse perhaps not to be left behind joined the opposition. Its general secretary E.M.S. Namboodiripad wrote in the party newspaper that left parties were aware that problems of the country could not be solved by elections, parliamentary and constitutional methods alone. According to Dhar all these parties worked together to convert JP’s call into a confrontation.39 The youth wing of the BJS, called ABVP had played an important role in the Gujarat mobilization and it got completely involved with organizing a similar movement in Bihar. A large alliance was formed by linking SSP’s, Samajwadi Yuva Jan Sabha and Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti into a larger front called Bihar Rajya Sangharsh Samiti. The demands presented to Bihar Chief Minister included issues like increase in scholarships, increased supply of wheat and rice to hostels and removal of minimum marks to appear for medical entrance exams and were agreed upon. However, for some odd reason JP began to lead the agitation and demanded resignation of the Bihar government. Student and people’s fronts called Chhatra and Jan Sangharsh Samitis respectively were to collect funds and volunteers for the movement. A series of bandhs were called, and many turned violent. JP gave a call for gherao of the assembly and led the march himself, however, the government continued unmoved and the agitation did not turn into a Gujarat as anticipated. It is possible that general student alienation, frustration and unrest

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were harnessed. A 1970 paper by Anderson and Pant (more about Anderson later) on student politics in Allahabad University talks of a disposition towards violence among students as they struggled to cope with a new environment, to form a new identity, or poverty and pressure. Most students at that time came from surrounding villages, conservative families that had little money to spare, besides they themselves often had such poor schooling that they struggled to cope with university education but viewed university education as prestigious and necessary for a white-collar job.‘It is not surprising that they feel oppressed and turn to leaders willing to go out and“fight the dragon” on their behalf ’.40 At a youth conference in Allahabad in June 1974, JP said that although he himself would not take up any armed insurrection, he would not stop revolutionaries from taking up the gun and followed up such statements by similar suggestions about the need of a people’s revolution, referring even to the Russian revolution as an example of how a successful revolution was possible only when the army and police rebelled. When the movement sought resignations from individual MLAs, 42 MLAs resigned out of 318. Some Dalit and tribal MLAs who were forced to resign, later backtracked. Even this maneuvre proved unsuccessful in removing the Bihar government. JP tried to expand the agitation by inviting farm workers, landless labour and other sections. The CPM was expected to launch convergent movements. It supported these agitations but in line with its basic opposition to the Congress. With the growth of the JP movement there were hesitant moves towards cooperation which never achieved formal status or proved of much significance.41 The JP movement, however, was running out of steam by the end of 1974, students went back to colleges and it did not attract the rural and urban poor even in Bihar and Gujarat. This made the opposition more frantic. Elections were due in January/February 1976 and Indira Gandhi challenged the opposition to settle the issue at the polls. JP and the opposition formed a National Coordination Committee for contesting elections. Again, this was perhaps a sign of either political immaturity or

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unexplained doubtful motivations. In November 1974, JP called a conference of opposition parties who eventually decided to gherao and later organized demonstrations outside Parliament and in states. By December, the fronts were asking for the formation of parallel governments in villages, in January 1975, separate Republic Day celebrations were organized and in February, a march to All India Radio followed. In March, JP gave a call to students to revive a no-Tax campaign. In May, a three-month programme to form Janata Sarkars was announced. All this disorder led to 500 casualties, 70 of them fatal but it had built up the excitement and expectations of the opposition parties. In state after state Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana opposition parties tried to organize similar agitations. Dhar describes at length, his attempts to negotiate with JP on behalf of the Congress to arrive at some understanding about how to proceed with some tough measures likely to be unpopular such as those meant to control food prices. Initially he tried to contact him through the director of the Institute of Gandhian Studies, Varanasi, but he got no response. JP did not at any point spell out his practical strategy to quell inflation or curb corruption. These were the very issues, which had disturbed him enough to begin the agitation. Nor did he take any notice of the policy package that the government had introduced which had reduced inflationary pressures. He kept talking about a revolution ‘moral, cultural, educational, social, and economic and so on to bring in a quaint set of outcomes like a ‘party-less democracy’, ‘communitarian society’.42 These ideas seemed very confused and not actionable to any unprejudiced observer of the ground realities in India. Dhar eventually suggests that the only two reasons that he could recognize through his efforts to contact JP was that he felt disregarded by Indira Gandhi who he had expected would maintain a close relationship with him given the past proximity of their families, in addition, he was enraged with her because after the 1969 split in the Congress Party she came under the influence of Moscow through her liaison with CPI (Dhar, p. 156). Just as with his antipathy to Mrs Gandhi, it is very unclear why JP had come to so abhor communists. He had spent nine years in America, shifted between Universities there, from University of

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California at Berkeley, to Ohio and Wisconsin and returned ‘Completing his Master’s in Sociology from Wisconsin University he ( JP) returned to India in 1929, firmly committed to Marxism’.43 Perhaps the anti-Stalin literature had got to him; there was no dearth of western evidence being put out about the horrors of life inside USSR and Soviet aggressiveness in Eastern Europe during the Cold War period. Many intellectuals had banded together under the umbrella of the CCF, some of them through conviction and others by inducements. JP and his role in the CCF will be discussed at some length in the next chapter. He also received the Magsaysay award where the citation described him ‘as the conscience of the people’, The government, could not deal with him or the disturbances more firmly given his age, stature as Gandhian, freedom fighter, and aura of renunciation. All this saved him from insinuations of dubious motives. The JP movement also scarred the Congress Party and divided it between those who wanted Indira Gandhi to negotiate with JP and those against it. She became inclined to CPI’s assessment of the movement as being an externally supported fascist movement. CPI would compare the praise showered by the US on JP in 1974, with the manner he was ignored when, only three years earlier, he went to USA to campaign for the Bangladeshi freedom movement. They believed that the administration of President Nixon was out to punish Indira Gandhi for her defiance both in the Bangladesh war and nuclear programme. Dhar notes, ‘In this context the hectic activity of Peter Burleigh a US consular officer who was constantly in touch with the agitators, was looked upon as proof of American involvement with them’ (p. 254).44 A New York Times report in May 1973 said an Indian MP made a demand to arrest and deport the same Burleigh and claimed he was a CIA agent.‘In Parliament, S.M. Banerjee read into the record a report from a local pro-Moscow newspaper, The Patriot, that Burleigh, had been ‘in regular and close contact’ with state officials in the east Indian states of Orissa and Bihar’.45 Press reports to that effect were common in India as well, and this is mentioned in American Ambassador Moynihan’s letters.46 Mrs Gandhi was beginning to get more and more uneasy about the foreign hand working against her; after all, Allende of Chile had

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just been overthrown and assassinated in 1973, because his presence would have meant the loss of American economic interests and influence. Similarly, unsettling intelligence reports about a plot to overthrow the new government of Mujib in Bangladesh were doing the rounds not to mention events in other parts of Latin America and the world as a direct fall out of the Cold War. It is likely that Mrs Gandhi would have received intelligence reports as well as warnings. Although the Bihar movement was losing momentum on the ground by the end of 1974 and the economic situation had improved as well, in early January 1975, L.N. Mishra the railway minister (also Congress Party’s fund raiser) was assassinated in Bihar. This was followed by an attempt on the life of the Chief Justice whom JP had called Mrs Gandhi’s stooge. Meanwhile, on 8 December 1974, the BJS parliamentary leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee had resigned from the Lok Sabha on the grounds that ‘parliamentary democracy was no longer an effective instrument to serve the people in our country. . .’ (p. 129).47 Minoo Masani supported what he believed to be JP’s belief that ‘hopes for India lay neither through election nor parliament’. In an interview with Oriana Fallaci in The New Republic July 1975, JP said that the developments in Gujarat are ‘the start of the battle I had been dreaming of since 1969’. In the meantime, Morarji Desi had commenced a fast on 7 April to force the centre to announce elections in Gujarat which had been under Presidents rule. JP strongly supported an early election rather than the one scheduled for September. The government eventually gave in, and elections were held in May. A four party alliance of Congress (O), Jan Sangh, Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) and Socialist Party formed the government in an electoral loss that was a setback for Indira Gandhi who had personally campaigned vigorously. On the day, the results were announced. The Allahabad High court set aside her election to the Lok Sabha on grounds of electoral malpractices on an election petition filed four years earlier by Raj Narain in consultation with JP. On 19 March, Mrs Gandhi became the first Indian PM to testify in court, she was in the witness box for five hours. On 12 June, the judgement of the court rendered her election to Parliament null and void. It acquitted her on 12 out of 14 counts holding her guilty on two

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trivial counts like UP government building a high platform for her and her election agent being in government service at the time he served her. The latter was a quibble on the date of retirement. The matter would not have survived a Supreme Court appeal. She moved the Supreme Court for a stay against the order of the Allahabad High court. The stay was granted but only a conditional one; it prevented her from voting in the Lok Sabha but allowing her to continue as PM. The manner in which the opposition besieged her at that juncture may be reason enough to suspect the motives and merits of the case itself. Raj Narain, descendant of the royal family of Banaras had long been a fellow traveller of JP in the Socialist Party. At that juncture Sanjay Gandhi stepped in to help his mother deal with the situation. Some in the Congress advised her to step down temporarily, win her appeal in the Supreme Court and then step back with both advantages of victimhood and vindication. She could select an interim PM who would step down later. ‘Mrs Gandhi discussed her stepping down idea with few of her colleagues and they not only concurred but congratulated her statesmanship’ (pp. 98-9).48 Sanjay thought his mother’s plan was dangerous. An appeal could take six months to a year and that that was a long time in politics. Could she be certain that Jagjivan Ram, Chavan, Swaran Singh – the suggested names – would step down? What if she lost the appeal? Historians and political analysts argue that she should have resigned and avoided the Emergency. Mehta thinks that ‘Sanjay’s advice to his mother was at once shrewd and sagacious. . . . Mrs Gandhi would have committed political hara-kiri had she done so’. With the benefit of hindsight, one would agree. Jagjivan Ram, abandoned her and joined her opponents when he thought she was going to lose in 1977. The opposition achieved in one stroke, what it could not for years of trying, they pushed her into a tight corner. Then they formed a National Programme Committee for a national wide campaign of processions, demonstrations to force her to resign. With Desai as Chairperson of a rally organized by Jan Morcha in Delhi, Ramlila Grounds, on 25 June, JP went so far as to say that civil disobedience should spread to army, police and government servants. This was not the first time that he had insinuated a call to arms and violence; often referring to an appropriate hour for the flare up or total rebellion. JP repeatedly asked the people to make the government

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dysfunctional, calling people not to pay taxes (that too at a time the country was suffering from drought). ‘Even more serious was JPs repeated incitement to the army, police and civil services to rebel’ (p. 131).49 Mrs Gandhi justified imposition of emergency in terms of national interest primarily on three grounds first; India’s stability, security, integrity, and democracy were in danger from the disruptive character of the JP movement. Referring to JPs speeches she accused the opposition of inciting armed forces to mutiny and the police to rebel. Second, there was need to implement a programme of rapid economic development in the interest of the poor and the underprivileged. Third, she warned against intervention and subversion from abroad with the aim of weakening and destabilizing India. Another anxiety she mentions is the need to keep the RSS under pressure and preferably in jail.50 The RSS and its fronts the BJS and ABVP are mentioned repeatedly in the Home Ministry Report (1975) too, it states that BJS and the Congress (O) started the Gujarat agitations on 1 January 1974 by organizing a bandh in Rajkot which turned violent.51 Junagadh also witnessed arson and so on till the three-day Ahmedabad bandh ended on 4 January. Students were drawn in, and on 10 January Ahmedabad was shut down for a second time. Simultaneously ABVP organized bandhs in other cities in Gujarat. While the agitation in Bihar was planned by the student community, it was the ABVP that tried to urge the leadership to organize a wider struggle even when the Chief Minister had assured students of his support in curbing the food prices. The two movements led to violence, deaths, and police firing. And finally, they are mentioned for giving direct assistance to JP for his ‘total revolution’. Jana Sangh cadres were the main foot soldiers. In the next chapter it becomes clearer that the JP and Jana Sangh had closer than imagined relations in the build up to the 1974-5 agitation, it was not forged in the heat of the moment. This relation of an RSS front with JP (who had launched a broadside against Congress leaders for having close relations with the RSS in the aftermath of Gandhi’s assassination in 1948) is another whodunit besides being a sign of RSS influence across the spectrum. So, by her own estimation, her home minister’s, her principle secretary’s account Mrs Gandhi seemed to have read the situation as

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perilously and increasingly subversive. By mid-1975 she came to believe, that the movement was nourished by foreign donations and said so publicly,52 that there was a conspiracy against her government and a threat to her life. Even if this was a one-sided view, historians of contemporary India cannot dismiss it to claim that she simply ignored the ordinary judicial remedy of appeal and resorted to unconstitutional measures out of expediency alone.

The Twenty Point Programme (TPP): The Cul-de-Sacs of Change by Legislation Alone Soon after declaration of emergency, on 1 July 1975 a government initiative called Twenty Point Programme (TPP) was launched and projected as a wide umbrella for the poor – a wide-ranging attack on poverty. Many of these schemes were later redesigned and improved and continue to be the basis of more contemporary policies like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA). The programme promised to liquidate existing debt of landless labourers, small farmers and rural artisans, extend alternate credit to them, abolish bonded labour, implement existing land ceiling and distribute surplus land to landless, provide housing sites to landless labourers and weaker sections, revise minimum wages of agricultural labour, provide special help to handloom industry, prevent tax evasion and smuggling, increase production, streamline distribution of essential commodities. There were schemes specially for children, women, the disabled and tribal areas. Interestingly, the limit of Income Tax exemption was enhanced to stimulate consumption of the low income groups and to encourage saving in the mid and investment in upper income groups. The rural segment of TPP ran out of steam soon, while the possibility of substantial land reforms was real during the emergency redistribution of land which was resisted by large landowners, rich peasants and unsympathetic bureaucracy (which often belonged to the same propertied class-caste formation). Indira Gandhi and the Congress party failed to create a new organization for social change, popular mobilization and implementation.53 An old mare cannot learn new tricks and implementation was dependent on the same old bureaucracy

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and politicians who often did not believe in rights of the poorer sections. Enabling the poor to access nominal welfare benefits is not simple in India; so far removed is the lower bureaucracy from the idea of egalitarianism that often even mere compassion is conspicuous by absence. This has remained a hurdle right into present times, particularly for the social sector and welfare schemes where human interface is necessary for delivery. Hence the continuing search for minimizing human contact in the delivery of benefits, measures like direct transfer of benefits to beneficiaries and minimum state interference becoming more fashionable in India compared to even advanced capitalist countries. What did work rather well during the emergency was curtailment of labour rights. In June 1974, a Wage Freeze Act was passed allowing for half of workers’ dearness allowance to be withheld as compulsory deposits. Later there was a reduction in the annual wage bonus. Strikes were banned, many trade unionists were locked up. Some large trade unions were disciplined from within. The worker’s participation in management was institutionalized for better industrial relations. This suited business interests as did various other measures to integrate national markets and encourage investment. In fact the tipping of policy scales back in favour of corporate growth begins here, more markedly in the 1980s and accelerates thereafter. The emergency probably taught the ruling party that right wing interest groups were far more deeply entrenched, well linked, could generate forces for regime change when stone walled compared to forces of the left.

The Excesses of Emergency: They were Asked to Bend, and they Crawled The least recalled aspect of the emergency of 1975 is that it was constitutional and remained well within constitutional ambit. The Constitution has listed between Article 352 and 360 immense reserve powers at the disposal of the state to be deployed when thought necessary. Emergency could be imposed as a response to war or internal disturbances. When imposed it would set into motion several provisions that allow delay of general elections, one year at a time, curtail citizen’s rights to appeal to courts to enforce their fundamental rights There are provisions retained by our founding fathers from our colonial past,

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which allows for preventive detention and suspension of human rights. There are scarcely any restraints that check its usage.54 Some members of the Constituent Assembly had remarked that there exist ‘no parallel to these provisions in any Constitution of any democratic country’.55 Indeed there were scarcely any restraints specially for a ruling party, led by a strong leader, that enjoyed sufficient majority. The emergency only needs ratification by the Parliament within two months and promulgated by the President. Such provisions were used before 1975 but not on a national scale. An emergency had been declared twice before but only to deal with external threats. When the internal emergency was imposed in 1975 an external emergency was already in place since the December 1971 war with Pakistan. Once the internal emergency was invoked, two laws were used to imprison political adversaries and common criminals alike, both predated the emergency, DIR and MISA. Emergency exposed three fundamental fault lines in India’s liberal democracy. First, fragility of its new democratic institutions – media, judiciary, bureaucracy and police. They caved in rapidly often without pressure exerted from the PMO, soon creating an absence of due processes and a vacuum of checks and balances.The inquiry commission to examine the excesses of the emergency had senior ministers deposing who wanted proof of any order in support of what was done during the emergency,56 a rather remarkable phenomenon that was to repeat itself even when institutions were not fledglings as in 1975. It lasted for a brief period, but the emergency incarcerated over one lakh prisoners only one-fourth were RSS members. All newspapers fell in line with pre-censorship and soon self-censorship was practiced based on phone calls from censors that were passed on as notes from news editors or sub-editors. Before the emergency the Indian Express had supported the JP movement. According to accounts by journalists who were employed by the Indian Express, Ramnath Goenka, its owner was a media adviser to the JP movement and fought to retain his role through his newspaper. He was specially close to Nanaji Deshmukh, RSS pracharaks and chief fund raiser for Jana Sangh (p. 128).57 The battle between the will of the people (Parliament) and the judiciary had begun long before the emergency on the issue of bank nationalization and

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right to property. Subsequently, judiciary was dealt with directly, transfer of judges and denial of promotions was the most common tool. Many judges stood up but not the majority. The passage of the thirty-eighth amendment in July made the declaration of emergency and ordinances promulgated under it immune from judicial review. This along with the suspension of civil liberties meant that though many battles were waged in the courts, none disabled the emergency. Intelligence agencies were mapping the political dissent before the emergency was declared officially. So, it was not difficult to identify primary suspects. Secondly, the speed with which mass protests and resistance died down as prominent leaders were incarcerated, perhaps indicated the absence of grass root leadership. The movement appeared to be dying out even before the emergency was declared.This is a fact that historians have alluded to. Middle and upper leaders of six opposition parties Congress (O), Jana Sangh, BLD, SSP, CPM and DMK were imprisoned within a few hours, 676 politicians were already in jail. After that the movement lost steam entirely. Rural India had not been a major participant of the movement nor was the impact of the emergency perceived beyond the periphery of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. For the middle-class it was a return to social order after a long period of unrest. Swift intensity of state repression was only one reason for the return to ‘normalcy’, an aspect that was to appear and reappear continually in the post-colonial state. The centre then commanded the military and paramilitary with personnel of over twenty million to be deployed at its command. Typically, no force within the security complex can defy the centre and was used against civilians even before the emergency. The other reason was the lack of deep roots in the movement, apart from the RSS which had the strong roots and organization. The RSS chose to play its old trick, made some show of resistance, plenty of subversion, and tactical compromise. Their shakhas grew rapidly during the emergency and after. Thirdly, a rather prolonged infatuation with strong, charismatic leaders has always been there. Indira Gandhi commanded the party she put together as a strong leader, her son Sanjay Gandhi gradually acquired a reputation as a strong leader within his coterie and outside as well. A fascination that was to endure, so much so that the absence

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of a charismatic, formidable leader would produce a collective national yearning. Ultimately, the RSS as the only organization dedicated to producing strong authoritarian leadership would fill the vacuum. Soon after the emergency was imposed, bureaucracy and police also became increasingly authoritarian. This feudal tendency was aggravated as officials were shielded by the emergency, unchecked by exposure in the press, courts, opposition or popular protests. They began to abuse the power they had, this affected everyone but mostly the poor, especially in northern India. The government at the top became unaware of the problem because of drastic press censorship and silencing of protests. People gradually lost faith in the press, relied on rumours and tended to believe the worst regarding the government’s actions and intentions. Further, over a lakh of people were incarcerated, many supposedly tortured. So many, including the articulate educated middle-class had been in and out of jail during the months of emergency and this hardened resentment, spawned rumours, brought the opposition together and created an aura of martyrdom around those who spent time behind bars. Active opposition to emergency in the government, judiciary, bureaucracy and middle-class subsided soon and surprised many western observers.58 Resentment of the poor particularly in the north, as usual, manifested itself only in the next general elections. They have never had too many champions in India. Here too, in the south the excesses of police and administration were minimal the electoral consequences were accordingly favourable. The anti-emergency sentiments thrived in the jails and became successful in focusing attention to the loss of fundamental rights and liberties for 21 months midst the middle-classes that had hitherto made use of much of that liberty. It is, to this day, frequently described as the darkest day for Indian democracy by liberals and leftists alike, at least up to 2014. Although, Mrs Gandhi repeated it often enough that the emergency was only a temporary correction for the dangers that Indian democracy and unity were facing, nonetheless, after the first year of general acceptance, support for the emergency vanished. Resentment spread to the poor as the four-point programme, of Mrs Gandhi’s now powerful younger son Sanjay Gandhi took precedence over the government’s TPP. The four-point programme included birth control resulting in

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forced sterilization of those who had more than two children and urban slum clearance. This direct association of poverty with over population is an axiom of faith in middle-class India to this day. Slum demolition made it an all-out anti-poor project. In this project the enthusiasm of senior officials in the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) like Jagmohan to clean up old Delhi which had a large Muslim population in slums has been well documented.59 The beautification and gentrification of the national capital was an ongoing project but during the emergency it was accelerated. Over one-and-a-half lakh homes were demolished within those 18 months. The personality of Indira Gandhi’s son, the strange coterie he rapidly acquired and their motive made it worse. Birth control became the source of disaffection among religious fundamentalists immediately and forced birth control united opposition to it across ideologies. Officials at major institutions like the World Bank and foundations like Ford and Rockefeller had been spreading the gospel of population control to combat poverty since 1950s in India. Their consultants had made successful representations to health ministries about the use of birth control. A central family planning board was created. Gradually the realization dawned that voluntary approach was not working in India and foundation pressures to give incentives and later to make it compulsory were mounted. Some infrastructure to implement mass vasectomies and sterilization was created which was eventually misused during the emergency to sterilise millions often with inadequate facilities.60 It is not clear who influenced and organized over enthusiastic forced sterilization though the involvement of Sanjay Gandhi is widely recognized. It is quite likely that it got implemented rashly in pursuit of poor people who were easy targets and eleven million were sterilized. More than anything else during the emergency it was the brash and brutal campaigns of slum demolition and sterilization that turned the general population against Indira Gandhi. Loss of liberty, incarceration of dissidents and press censorship could not have moved the masses then as now. It means little to the toiling classes in India. Why Indira Gandhi developed a precipitous dependency on her younger son is not clear. Nor is it clear why she did not monitor him. The only reasonable explanation is that she felt lonely, distrustful of her own colleagues in the aftermath of the JP movement. Sanjay Gandhi

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stood by her and aided her in the most difficult period of her career. ‘During the dark days of the Allahabad trial, Sanjay stood by his mother. Subsequently, when she was universally advised to step down, he advised her to fight it out. Moreover, . . . the imposition of the emergency was such an unqualified success (from the Congress point of view) that Mrs Gandhi was beholden to Sanjay, not only for his moral support, but for his political presence too’ (p. 233).61 Some trusted assistants and well wishers tried to warn her about his impetuous and rash tendencies but later withdrew and some others truly loyal to her like Haksar even distanced themselves from her over Sanjay’s ambition and personality.62 The politician in Indira Gandhi did not overcome the mother and apparently, she never spoke a harsh word to him even after the election results, defended his role and programme to the end. Indira Gandhi was an astute, adept politician, good at sensing the popular mood; she would have soon recognized the remoteness of her government from the people. But she also felt trapped, politically isolated and alone in a situation she felt was not of her making and wherein her instincts were not functioning. She was deeply uneasy in her image as an authoritarian anti-democrat.63 On 18 January 1977, she announced that elections to Lok Sabha would be held in March. Only two months earlier she had got the Parliament to extend the emergency by one year. Indications were that she did so of her independent will and Sanjay Gandhi was not in favour, he thought his mother was ‘too much influenced by communists’ (p. 136).64 Simultaneously, all political prisoners were released, press censorship removed and restrictions on political activities such as holding public meetings by political parties were lifted and they could campaign freely. Mrs Gandhi announced elections barely a yearand-a-half after announcing the emergency. It was an election that she eventually lost to the coalition of the opposition, the very same assemblage that had been the cause for imposing the emergency. All opposition political parties came together to fight the elections. The anti-emergency movement, much of it underground, was to become one of the most effective movements to restore constitutional rights. It united the far right with the left and isolated Congress under Indira, CPI, and allies. Intellectuals, middle-

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classes and the poor who were experiencing the effects of an unchecked bureaucracy became united in their anger. The primary target of public dislike became the repressive regime.65 Prominent Congress leaders like Jagjivan Ram, H.N. Bahuguna and Nandini Satpathy left the Congress and joined the opposition in some form or the other. The new entity created by the opposition for the purpose of elections after the emergency was called the Janata Party; its founder was JP and its president a young man of 38. A brief diversion on the young man would not be amiss here. Some accounts say he had been contacted by JP in 1968, in America and was inspired to give up his job as a teacher of economics at Harvard University and return to India to work for Sarvodaya – a Gandhian movement started by Vinoba Bhave that JP had joined in 1955.66 (the control of Sarvodaya was taken over and later used in the JP movement.) The young Subramanian Swamy did return to India to work briefly in Sarvodaya by his own account. He was a vocal advocate of free markets, self-avowed pro-American, anti-Communist. According to his journalist sister in law (who devotes many pages to his Houdini acts, absconding from police and crisscrossing the country and abroad with the help of the RSS during the emergency) Swamy was already a Jana Sangh MP from Rajya Sabha in 1974. ‘After that he worked closely with Nanaji Deshmukh, a full time RSS pracharak at the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Research Institute’ (p. 128).67 How did he find his way into Jana Sangh nominations five years after his return? Swamy had quit his associate professorship at Harvard when he was invited to teach at Delhi School of Economics in 1969. It seems that the offer of professorship was withdrawn because his views were pro-market and anti-establishment and he was offered a readership instead. Swamy accepted a professorship at IIT Delhi instead. He then did a short stint in IIT Delhi. According to his sister-in-law he was dismissed from the IIT for his union activities and anti-establishment pronouncements. Of this union some two names are mentioned as members who supported Swamy during the JP movement and emergency days. Nanaji Deshmukh and RSS were known to have an ability to mobilize manpower and money (p. 130). Even newspaper barons knew that. As a Jana Sangh MP he joined forces with JP, in the movement against Indira Gandhi. Inside the prison where political and petty criminals were a mixed house there

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was one petty criminal who voiced his opinion that Swamy was working for the CIA (p. 111).68 Within ten years of meeting JP, Swamy was to become the president of the party that was going to form the government. More recently in 2013, he merged the Janata Party with the BJP and is currently a BJP MP. He remains to this day, for many observers of Indian politics, an inscrutable but powerful political player, his pro-Hindu views became more extreme with time and helpful to the RSS causes. He has been celebrated by them in return.69 To return to the events after the emergency, in the elections that followed, the Congress lost, got 154 seats out of 542. CPI got 7 and their allies All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) 21. Congress was wiped out in northern India. It won 2/234 seats in seven northern states. In western India there were mixed results. In the south, however, the result was different perhaps because the excesses of the emergency were less pronounced there, and the pro-poor measures better implemented. The Congress improved its position from 70 to 92 seats and Janata won only six in four southern states. Both Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi lost their seats. Indira Gandhi issued a statement accepting the public verdict with due humility. This did not seem like the strategy or disposition of an autocratic ruler. Yet, for many political observers, she was categorized either as a left-wing populist of sorts who spoke directly to the people overriding the party as an organization, or an outright authoritarian, who distorted the party and constitutional apparatus for her own political ambitions. Her style and rule marked some sort of turning point in the decline of Congress as an organization of collective decision making. It was a turning point in the use of the executive to override judiciary, introduction of curbs on media, on trade union activity and civil liberties. Evidence exists and is summoned to support these trends; comparisons are made with Nehru the greater consensus seeker. Yet how much of this was decline from high standards of liberal democracy in India were her doing and how much was in the making from the word go? Why is the loneliness of Nehru sidelined in the analysis? How much of organizational weakness came from the heterogenous make up of the Congress itself, its lack of ideological coherence and cadre? How much from the masses of poor, illiterate for whom liberty meant little, who waited for messiahs to this day and for whom democracy was just one

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day of reckoning every five years? How much was the deterioration a result of the electoral funds game?

What Followed in the Name of ‘Total Revolution’? Three PM aspirants emerged, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, and Jagjivan Ram. JP and J.B. Kriplani decided in favour of Desai (the very person who Indira Gandhi had feared would roll back socialism) on 23 March 1977. The new government at the centre dismissed nine congress governments in states where congress had lost Lok Sabha seats. In reelection there the CPM emerged with an absolute majority in West Bengal, in all other states Janata Party and allies came out victorious, only AIADMK won in Tamil Nadu. The centre also modified the 47th amendment repealing those of the provisions which had changed the Constitution and restored the rights of the Supreme Court and high court to decide on the validity of central and state legislation. They restored press freedom, ended censorship. A newspaper revolution that began at that point has been recorded.70 And some historians note that while the political system was being decentred as the Janata Party proved to be unstable, there was a flowering of various new social movements like feminist, environmental, unorganized workers, civil liberties that were previously neglected by class-based movements. In their view ‘Indian democracy was being deepened and enriched simultaneously’.71 But within seven/eight months the support for Janata party began to evaporate. They were unable to deal with social tension in rural areas where atrocities against the rural poor and schedule castes began to rise. This was because its social base in rural north India was mainly rich and middle-class peasants and large landowners belonging to upper-castes. The rural big and middle order landlords felt empowered with the new government. The rural poor, landless labourers’ belonging largely to the schedule castes had become less pliant over time, and had started asserting their demands for benefits and rights specially those they had obtained under TPP. Money lenders wanted to recover debts cancelled under TPP. Landlords wanted to reclaim land redistributed under TPP. The result was widespread tension and caste violence in rural India. Within four months of the new government formation,

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killing and torturing of Dalits increased in Bihar (Belachi) in 1977. For ten years after Belachi they were regular in recurrence, particularly in Bihar, the seat of JPs ‘total revolution’. This episodic trend of violence turned to mass violence against Dalits all over India. It acquired a new form in the 1970s partially because dalit movements also began offering organized resistance, e.g. the Dalit Panthers.72 In urban areas Janata party’s support came from shopkeepers, small businessmen and petty bourgeoisie. Here there was a rise in communal violence, and lawlessness and colleges and universities were particularly affected. Not just caste but communal violence was to escalate in the decades that followed, more about that aspect in the last chapter. Factory strikes and unrest increased. The Bhilai steel plant, for example, was one of the biggest industrial investment projects in post-colonial India. It was planned and built in cooperation with the Soviet Union; therefore, it was in the focus of party politics in the background of Cold War. Sixty km away, 20,000 male and female workers were employed in the iron ore mines of Dalli Rajhera (Chhattisgarh), supplying the steel plant. In 1977, their wages were around Rs 5 a day; most of them were hired through contractors. In the steel plant the permanent workers earned about ten times as much.The mining workers organized a strike in February-March while the emergency was still formally on. One of the leading figures of the strike was Shankar Guha Niyogi; he had left his job at the Bhilai steel plant to ‘organize in the rural areas’. After his release from jail where he had been put during the emergency, he returned to the scene. On 2 June 1977, three months after the official end of the emergency, Niyogi was again arrested allegedly for provoking thousands of workers to demonstrate at the police station and practically lay siege to it. On 3 June 1977, police opened fire on the protesting workers, and killed 12. That incident of firing was only the first of its kind in the first 100 days of Janata rule.73 Niyogi was assassinated in 1991. On 30 June 1977, all activity in Faridabad industrial belt came to a standstill. Thousands of factory workers downed their tools in protest of the death in police custody of Harnam Singh, a maintenance foreman, working in one of the leading companies of Faridabad. Violence erupted

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in many parts of Faridabad and vehicles proceeding to the capital were stoned, looted and burnt. According to his co-workers, Harnam Singh had been tortured to death by the police on the factory premises in the presence of the managing director, a sub-inspector of police, and other senior company officials. On the morning of 7 September 1977, Harig India, a machine tool factory located in Mohan Nagar near Ghaziabad, was the scene of a violent confrontation between workers and the management, in which two persons died, 76 were hurt and the factory was gutted by fire. The management was unreceptive to the charter of demands made by the union and had used security guards to thwart protests. Workers in neighbouring factories went on one-day wildcat strike in solidarity with the Harig workers, a crowd of 20,000 workers gathered next day. Most encounters ended in bloody violence. On 16 February 1978, over 120 striking workers of the Auto-Pin (India) in Faridabad were arrested on charges of rioting and arson, after they had defended themselves against armed security guards sent in by management to break their strike. All this violence against workers occurred while the arch trade unionist and stalwart George Fernandes (of the famous railway strike that set the stage for escalating unrest) was Labour Minister in the Janata government. In the middle of 1979, a wave of strikes and mutinies by policemen and paramilitary forces spread, the very things that JP had earlier tried to instigate before the emergency. Although this was a continuation of the industrial unrest that had preceded the emergency, it was clearly a case of economic demands still being firat ignored followed by repression. The period after the emergency also saw the general weakening of labour power, further fragmentation of unions. Congress and CPI unions saw a decline in membership due to the excesses of the emergency while right wing unions increased. The growth rate of the trade unions federated with BMS (affiliated to RSS) which was slow till 1970, accelerated thereafter, from 240,000 members registered in 1967 to 1.2 million in 1984; it had grown five times.74 (The trajectory continued. BMS membership in 2010 was 11 million while the left unions saw erosion). The 1980s also saw the expansion of the unorganized sector in manufacturing where labour laws did not apply.

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Not only was no radical agenda undertaken, but the neo-Gandhian mission of uplifting the rural poor was minimized and changed to a food for work program. Propertied intermediate castes in the Gangetic plain benefited as the green revolution spread gained more because of Janata party’s agricultural policies.75 Measures to augment and decentralize power for implementation of welfare policies began by increasing entitlements of village panchayats and holding elections to local bodies like gram panchayats, municipal corporations, and Zilla Parishads. Most of the power was captured by local elite. The most significant scheme for the poor, implemented by Janata party was ‘food for work’ programme for rural unemployed labour to be implemented by the gram panchayats. By 1977 when the emergency ended, India had a food grain surplus stock of 15.4 million tons, a markedly different situation compared to five years ago. It was decided by the Janata party to use this to create employment while building the rural infrastructure. But it was implemented well only in some states like Maharashtra where a Rural Employment Guarantee scheme already existed. The entire scheme was criticized by the auditor and comptroller general of India and the Planning Commission for not living up to expectations.76 Another scheme called Antyodaya was aimed at five poorest persons in every village to be identified and helped by the gram panchayat. Raj Narain, who took Indira Gandhi to court and was famed for being the only politician to defeat her at that point, got the Health Ministry. His main achievement was drafting a new health policy that de-professionalized, decentralized, and promoted indigenous systems of medicine. This was in sum, the outcome of the ‘total revolution’ for the poor. Alignment with the west (America) certainly increased. Through the 1960s America had shipped large amounts of wheat to India under the agreement called Public Law (PL) 480, the wheat was to be paid for in hard cash, i.e. Indian rupees at a continually inflating process. Part of these tremendous funds generated in India were ued to give loans to the Indian government and a part used to fund American cultural activities,77 both with the intention of getting a grip on opinion building process in India that eventually brought dividends. Throughout, internal bickering was a major preoccupation, the Janata party front was disintegrating fast, and by late 1977 the

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government lost direction and grip. Two years on and, Morarji Desai was replaced by Chaudhry Charan Singh in 1979 and his term lasted till the next elections in January 1980. Each group within the Janata party tried to expand its base and power within the government and country. In the ideological sphere Jan Sangh tried to promote its communal agenda via textbooks and own-cadre recruitment to the official media, educational media, and the police. Jan Sangh had 90 MPs, was the best organized and dominant partner. Along with RSS it maintained its separate identity and agenda. The final breakdown of the Janata Party government came with the walking out of Charan Singh (in July 1979) and the socialists over the issue of dual membership of Jan Sangh members in RSS. The collapse was followed by elections in January 1980 and the Congress under Indira won 353/529 seats in the Lok Sabha. After the elections, Janata Party split again into its components, with the old Jan Sangh leaving it to form a new party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Conclusion What Indira Gandhi was trying to achieve in her left turn was essentially to build safeguards against existing monopoly capital and the stranglehold they had dover the economy. There was no redistribution of land or wealth. By redirecting a renewable resource like credit to agriculture and small industry she was trying to build a wider, new class of wealth owners. There were some novel programmes directly addressing poverty. By no means, a radical agenda yet the scale and speed of changes probably offended existing wealth owning classes. By waging and winning the war against Pakistan she had upset America at the height of Cold War. Economic stress after the 1971 war and oil price hikes by Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries created a crisis in the domestic economy. An agitation was organized at that juncture and it took the form of the JP movement. Significantly, on account of its role in the JP movement, the emergency, and its aftermath, RSS, through its political front, experienced the benefits and reimbursements of political power at the centre. The decades that followed first saw the rise of several regional

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identity, caste, religion based political parties. With restored ambitions, a new plan and vigour to forge ahead, in 1980, the present political face of far right in India was also shaped.

NOTES 1. Indira Gandhi (1980), My Truth, New Delhi: Vision Books. 2. Ibid. 3. M. Pillai (2018), ‘The Complicated V.K. Krishna Menon’, LiveMint, 2 May 2018; Jairam Ramesh (2019), A Chequered Brilliance, India: Penguin, Random House. 4. Indira Gandhi (1980), My Truth, op. cit., 5. R. Guha (2017), India After Gandhi, New Delhi: Picador India. 6. Ibid. 7. Indira Gandhi (1980), My Truth, op. cit. 8. Lasse Berg and Lisa (1971), Face to Face, Fascism and Revolution in India, Berkeley, California: Ramparts Press. 9. P.N. Dhar (2000), Indira Gandhi, The Emergency and Indian Democracy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 10. B. Chandra, M. Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee (2008), India Since Independence, New Delhi: Penguin. Ibid. 11. Lasse Berg and Lisa (1971), Face to Face, Fascism and Revolution in India, Berkeley, California: Ramparts Press, pp. 93, 182. 12. B. Chandra, M. Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee (2008), India Since Independence, op. cit. 13. Ibid. 14. Indira Gandhi (1980), My Truth, op. cit. 15. J. Basu (1999), Memoirs: A Political Autobiography, Calcutta: National Book Agency. 16. Indira Gandhi (1980), My Truth, op. cit. 17. J. Ramesh (2018), Intertwined Lives, New Delhi: Simon & Schuster. 18. Ibid. 19. B. Sarkar, ed. (1989), P.N. Haksar: Our Times and the Man, New Delhi: Allied Publications. 20. P.N. Haksar papers, third installment, subject file 198, note dated 21 January 1968. 21. J. Ramesh (2018), Intertwined Lives, op. cit. 22. B. Chandra, M. Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee (2008), India Since Independence, op. cit.

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23. A. Panagariya (2011),‘March to Socialism under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi…’, Economic Times, 24 August. 24. R. Guha (2017), India after Gandhi, op. cit. 25. V. Mehta (1978), The Sanjay Gandhi Story, Bomaby: Jaico Books. 26. V. Mehta (1970), Portrait of India, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pp. 545-6. 27. B. Chandra, M. Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee (2008), India Since Independence, op. cit. 28. Indira Gandhi (1980), My Truth, op. cit. 29. P.N. Dhar (2000), Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 30. Indira Gandhi (1980), My Truth, op. cit. 31. R.K. Hazari (1964), ‘The Managing Agency System’, Economic and Political Weekly, February 1964, pp. 315-22. 32. K.N. Kabra (1986),‘Nationalization of Life Insurance in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 21, no. 47 (22 November 1986), pp. 2045-53. 33. P.N. Dhar (2000), Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy, op. cit. 34. The Hindu, 30 March 1974. 35. C. Kapoor (2015),‘George Fernandes: Rebel Without a Pause’, LiveMint, 26 June 2015. 36. H. Hill (1993), ‘ The CIA in National and International Labor Movements’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, vol. 6, no. 3 (Spring, 1993), pp. 405-7. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/ docs/CIA-RDP88-01350R000200420037-8.pdf; https://www.cia.gov/ library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560008-9.pdf. 37. C. Kapoor (2015),‘George Fernandes: Rebel Without a Pause’, LiveMint, 26 June 2015. 38. W. Anderson (1972), ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – IV’, Economic and Political Weekly, 1 April 1972, pp. 724-7. 39. P.N. Dhar (2000), Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy, op. cit. 40. W. Anderson and A. Pant (1970), ‘Student Politics at Allahabad University-II’, Economic and Political Weekly, 13 June 1970, pp. 941-8. 41. R. Mallick (1994), Indian Communism: Opposition, Collaboration and Instutionalization, Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 159-62. 42. P.N. Dhar (2000), Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy, op. cit. 43. Bipin Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, New Delhi: Penguin Books.

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44. P.N. Dhar (2000), Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy, op. cit. 45. New York Times (1973), https://www.nytimes.com/1973/05/11/ archives/indian-mp-demands-us-aides-expulsion.html. 46. S.R. Weisman (2010), Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary, Public Affairs, New York: Hachette. 47. B. Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, Gurgaon: Penguin. 48. V. Mehta (1978), The Sanjay Story, Bombay: Jaico. 49. B. Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, op. cit. 50. Indira Gandhi (1980), My Truth, op. cit. 51. Government of India (GOI), Ministry of Home Affairs (1975), ‘Why Emergency?, July. 52. R. Guha (2017), India After Gandhi, New Delhi: Picador India, p. 484. 53. Mary C. Carras (1980), Indira Gandhi: In the Crucible of Leadership, published in arrangement with Beacon Press, Boston by Bombay: Jaico. 54. C. Jaffrelot and Anil Pratinav (2020), India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-77, London: Hurst Publishers. 55. K. Nayar (1977), The Judgement, New Delhi: Konark Publishers. 56. Ibid. 57. C. Kapoor (2015), The Emergency, Gurgaon: Penguin Books. 58. C. Jaffrelot and Anil Pratinav (2020), India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-77, London: Hurst Publishers. 59. Jagmohan (1975), Rebuilding Shahajahanabad: The Walled City of Delhi, New Delhi: Vikas; C. Kapoor (2015), The Emergency, Gurgaon: Penguin Books; C. Jaffrelot and Anil Pratinav (2020), India’s First Dictatorship, The Emergency, 1975-77, op. cit. 60. G. Prakash (2019), Emergency Cornicles: Indira Gandhi and India’s Turning Point, Princeton: Princeton University Press. 61. V. Mehta (1978), The Sanjay Story, Bombay: Jaico Publishing. 62. J. Ramesh (2018), Intertwined Lives, op. cit. 63. M.C. Carras (1980), Indira Gandhi: In the Crucible of Leadership, op. cit. 64. V. Mehta (1978), The Sanjay Story, op. cit., p. 136. 65. J. Das Gupta (1979),‘The Janata Phase: Reorganization and Redirection in Indian Politics’, Asian Survey, vol. 19, no. 4 (April 1979), pp. 390-403. 66. https://www.ibtl.in/news/exclusive/1666/my-experiences-withjayaprakash-narayan-:-dr.-swamy/ 67. C. Kapoor (2015), The Emergency, Gurgaon: Penguin Books. 68. Ibid. 69. S. Subramanian (2012), ‘The Outlier’, The Caravan, 1 May 2012.

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70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76.

77.

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https://web.archive.org/web/20120504172103/http://caravanmagazine.in/Story.aspx?Storyid=1389&StoryStyle=FullStory; https://web. archive.org/web/20120828044859/http://janataparty.org/articledetail. asp?rowid= R. Jeffrey (2000), India’s Newspaper Revolution: Capitalism, Politics and the Indian-Language Press, London: C. Hurst and Co. R. Guha (2017), India After Gandhi, op. cit., p. 541. K. Satyanaraana (2014), ‘Dalit Reconfiguration of Caste: Representation, Identity and Politics’, Indian Cultural Studies, 21 October 2014, https://doi.org/10.1111/criq.12137. This chronical of strikes and events that followed is borrowed entirely from the Gurgaon Workers News, https://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress. com/workers-history/#fn3; https://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress. com/workers-history/#fn4; On Workers of Dalli Rajhara Mines: https://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/workers-history/#fn61. W. Anderson and S. Damle (2019), Messengers of Hindu Nationalism, London: Hurst & Company. S. Ruparelia (2015), Divided We Govern, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. P. Chawla (1981), ‘Food for Work Programme Criticized by Planning Commission and CAG’, India Today, 31 May 1981. https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/indiascope/story/19810531food-for-work-programme-criticised-by-planning-commissioncag-772930-2013-11-22 Lasse Berg and Lisa (1971), Face to Face, Fascism and revolution in India, Berkeley, California: Ramparts Press.

CHAPTER 3

Curious Case of Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan Unlikely Messiah

The Indian concept of life is that we are living in order to achieve our deliverance – whether it is called by the Buddhist term of Nirvana or the Hindu term Moksha – deliverance from the limitations of time and space – from the limitations of life and death, from bondage … Every individual was expected to fight his own battle, not with the help of the state. Every individual had to struggle in order to free himself from the limitations which his Karma, or whatever you call it, has placed upon him. –Jayaprakash Narayan It is tempting to see the JP movement as a reprise, at the all-India level, of the popular struggle against the communist government in Kerala in 1958-9. The parallels are uncanny. On the one side was a legally elected government suspected of wishing to subvert the constitution. On the other side was a mass movement drawing in opposition parties and many non-political or apolitical bodies. –Ramachandra Guha (p. 481)1

Introduction On 16 July 1977, in a glittering ceremony Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan awarded JP, a copper plaque. The citation read ‘We venerate you as the messiah who lead us to freedom from native dictatorship through a unique ballot box revolution in 1977, as we do the Mahatma who led us to freedom from foreign rule. . . .’2 This chapter is a deviation from what has so far been the how and

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why of events. It is about a person, indispensable because in a retelling of the past, the agency of major leaders cannot be brushed aside. JPs views have been taken almost entirely from his own writings, letters and speeches available in the archives of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library as well as published in book form. To quickly sum up events of Chapter 2, in the words of a historian, ‘Two crisis of unprecedented magnitude rocked India during the years 1974 to 1977. From January 1974 to June 1975 the country went through a turbulent period marked by a series of agitations – bandhs and gheraos, strikes and slowdowns, closure of colleges and universities, two massive popular movements in Gujarat and Bihar, that demanded resignation of state governments and dissolution of state assemblies’.3 The latter soon spread under the leadership of JP to parts of north India and developed into a movement for the ouster of Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. The disturbances led to the imposition of emergency by the PM on 26 June 1975 which lasted till 1977. The Gujarat movement began earlier and as he himself says inspired him greatly. On 20 December 1973, students at L.D. Engineering College, Gujarat set fire to the college canteen, attacked the rector’s house; they were protesting against the mess fee hike. The hike followed a hundred per cent rise in food grain and cooking oil prices. Two successive droughts had brought it on. Two weeks later they went on strike and destroyed college furniture. In the confrontation with the police there was the usual brutality. On 10 January, students called for a bandh protesting police brutality and price rise. It was supported by opposition parties mainly Congress (O) led by veteran, conservative Congressman, Morarji Desai, Jana Sangh and by a large number of Sarvodaya workers, who were associated with the Bhoodan movement founded by Vinoba Bhave and were being used increasingly for agitations under the influence of JP,4 a situation, which later led to serious differences between the founder and the followers and wrecked Sarvodaya but more about that later. Here it is sufficient to note that even the Gujarat movement was connected to JP. Sarvodaya was launched by its founder to secure voluntary donation of land to the poor. The student agitation continued, supported by opposition parties who expanded its purpose to suit their own agenda – dissolution of state assembly and fresh elections. On 11 February, JP visited Ahmedabad and lauded the students, ‘For years I

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have been groping to find a way out. . . . Then I saw students in Gujarat bring about a big political change with the backing of the people and the moral support of Ravishankar Maharaj (Sarvodaya leader) and I knew this was the way out’ (pp. 98-9).5 For ten weeks Gujarat was in turmoil and over a hundred people were killed, 3000 injured and 8000 arrested and ultimately the opposition succeeded. The two, Gujarat and Bihar movements are connected, as are the JP movement and the state of emergency that followed. By all counts they changed the course of India’s post-colonial history. The dramatis persona is JP. A case will be made here that JP had perhaps, come to occupy a position that surpassed his authenticity. The narrative that follows, quotes extensively from his texts including letters. It will also examine texts of others who have tried to understand him. It is an attempt to comprehend his position on important political issues and where he wanted to lead the nation. As it turns out it is not easy to do so. His position on significant national issues shifted through his lifetime, often going round in confounding circles. ‘JP’s odyssey in quest of the India revolution took from revolutionary nationalism, to Marxism, to democratic socialism, to Gandhi’s non-violence to winking at violence, to Sarvodaya to total revolution’ (p. 155).6 But it is also difficult to explain why a man in his 70s by 1974, jumped out of semi-retirement, to lead a violent anti-government agitation in the midst of one of the most difficult times for the country, unless the consequences of what ensued are reviewed with the benefits of hindsight and the episode is reread with evidence available now. One insightful source (more recent evidence) is available in the form of ten essays, one of which is by Bhola Chatterji, a fellow traveller who had questioned JP on many occasions.7 In search for the real JP, Chatterji examines the inconsistencies in ideas and practice occurring frequently, sometimes barely months apart. After the 1977 elections, shortly after the Janata government was established and his dramatic apprehensions about the state of democracy proved unfounded, JP declared that ‘his life’s work was done now’. From that statement in the press, Chatterji goes back to the 1930s pointing out JPs disagreement with Gandhi, followed by opposition to participation in elections and taking of office in 1935 to a total turn around on all those issues within

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months. JP was a Marxist, considered Gandhi a retrogressive force in Indian politics and said so publically. In the 1939 Tripura Congress midst the Gandhi-Subhas Bose dispute, JP took a pro-Gandhi position against a fellow socialist, then in 1942 during the Quit India movement, when all senior Congress leaders were arrested, JPs in opposition to Gandhi became the centre of an underground revolutionary movement as General Secretary of the CSP. In the 1948 post-Independence conference of the CSP in Nasik, JP discovered the moral imperative of Gandhi and the salience of means over ends. The deficit of moralism in Marxism upset him. Subsequently he dwelled on non-violence and satyagraha in various CSP conferences. But at the same time JP was the principal organizer of the armed resistance against Nizam’s Hyderabad in 1948 and an active conduit of arms for the armed revolution for democracy in Nepal in 1950s. Reexamining the past Chatterji is compelled to wonder,‘Were JPs choices those of expediency? Did he have double standards? Was there an area of darkness between his profession and practice?’ (p. 152).8 His conclusion is not explicit, but his doubt is the starting point of my inquiry. Perhaps the confusion around JPs purpose and ideology was by design. One is of the view that it was by clever strategy, not by coincidence, that in the period between, 1972-5 he set out to push back a set of policy initiatives that were basically aimed at circumscribing the control of capital and feudal elements – the left turn at the top described in the previous chapter. He shrewdly chose a time when external forces had loaded burdens on the nation, there was war with Pakistan and oil price had risen, droughts had thrown the Indian economy out of gear. Why did he do so? The alternate view that is far more popular, is that he was a very confused, benign old man, avowedly Gandhian in the last phase of his life, who perhaps wanted positions of power and influence but did not hold on to them. Hence he skirted the burden of responsibility and blame, a view perhaps, held by Mrs Gandhi as well, for as she desisted from taking actions against him till the very end even though ‘The [ Jayaprakash Movement] JPM acquired a large part of its political strength and popularity from the moral authority and political appeal of JP’ (p. 94).9 He had built up such a reputation as the last of the stalwarts of the freedom struggle, who stayed away from positions and

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power selflessly that it was difficult to accuse him of anything. He was repeatedly described as a staunch Gandhian Socialist by his admirers. But then again remarkably, in 1972 he was receiving and sending off telegrams to arrange meetings with members of the Jana Sangh and addressing members of the RSS as friends in his correspondence.10 He was in contact with these friends many months before; was making active alignment with them, allegedly to ‘preserve democracy’. He could not have missed noticing the role of RSS in the assassination of his mentor and ideal. Indeed, he did not miss it for he launched an attack through public speeches and press conferences that are documented in the Kapur Commission Report referred to in the Chapter 1, not just corresponding with the Jana Sangh but making room for them because eventually, RSS cadres were manning important positions in his movement.11 By March 1975, at the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Jana Sangh Party JP declared that, ‘If you are a fascist, then, I too am a fascist’ (p. 37).12 A few decades earlier he had criticised the same lot severely in public addresses. JP spent some months in jail during the emergency, in reasonable comfort it appears. He wrote a prison diary. His thoughts were penned in his prison diary in the silence of his cell after the heat and dust of the agitations subsided. One assumes they are products of a more thoughtful spell than his heady public orations for seventeen months at the helm of the movement. His account of purpose and events in this Prison Diary are quite dissimilar to comprehensive accounts of that period by historian, Bipin Chandra, P.N. Dhar (Principal Secretary to PM) and reports of the Home Ministry at that point. But the Prison Diary is worth reading carefully as the testament by a messiah at the near end of his career.

JP on his Purpose and the Appropriate Manner of Opposition in a Liberal Democracy A wave of student protests started in Patna, Bihar in December 1973 and spread to other towns. Following the Gujarat model, opposition parties (except the communists) called a bandh against price rise on 21 January 1974. A conference of student leaders from Bihar colleges formed a Bihar Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti (BCSS). The purpose was

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to fight for students needs including lowering of food prices, reducing tuition fees, more jobs and to fight against corruption. The left students’ unions stayed separate but did join the student’s struggle which turned violent by March and the usual cycle of police repression and escalation followed. Bihar soon turned into a battle ground and the army had to be called out and curfew imposed. By April according to a magazine he brought out, JP was invited by the Patna University Students Union and some student leaders of the RSS student wing ABVP, to lead the movement. Thereafter for a year, he was to stress the revolutionary role of the students and youth. However, before the 1971 general elections he had tried hard to unite the opposition in an anti-Indira, anti-Congress coalition primarily because she had formed an alliance with the CPI. In 1969 he had opposed bank nationalization as wrong and unwarranted.13 Soon he was speaking of the dangers of her authoritarianism being imposed on the country in the name of socialism. And by November 1974, he told a conclave of opposition leaders that the Bihar movement was not just a student’s movement but a struggle for a ‘total revolution’, which was to become the movement’s clarion call. The organ of revolution BCSS, was to form branches in every college and village. They were to set up village level Janata Sarkars in every village right up to district level and these were to become permanent organs of peoples’ power. This was the revolutionary hard work which never took off; few student agitators in his following had the commitment for such work. Most of the time of the leaders were devoted to agitations called ‘satyagraha’ in the Gandhian mode (more violently though) with JP making frequent use of the episodes from the freedom struggle to highlight the significance of his movement in speeches. Contrary to allegations of the government, JP said he was creating only a medium between the government and people through his village bodies (Gram Jana-Sangharsha Samitis and Janta-Sarkar) particularly at district level. Janata Sarkars were not intended as a parallel government. And of his purpose he said, ‘Here was I trying to widen the horizons of our democracy. Trying to do it mainly by involving people more intimately and continuously in the process of democracy. This in two ways one, by creating some kind of machinery through which

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there could be a measure of consultation with the people in the setting up of candidates. Two, by providing a machinery – the same as in the one above, through which the people could keep a watch on their representatives and demand good and honest performance from them’ (p. 2).14 He however added later (p. 21 of same Prison Diary) that the movement he launched was for ‘total revolution’. It is not clear when his aims shifted from including people more intimately in the democratic process to‘total revolution’ of removing Indira Gandhi from office. It is not clear if his youthful followers knew either. His post-Independence break from politics commenced with participation in Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan and Gramdan campaign which was supposed to take the Gandhian vision forward – it sought voluntary donation of land to the poor. JP had announced his retirement from politics to join this movement. But then it appears that his enthusiasm fizzled out. About the struggle launched in 1974, he said an attempt was being made to deepen and strengthen the Gandhian movement through a people’s struggle which would release ‘psychological forces’ that would go beyond moral appeals and saintly influence. Such an atmosphere of struggle cannot be conjured up at will, it is only when a large section of people, especially the youth and intelligentsia are disaffected and frustrated that conditions for a struggle are ripe. It is perhaps such a circumstance he found in December 1973. He said that he had always been bitten by the bug of revolution since school days. When Mahatma Gandhi gave a call for revolution and he joined it; after which he went to American universities to learn and earn his way through. The revolutionary bug took him to Marxism, national freedom movement, democratic socialism and Vinoba Bhave’s non-violent revolution through love and Bhoodan. This last revolution had attracted him because it aimed at transformation of man, and through man, the human society. But since Bhoodan, the non-violent revolution had lost all momentum, he was seeking some other way and using Sarvodaya workers for the same. Why had he not tried to use his position for improving the parliamentary democratic system from within (rather than capsizing it in the 1970s with call for total revolution against an elected government)? JP said that he understood the struggle for Independence had been a struggle to create an independent democratic state. He had been

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advocating certain electoral reforms such as measures to make elections less expensive, to make parliamentary democracy more democratic, and a better type of democracy such as Gandhian communitarian democracy or something like a mix of German (List) system rather and the majority system that prevails here. However, he never accepted an office of government (or responsibility) to use it as a platform for the reforms he espoused so ardently and perhaps soon enough lost interest in that as well. He refused offers made by Nehru. But at the same time, he often suggested that liberal parliamentary democracy was a western idea unsuitable for India. It could be reduced to mere casting of votes and rule of coterie, that it was as capable as totalitarianism or the ‘rape of masses’. So, what was the alternative? A ‘natural decentralization, a multi-central pluralistic state’ he said.15 How was it to be achieved and who would grasp power at the local level? In an interview (Hindustan Times, August 1974) he said that while selecting or endorsing candidates, the most important ideology should be honesty.16 What else was needed besides honesty? So, the total revolution that JP had in mind seems artless. As a self-confessed Gandhian, he did not think it was dangerous to make violent agitations and civil disobedience as a basis or means to change democratically elected governments. Nor did he expect Indira Gandhi to react in the severe manner she did. In the Prison Diary JP seems to suggest that the government in Bihar had been given enough time and room to involve the agitating students in finding a solution and the student agitation became violent only when the offer of dialogue did not come from the government and later when repressive measures like lathi charge and tear gas were used to quell the agitation. He felt that the lack of response from the Bihar government was founded on its innate corruption and arrogance; it did not leave any option to the protesting students. How a government was to deal with the ever-widening demands and agenda of his movement, discussed in the last chapter, was not his concern. As it transpired the Bihar movement was far from non-violent, it began on 18 March 1974, it started with a gherao of the Bihar assembly, and this led to a confrontation between police and students. Government buildings were set on fire, food warehouses were looted, mobs were rampaging, and similar episodes occurred throughout the capital; some

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27 people were killed and property destroyed. They continued till 27 March and spread to several other towns. JP took leadership in April. The movement was intensified further, JP made calls to render the government dysfunctional, to paralyze the economy with an all India railway strike under the leadership of his friend and socialist union leader, George Fernandes; violent protests occurred on other occasions as well. But the movement was not called off. Gandhi had called off his Satyagraha campaigns when violence erupted. But JP began to warn his Gandhian friends that if the problems of the people could not be solved democratically, he too could take to violence. Incidents like these occurred throughout 1974, and JP kept up his metaphysical deliberations about peaceful versus violent means and made some perilous declarations like, ‘A stage has now come when a flare up is a must’ (p. 182).17 After a meeting with the opposition parties on 5 June 1974, JP said that the parties had given him their assent to accepting total revolution as the goal of the struggle/movement. He added that he was not sure as to what extent they were committed and convinced about the revolution, but he pulled them along and pushed the struggle anyways (p. 26).18 Later he said he was not convinced during his tours that if continued, the struggle would spread all over India, but he was anxious ‘in the interest of the health of our democracy’ to break the Congress monopoly of power at the centre. Who would replace the Congress? The commitment of the opposition to democracy was not his concern. This was over and above his doubts about the opposition’s commitment to the goals of his concept of total revolution itself. Then why this rush to achieve with whatever means possible with the end of breaking Congress monopoly in Delhi! A monopoly which was by no means unchallenged in many states already! Regarding the validity of a call to civil disobedience as a method of changing elected governments, he said that normally the recourse to the civil disobedience was not a part of democracy but in rare circumstances like corruption, or repression of protests, the opposition was compelled to do so. Over this issue he fell out even with his second mentor and Gandhian, Vinoba Bhave. He and the opposition decided that the condition was rare enough in 1974. It somehow did not matter to JP’s sense of democracy that the economic woes of the country were

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beyond Indira Gandhi’s instant control or that the Bihar government, like the one in Gujarat, had been duly elected for a period of five years or that Indira Gandhi had declared that the next election would follow soon. He said that the agitation to remove these governments might be unconstitutional but not anti-democratic. A.B. Vajpayee (the president of Jana Sangh) also acknowledged that the movement was an extra parliamentary action. Six months later, his lawyer friend and supporter had apparently persuaded him that the demand was quite constitutional quoting some nineteenth century British scholar of constitutional law who was probably discussing the prerogatives of the Crown.19 But in an entry dated 6 September in his Diary, JP reflected that ‘there is no doubt in his mind that if the movement had not got mixed up with opposition parties, its educative value and character would not have been compromised!’ After coming out of retirement back into politics, he had no organization or cadre of his own, and was wholly dependent on allies about whom he already had some misgivings; and should have had serious apprehensions. The parties involved were Jan Sangh, Socialist Party, BLD and Congress (O). It is curious to say the least that a politician/public figure of his vintage would not have known that, the ideological inclinations of at least two of them was diametrically opposed to any form of socialism Gandhian or otherwise. Most of his allies like Jan Sangh, Jamaat-i-Islam, Anand Marg, Akali Dal, RSS, Congress (O) were conservative right wing parties, some deeply divorced from even the idea of popular democracy, a fact that some political thinkers to the left seem to have recognized early enough.20 Did the nature of the democratic crisis in 1974 justify an alignment with them for civil disobedience? After all, elections had been held in 1971 and would be held again in 1976. Indira Gandhi had repeatedly said that the next elections would resolve the question of the unpopularity of her government. His version of the events leading up to the emergency were rather odd but so is his reaction to the emergency given his repeated and audacious call to the armed forces and police to disobey orders,‘I went wrong in assuming that a Prime Minister in a democracy would use all the normal and abnormal laws to defeat a peaceful, democratic movement, but would not destroy democracy itself and substitute for

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it a totalitarian system. . . . But the unbelievable has happened. One could have understood such a result if there had been a violent outbreak and there was fear of a violent take over. But a peaceful movement resulting in such a denouement! What can people do . . . wait quietly for the next general election! But what if, in the meantime the situation grows intolerable. I don’t think in any democratic society the people have relied wholly and solely on elections to change their plight. Everywhere there have been strikes, protests, marches, sit-ins, sit-outs, etc.’ (p. 2).21 Chandra thinks that ‘. . . JP himself was not the stuff of which dictators are made . . . he was basically a democrat and had functioned as such in the Congress and in the Socialist Party. It would be wrong even to see him as an agent of fascist forces’ (p. 153). However, ‘The authoritarian or fascist possibilities also lay in the fact that, by mid1975, the core of the JPM, especially in Delhi and in the Hindi heartland, was provided by the RSS-Jan Sangh’ (p. 155).22 Moreover, ‘JP did not oppose the RSS-Jan Sangh penetration and domination of the JPM, and instead, gladly accepted their active participation even though he had been all his life a staunch opponent of communalism and communal organizations and also a sharp critic of RSS-Jan Sangh’ (p. 144).23 P.N. Dhar said that when confronted with this in 1976, JP said that the RSS had surrendered to him and his struggle for total revolution and at the same time he denied their main role in what came to be known as his movement.24 Was JP being used without knowing so? Was JP’s association with the far-right, RSS and its political face, Jan Sangh one that was pragmatically forged in the heat of the moment during the agitation to topple Mrs Gandhi? Was it purely a happenstance? Documents indicate that it was not. There was some urgent and direct communication between them as early as 1972. A telegram from L.K. Advani (a Jan Sangh MP) to JP dated 23 November 1972 from Delhi said, ‘Your not coming to Hyderabad will cause deep disappointment to us all. I urgently request you to reconsider and readjust programmes. Please make it positive’.25 A reply followed acknowledging the telegram and, ‘… As I explained to Nanaji Deshmukh it is impossible for me to leave Bihar at this critical hour. Hope you and other friends realize my position’. These were perhaps friends in need of each other.

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As the movement intensified there was direct communication from Jana Sangh to JP and the letters become increasingly respectful in their address. For example, the letter from Secretary, Jan Sangh, Bombay dated 30 December 1974, referred to him as Jayaprakashji while the later ones from Uttar Pradesh addressed him as Loknayakji. The letter from Bombay by Jan Sangh Secretary informed JP of the active role played by the Jana Sangh in the Bombay chapter of Bihar Jan Sangharsh support committee. It requested him to make time during his busy schedule for their local Corporators and MLAs, who wanted to meet him during his forthcoming visit to Bombay in January 1975. The intensity of cooperation only increased; it was apparently not forged at the height of his movement.

JP and Mrs Indira Gandhi In the Prison Diary JP referred to Indira Gandhi as the frightened lady of New Delhi who thought that the gang up of JP, Morarji Desai, Ashok Mehta, A.B. Vajpayee, Chandrashekhar, and Ramdhan was aimed at annihilating her and her family. He declared ‘I had always believed that Mrs Gandhi had no faith in democracy that she was by inclination and conviction a dictator’.26 Later in the same book, after he had probably read news of her announcement that elections would be held, he said,‘I do not find any such personal quality in Indiraji or in her party as to believe that her autocratic rule over this vast land will continue for long’ (p. 11). Some pages later he again declared that Indira Gandhi would hold elections only when she was sure to win, and that everything leading to emergency and after it was meant ‘to keep Mrs Gandhi safe and warm’ (p. 28). His communications with Indira Gandhi are equally curious. Revealed through his letters, there are some 22 of them addressed to her, over a span of four years from 1972-6.27 The first letter dated 19 April 1972 suggested how the administration might deal with the dacoits who had surrendered in Chambal, by a process he seemed to have evolved from a moral force through a peace mission. The mission he said was acting in parallel, as a back channel to the police. He was seeking, her views, the support of the administration on the matter, and a meeting with her to discuss the possibility of involving Sarvodaya

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workers in model self-governed ashram-like prisons (p. 13). Within three months he wrote again to the PM because a controversy had erupted about his role in the surrender of the dacoits. The Police Commissioner, Sethi seemed to have reported that JP was objecting to the fact that government and police did not want more publicity and film making of the events. In a TOI (11 July 1972) report the police commissioner was quoted as having said that JP had at a public meeting at Gwalior stooped to challenge the PM’s authority. The letter he sent off to Mrs Gandhi hastened to correct that impression while he went on to say that he did not understand why the government was not allowing public, press and filming by British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). However, he had already given an interview to Minoo Masani in the Illustrated Weekly of 11 June 1972 criticizing the government’s inhibitions on media participation and the low level of media involvement in the events (p. 58). He appeared to be a Gandhian in urgent need of additional media attention. Many other letters and polite replies followed on a range of issues like some freedom fighter’s pension, prohibition in Rajasthan, the north-east, problems with wheat procurement, and so on. He appeared to be establishing a personal and direct rapport with the PM. This was reciprocated; there are exchanges between Mrs Gandhi and him, solicitous inquiries about his wife’s health and letters from him on the issue of his wife’s illness. Later he wrote another long letter on her selection of the Chief Justice which overlooked the consideration of seniority which had perhaps been the convention. He was urging her to maintain an independent judiciary and create mechanisms of consultation with opposition and public opinion to select the Chief Justice in cases of selection rather than seniority as basis. He was not alone in his concern for judicial independence, A.G. Noorani, a constitutional lawyer had voiced it in an article.28 Her reply was prompt and pointed out that since his statement against her selection was already in the press, she was aware of his positon but since he had followed it all up with a letter to her, a response would be expected. She wrote,‘Dissent is indispensable to democracy, equally indispensable is the readiness to shoulder responsibility in order to fulfil the dreams of people . . . You have spoken about the competing rights of democracy and socialism. It has been

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our endeavor throughout our struggle and during these 25 years as an Independent nation to reconcile the two. I am perhaps more confident than you that we can achieve this reconciliation. Democracy, independence of judiciary and fundamental rights are not in danger. They would be threatened if we were to allow our faith to be eclipsed by defeatism and if we help alliance of the extreme right and left’ (p. 120). She went on to explains that such a selection was not against the Constitution but necessary to reduce turnover of Chief Justices, allow continuity of thought and permeation of more liberal ideas in the judiciary, particularly about the right to private property around which there had been much debate and confusion because the judiciary had taken a position different from the legislature in the preceding years. This issue again focused on the complications of policy left turns through legislations alone. Probably she also had wind of the convergence of opposition parties occurring around her left ward turn. Many months later, a letter he wrote dated 28 February 1974 indicated that Indira Gandhi had, at a meeting with her in her office, requested him to help her to reach some kind of amicable agreement with the opposition, which he promised to do, adding that, she looked very ‘well, spruce and charming’ and hoping that she would always look so. Another letter addressing her (4 March 1974) as ‘Indu’ followed. Here he said that he had been unwell but detailing efforts he had made in the directions Indira Gandhi had hoped for. He had talked to A.B. Vajpayee and had received a positive response from him in favour of an all-party solution to the national crisis under his ( JP’s) leadership and he promised to continue the discussions with other parties. Indira Gandhi, in turn had been inquiring about his wife and his health and so on in an apparently cordial relationship. But, behind this smoke screen there were letters flying out from him to opposition members on how to manage the Bihar movement and intensify it. Six months later, he was writing to N.A. Palkhivala addressing him as ‘Dear Nani’ making an ‘earnest request’ to him to fight the case of MP, Raj Narain’s against Mrs Gandhi in the Supreme Court (p. 337). Meanwhile the Gujarat and Bihar anti-government movement had picked up steam, the latter under his direct leadership.

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Then JP shot off yet another letter to Indira Gandhi (20 June 1974) accusing her of making insinuations (reported in the press) against his wealthy connections, and the role of non-party organizations like Sarvodaya without naming him. This he claimed she had done only after his threat of launching a procession, to be led by him against corruption, in Patna. The tone was that of hurt and moral indignation pointing out that she was ‘missing the meaning of the upsurge welling up from below’ (p. 307). She replied quite promptly and at length, thanking him for saying that there was no confrontation between them. She went on to add that it was difficult for her to know what to write to him since he had already spoken to a newspaperman and others stating that ‘all bonds’ between them had snapped and that he saw no point in having a dialogue with her. She added that reading the published account of his Patna speech of 5 June, his interview in The Statesman and his letter filled her heart with sadness. She argued the case that corruption was not a weapon to be used by the opposition but a problem to be solved by concrete proposals and their implementation. In the election process for example his notions of a party-less democracy was not practical in the present state nor were the people aligning with him beyond the issue of corruption. She attempted to explain, caution and help him understand her position. JP responded in July saying that her reply went a long way in restoring the personal relationship of affection and regard he had for her. He said his ideas went beyond party-less democracy to evolve organs of people power to exercise strict vigil over the democratic process including non-payment of taxes and land rents as a manner of protesting against corruption (p. 321). This letter to her was immediately followed by (on the same day) a statement perhaps released to the press stating that the PM had clarified her remarks made against him for which he was thankful. The statement also said the PM continued to make wild statements about the Bihar movement. He claimed that although he had never held a position of power or office he could raise large sum of money ‘. . . it is not difficult for me to raise a few million rupees for this movement or for any other cause. . . . In the past also I have raised large funds, including those for famine relief in 1966-7 in Bihar, and have never depended on any one businessman or business house’ (p. 322).

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Then there was an escalation of the Bihar movement, and a meeting with the PM on 1 November 1974, that lasted for 90 minutes along with Jagjivan Ram, Minister of Food and Irrigation. This was followed by a press release in which he mentioned her anxiety about the escalation and spread of the movement to other states and he identified problems of inflation, electoral reforms, corruption, and education and repeated the demand for the dismissal of Gaffoor Ministry. He stated that the movement would go onto the next phase with new vigour (p. 381). Compare all this with the letter dashed off to her from Bangalore (8 July 1972), congratulating her on the success of the Shimla talks and with Bhutto with a usual suggestion thrown in and ending with ‘I am afraid you are working too hard and I hope you will take care of your health. I am glad you decided to stay behind in Shimla for a couple of days of rest.’ In two years she could do nothing right! Although Mrs Gandhi’s replies were gracious throughout, they became brief progressively. She was in fact, convinced that the movement was directed against her, that it would lead to anarchy and political instability and that JP was working under the influence of the forces of reaction and outside forces.29 The game of smoke and mirrors lasted for about two years. The phase of kind hearted avuncular regard and counsel on different issues was abruptly over. The confrontation thereafter became direct. Thereafter a single-minded attack on the person of Indira Gandhi began, that was evident in his letters, speeches, and press releases. For example, in a press statement issued and signed by him on 9 January 1975, JP responded derisively to a speech delivered by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi soon after the assassination of Congress Party treasurer and minister L.N. Mishra. She had blamed the Bihar movement for having created an atmosphere of hate and violence. He said she had ‘whipped herself into hysteria’ and repeated the words again in the same document. JP first cast doubts, about who could have assassinated Mishra, insinuating perhaps that the situation within the Congress was such that it could well have been an inside job. He went on to declare ‘For my part I assert with full responsibility that the Bihar movement has been the most peaceful and orderly of all such movements that there ever were in this country, including those of the

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freedom movement’.30 He blamed the Bihar government for more than a hundred deaths, injury of thousands and imprisonment of thousands. This shrewd rejoinder in the press notwithstanding the facts were that mammoth anti-government rallies were indeed being held in Bihar, enforcement of three day Bihar bandh did happen and meetings were held in every constituency and in Gandhi Maidan on 18 Novembers 1974. Similar level of activities occurred in Uttar Pradesh, making the entire region quite ungovernable. However, observers said that the movement was dying down by late 1974. Indira Gandhi publicly addressed JP Narayan to ‘let people decide at the ballot box’. He publicly accepted the challenge. But repeated acts of violence from both sides continued. He cited these as a measure of people’s will against a corrupt government, but no charges of corruption were produced or substantiated (not even during the Janata Rule that followed). Corruption itself was a systemic fact, the real problem was how to build checks and balances against it and keep them in place. Decades after Independence opposition leaders pronounced their determination to root it out with convenient predictability. Much later in a speech at Sarvodaya Ashram he became more sober since there was evidence from the field that the movement was indeed slowing down.31 He referred to the fact that there was an impression that the movement was losing ground since the number of demonstrations had fallen; mentioned a few pending public actions but talked mainly of the need to organize students and people for Lok Sabha elections since Mrs Gandhi had thrown the gauntlet of using the elections to test the will of the people. But on 15 January 1975, in a continuation of the old strategy of agitation he said ‘as we approach 26 January this year, in Bihar we feel that the present government has no right to lead the people in celebrating. . . . In the country itself, there has been an unmistakable tendency to stifle and limit democracy. Fundamental rights of the citizens have been curtailed; serious threats have been posed to the independence of the judiciary. Attempts have been made to brow beat and control the press. Elections have been manipulated through the massive use of money power. . . .’32 He urged the anti-government movement to continue.

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Twenty odd days later in a press statement on Mohan Dharia’s dismissal (a congressman and socialist who had been calling for dialogue with JP) he urged senior congressmen to protect the tradition of their party, since a conspiracy seemed afoot to establish Indira Gandhi’s dictatorship. A week later, he was once again making a speech in a large gathering of rural folk at Aurangabad. He talked about Indira Gandhi and how she had spoken to him (on 1 November 1997) and refused to dissolve the Bihar assembly. On 6 March 1975, the Bihar movement activists marched to the Parliament. The tenors of the speeches that followed were less and less peaceful. Hence, the fact that elections could be announced soon had not mitigated his fanatical unease. It appeared that he could not wait. Perhaps the fact that the movement was running out of steam and the economy was stabilizing did not allow him to calm down. Then another door that was being pushed (with his help) opened up. The Allahabad High Court delivered its judgement on 12 June 1975 on the petition filed by Raj Narain (another socialist) challenging the validity of Indira Gandhi’s election in 1971 from the Rae Bareli constituency against him. The judgement found her guilty of technical malpractices, declared her disqualified for a period of six years, that was one more opportunity. JP thundered from Patna, ‘Mrs Gandhi’s failure to bow to High Court verdict would not only be against the law as found by Allahabad High Court, but against all public decency and democratic practice.’ At the same time opposition leaders sat on a dharna outside Rashtrapati Bhavan and continued till he returned from Kashmir (p. 72).33 The opposition parties did not want to wait for the plea filed on 23 June in the Supreme Court, for a stay on the orders of the Allahabad High Court. On 25 June, JP addressed that large and ‘famous’ rally at Ramlila Ground in Delhi announcing a programme of civil disobedience against a duly elected government and repeated his exhortation to the police and army to disobey illegal orders. On 25 June, soon after a call by JP that would culminate in a gherao of the PM’s residence, forcing her to resign, Morarji Desai said,‘we intend to overthrow her. To force her to resign by camping there day and night.’ Oddly such relentless attacks hurled on one individual seemed to

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imply that it was in her person alone (in the entire, massive Congress Party) that a threat to JP and the notion of democracy of his coalition was embodied or the opposition was convinced that Indira Gandhi was a lonely guardian of the Nehru’s socialist, secular and non-aligned policy.

JP and his Favourite Variety of Socialism Presenting Mrs Gandhi with a book he had authored, JP wrote ‘Dear Indu’, in an epistle (dated 4 March 1974), ‘You understand that my thoughts are somewhat odd, and I speak something sometime and something else some time. If you go through this book, you get help in understanding me – provided you want to’ (p. 250).34 This letter was written after she had met him and requested him to help resolve the confrontation with the opposition; he had promised to help and did just the opposite. Indeed, not just Mrs Gandhi but others mentioned earlier tried vainly to understand the logic of his ideology. Amplifying his ideology in the journal Everyman’s Weekly which he had launched, JP announced in 1973 that he was not wedded to any ism-whether left, right or centre (p. 151).35 In an interview given to the Statesman (15 June 1974) he is reported to have told an interviewer that ideology was a very deceptive word, what was needed was an end of all ideology and instead only science could answer the questions and scientists and economists could chalk out a programme, and common sense and intelligence could remedy all the social evils. JP’s socialism was curious indeed, positioned away from Nehru and Mrs Gandhi it is hard to define. But it would fall somewhere between the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and the Gandhian transformation of men into pure trustees of their wealth employing it for decentralized, people’s participation, community-oriented development with small enterprises. It would perhaps also stand against consumerism, in opposition to the tyranny of ‘standard of living indicators’, and fall into a third way an alternative category, but one that had no benchmarks, no clear point of reference. How it was to be achieved and sustained in a world deeply divided between deeply centralized (large scale produciton oriented) capitalist and communist alternatives

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was not a profound concern for JP. Having opposed bank nationalization earlier he said, state enterprises were state capitalism, elitism prevailed, and the basic social structure was unchanged. When pressed, he said nationalization might not be permissible in large scale utilities; even here other forms of organization might be invented and so on and so forth. He probably dismissed bank and coal, nationalization announced by Mrs Gandhi as mere statism. Socialists looking for a third way were wary of statism. Nine months after his address to the Rangoon sessions of the CCF (more about his long association with that later), on 27 December 1955, he addressed the second conference of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP). JP was a leading member of the Party. He talked about his decision to retire from active politics to devote himself to Sarvodaya – an organization that JP later used for his political movements and damaged. This address to PSP followed a split in the party; the PSP put up a poor show in the first general elections and his associate Dr Rammanohar Lohia had broken away. Two years later he offered a rationale in the form of a 54-page booklet with Vinoba Bhave’s introduction (a man he also fell out with later); it was addressed to his colleagues in the PSP and public generally. He began ‘The past Course of my life might well appear to the outsider as a zigzag and torturous chart of unsteadiness and blind groping. But as I look back, I discern in it a uniform line of development’ (p. 228).36 Therein is an account of his journey from participation in non-cooperation movement, his involvement with Salt Satyagraha, his quest for freedom, commitment to marxism and communism as a student in America. Then follows his disenchantment with the Soviet style of communism, not uncommon in the post war, post Stalin period. The Khrushchev years and exposure of Stalin’s methods must have added to the disenchantment across the world. Upon returning from America as a marxist he had differences with the CPI. The reasons are described in some detail. Even for the rise of Hitler he blamed Stalin. JP actively disassociated himself from the communist movement. He then got involved with the CSP, which had an alliance with the CPI till they fall apart. Then he abandoned marxism, reconsidered socialism, searched for an Asian socialism till he found it in travelling away from ‘materialism’ to ‘goodness’ and ‘Sarvodaya’. But for the longest time he

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remained closely associated with the CCF (now widely acknowledged as a CIA front), this did not deserve even a mention in his 54 page booklet on his ideological journey and ‘development’. Almost twenty years after he had described this ideological journey, his Prison Diary repeated and added other ideas to his eclectic vision. In the Prison Diary he said that the aim of economic development should be man, work for every head of the family and a minimum standard of living. Industrial development should take the line of medium, small and rural industry, appropriate technology for the scale. Ownership patterns should vary but be biased towards the small entrepreneur. Social ownership and trusteeship of workers in the large industry would be most desirable. He said,‘the Yugoslav model minus the dictatorship would be quite an agreeable picture’. At the same time in fact, in the same text, he said that the private sector should have enough incentives to produce, develop and grow. Unnecessary restraints, controls should be removed. All enterprises must be keenly sensitive to ecology as well as considerations of beauty and cleanliness. An assortment of suggestions followed but all curiously ignored critical issues of how they would be achieved or how control, national security in such a decentralized, nebulously structured political economy would be maintained. How was India to position itself internationally, guard against interference, aggression and the military technologies evolving the world over and being supplied in the subcontinent? How should it survive the cold war? From his affiliation with Bhoodan were added the ideas of Trusteeship of Property, ‘Sarvodaya’, voluntarism, of near-total or maximal decentralization, and against central planning. All this was essentially a confused, conservative agenda in the 1970s with a decorative, rhetorical veil. ‘Running through all of them is the radically interpreted concept of voluntarism, which Gunnar Myrdal, in his Asian Drama singled out as the pernicious feature of the soft state that pervades not only government but the entire socio-political structure and culture’ (p. 189).37 Such decentralization in 1970s appeared to be cloak for nineteenth century type laissez-faire positioned against planning, control of monopoly capital by expansion of public sector and against any kind of redistribution.

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As for education, there was a string of recommended topics for rural schools, about courses on agriculture, law, literature, sociology, book keeping, gas plant, gram adalat, hygiene, compost, bacteria, biology, urine-manure all followed each other in a list. This ephemeral description of curriculum was supposed to be the foundation for a third way in socialism. Various hopes, ideals, suggestions followed each other eccentrically, unsupported with facts or explanation. By then he was in his late seventies! It is quite understandable how this eclectic vision provided a complete umbrella for the right and far right and socialists of all hues. It paved the way for the far right which had been struggling previously. In this coalition, a segment of communists (CPM) was ironically to find themselves aligned with the far right. To this and other peculiar compulsions and maneuvres of the organized left in India we will return at some length in the 4th Chapter.

JP’s Horror of Communists, Soviet Takeover of India, the Role of CIA and America in the World and Asian Neighbourhood Generally ‘Of course, quite a number of congressmen are disguised Communists, they will go with Mrs Gandhi to the ultimate end. They have always been enemies of democracy. Right behind them is the CPI and behind it is Soviet Russia. Russia has backed Mrs Gandhi to the hilt. Because the further Mrs Gandhi advances on her present course, the more powerful an influence will Russia have over this country. A time may come when, having squeezed the juice out of Mrs Gandhi, the Russians through the CPI and their Trojan horses within the Congress will dump her on the garbage heap of history and install in her place their own man’ (p. 3).38 ‘It might appear from my letter to the PM . . . that she acted in the manner she has done when her position as PM was threatened. That only determined the timing. But I am sure Indiraji, the disguised Communists in her party, the CPI and, behind the scene, Soviet agents must have prepared a detailed plan for substituting a totalitarian system for the democratic one that we had until 25th June . . . first social

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democracy and then naked Communist Party rule under carefully disguised Russian tutelage’ (p. 6).39 His deep seated anti-communism found expression in his vocabulary associated with the McCarthy era, wherein Communists were ‘describes as stooges’, ‘cryptos’ and ‘dupes’.40 He read of the coup in Bangladesh while in prison. Reacting to the coup and Mujib’s assassination in 1975 he wrote that it was all the result of personal and party dictatorship that Mujibur Rehman had established in Bangladesh after independence. Rumours according to JP, were thick that,‘. . . at that time the whole strategy followed by Mujib had been worked out at Delhi by Mujib’s trusted men, Mujib also gave out excuses similar to those being given now by Indira Gandhi’ (p. 17). He went on to say that Mushtaq Ahmed, the leader of the coup against Mujib, could not have done it on his own. The CPI and Russian stooges all over the world would put the coup down to American imperialism but JP believed that Mujib’s dictatorship was the cause of the coup. JP could not grieve for him because Mujib had not overcome his difficulties to establish a democracy after his break from Pakistan. It entirely ignored the fact that the utter chaos that prevailed there was in good part a result of brutal Pakistan repression. JP knew most of the senior leaders of the Awami League. He knew Mushtaq Ahmed the leader of the coup at the time of the provincial government, knew him to be pro west and more Muslim in a sectarian sense than the Awami League. He added that although CIA and Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) were active all over the world, in India KGB appeared to be doing better and CIA might have got the better of KGB in Bangladesh, but added with some certainty that it (Bangladesh coup) was a domestic affair; it went off smoothly without much bloodshed and was not the result of an intervention by CIA. He wrote all this from the prison. It took many years of investigative research by a journalist to prove otherwise.41 Soon after the coup in the 1980s ‘market based reforms’, liberalization and privatization became operative policy measures in Bangladesh. To think that a few years before this summary judgement against Mujib, JP was writing to and lobbying for Bangladeshi independence! He was corresponding with leaders and with T.N. Kaul (India’s Foreign Secretary in 1971) and remarking on Haksar’s cautious approach to Bangladeshi leaders, who he claimed were unhappy with Haksar, Mrs

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Gandhi’s advisor.42 In his letters he claimed to be in touch with the ultra left leaning leaders of Bangladesh. In those days he seemed to want to hasten India’s recognition of Bangladesh. JP thought Anwar Sadat of Egypt towered over all other leaders of Asia because he spoke boldly and frankly of Soviet influence and pressure to accept ceasefire with Israel. America had armed Israel. Nixon had earlier visited Moscow and the two, USSR and America had issued a joint statement which reduced Soviet influence in West Asia. To give the reader a sense of the significance of that occasion and JP’s position in the Cold War, it is worth noting that on the occasion of the 40th year of Nixon’s visit to West Asia, the Nixon foundation website said, ‘President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger worked together with President Sadat to push Soviet influence out of the Middle East, thrusting the United States into the leadership role as mediator of peace. Egypt was the first country President Nixon visited on this journey, and the first in the Middle East to instigate a shift in Arab-Israeli peace talks.’43 JP often mentioned his belief that the secret cells of the PM’s confidants were pro-Soviet members and they had planned the emergency in his diary. He, an avowed Gandhian socialist, seemed to be much more panicky about the implausible Soviet takeover of India in the 1970s than the American interventions to topple popular democracies all over Latin America and the world. By 1970s chronicles of CIA interventions were well-known in the decolonized world. In the hub of the cold war, he seemed to have a clear partiality. JP seemed to be horrified by communist states, a horror not uncommon among socialists in what they called the free world, a horror that was amplified by cold war literature. He offered the examples of poverty in Eastern European cities. One is left wondering how he compared them to the condition of Indian cities in Bihar in his own time or how soon decentralized socialism and democracy of his chosen variety could help improve them. Unfortunately, he is as vague during his sunset days about the details, as he was in his early days. But there is one platform where he was quite consistent and involved (until it becomes impossible to hide behind the façade) and that was the CCF.

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JP and the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) in India A certain ‘CCF’ existed in India; the first country in Asia, outside of western Europe and America, to have such a Congress. JP was the Chairman of its first conference in India and (his associate) Minoo Masani was a pivotal figure. Its first conference was organized at Sundarbai Hall in south Bombay (Mumbai), on 28 March 1951 barely four years after Independence. Its plenary session met in the morning at the Library Hall of the Indian Merchants Chamber in Bombay, having been denied permission to conduct the conference in Delhi. C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar was elected to chair the meeting and the agenda was to elect members of the steering committee and the following were elected: D.F. Karaka, Minoo R. Masani (an MP and close associate of JP), Asoka Mehta (secretary of the Socialist Party of India), S. Natarajan (editor of the Bombay Chronicle) and Vatsyayan. Delegates from America and Europe arrived and they were nominated to attend the meeting in a consultative capacity. Its participants, agenda and content were noteworthy for reasons that would be discussed. The same evening, an inaugural session was conducted in Sundarbai Hall nearby, JP was chairing that session. The welcome address was given by Masani wherein he welcomed K.M. Munshi a Cabinet Minister and significant player in the cultural crew of the far right (he was a Minister in Nehru’s government that had denied permission to conduct the conference in Delhi,) and JP whom he hailed as the one of the finest and noblest of public men, indeed, one who was looked upon as the hope of a large section of young people. He then made some sarcastic remark about the establishment in Delhi which denied them permission, referred to the danger of a totalitarian menace which restricted the freedom of speech, expression and thought in India and everywhere in the world. Bombay apparently was the host of the last resort in India. Masani who gave the welcome address and the Cabinet Minister who gave the opening speech were both from Bombay and were able to plan to shift the conference from Delhi to Bombay at short notice. Foreign delegates included the following, Norman Thomas a Presbyterian Minister, an ambitious politician, a leader of the socialist

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movement in America, who often spoke about the differences between his brand of socialism and communism, and was an active anti-Stalinist; H.J. Muller geneticist and Nobel Prize winner, who edited a leftist newsletter The Spark. Earlier in 1934 he had migrated to USSR, but his work on eugenics had earned the displeasure of Stalin and he had to leave; Max Yergen an African-American sociologist; James Burnham an American political scientist was a prominent left activist in the Trotsky camp 1930s and later left Marxism to become a public intellectual of the conservative persuasion; Stephen Spender and W.H. Auden were both from Oxford and poets of the 1930s, Spender’s early career reflected his Marxist orientation; Denis De Rougemont a social philosopher from Europe and campaigner against the perils of totalitarianism and preservation of Christian values and federalism in Europe; Julius Mangoline known as an authority on soviet slave labour; Don Salvador de Madariaga a Spaniard man of letters, classic liberal, diplomat and Ambassador to USA and a permanent delegate to the League of Nations. These assembled foreign speakers either dwelt on or referred to the dangers of Soviet style totalitarianism. This galaxy of socialists and ex-leftists with some men of science was a front as one would see later. Mr S.H. Vatsyayan (‘Agyeya’ the unknowable, as he was known) was the secretary of the CCF, a man of many parts, associated with revolutionaries during the freedom movement, a Hindi literary figure with an extensive body of work, political activist, well travelled in his later years and associated with the Progressive Writers Movement, editor of many Hindi newspapers and magazines at various periods, some associated with the TOI group. Vatsyayan began by reading messages of greetings from abroad and within the country, made some observations regarding the significance of the conference since he was the editor of the journal which originally sponsored the idea of an Indian Congress of Cultural Freedom. Vatsyayan held forth on the long history of cultural freedom or freedom of the spirit as he called it, in India and the need to have no sense of complacency in guarding it especially in the wake of a dangerous idea that had grown out of the European enlightenment into Marxism, which linked culture completely with political ideology.44 In 1973-4 he was editor of JPs magazine Everyman’s Weekly. In 1978 he was duly

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awarded the Bharatiya Jnanpith Award for Hindi literature, when the (opposition) Janata Party was in power. So, the core group was like minded, consisted of handy associates of JP and the invitees who were worried mostly about the dangers of Marxism, Communism and Soviet Union. Some however were not as alert as others about the mission and purpose of the CCF. JP remained closely associated with the CCF for he addressed the next event too, this time in Rangoon on 17, 18, 19 February 1955. His friend Minoo Masani and the Mayor of Rangoon were in attendance; he spoke to an audience from various Asian countries about the threats to cultural freedom from the increasing role of the state, he referred to the division of the world into the ‘free part and the slave or totalitarian part’ and the mixtures within the spectrum, advising countries who were looking forward to shaping a political system after achieving freedom to stand guard.‘In my country we talk a great deal, for instance, of the welfare state. In other countries there are other ideals which have been placed before the people; but all these systems seem to be based on the assumption, on the principle, that human beings cannot take care of themselves; that there should be some institution, some authority, whether elected by the people or imposed over their heads, who should be given the power and the authority to look after the well-being of the people – their education, their economic betterment and so on. It seems to me that in thinking of all these systems, economic, political or other, there is a tendency to forget the human being – the individual who is, after all, the root of society’ (p. 47).45 He talked of how creating a welfare state, could translate into denial of freedom to vast masses of people and the growth of a totalitarian state. Instead, the basis of cultural freedom was a self-reliant, independent, creative man as the centre of the system who was dedicated to the good of all. ‘The Indian concept of life is that we are living in order to achieve our deliverance – whether it is called by the Buddhist term of Nirvana or the Hindu term Moksha – deliverance from the limitations of time and space – from the limitations of life and death, from bondage. . . . Every individual was expected to fight his own battle, not with the help of the state. Every individual had to struggle in order to free himself from the limitations which his karma, or whatever you call it, has placed upon him’ (p. 49). He spoke on three consecutive days on religious and

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economic aspects of cultural freedom voicing his faith in the transformation of man for Sarvodaya. The CIA had funded CCF to counter what they described as the Soviet propaganda. The CCF in turn spawned a variety of cultural interventions in the world of letters, this included magazines and journals. The political interventions of the CIA were rather well recognized even in the 1960s and 1970s. However, their activities in promoting the American view and way of life through the world of art, music and literature became better known much later. The details of these operations were uncovered gradually through books and papers, Saunders’ Cultural Cold War (1999) being the most cited work in that context.46 Papers like Sabin’s,‘The Politics of Cultural Freedom’47 and Sconti’s paper on CCF in Europe can be cited as examples.48 A more recent book by Whitney (2016) has extended the line of research to confirm the level of CIA involvement in India.49 Whitney’s research is based on archives that of the internal correspondence of parties involved in the CCF. A letter of one of the co-founders of The Paris Review (CFF flagship publication), from Harold Humes to Plimpton (co-founder) informed him on Humes having just learned from a third co-founder Peter Matthiessen that he (Matthiessen) was an agent of the CIA and that Matthiessen himself had volunteered this information. Whitney said, ‘. . . In an attempt to inspire his colleagues to come clean Humes cited an opinion that grew increasingly common as revelations of the CIA’s vast propaganda apparatus was published in Ramparts (magazine) and The New York Times in 1964, 1966 and 1967. Namely that any association with the super-secret spy agency notorious for coups, assassinations, and undermining democracy in the name of fighting communism-tainted the reputations of those involved’ (pp. 3-4).50 Humes pressed the point forcefully,‘. . .since this was apparently a formal arrangement, involving Matthiessen being trained in a New York safe house and being paid through a cover name; that without doubt the fact is recorded in some or several dusty functionaries files in Washington and all around the world that our hapless magazine was created and used as an engine in the damned cold war.’ Plimpton chose to downplay the concerns of Humes perhaps because he himself had ties with the CIA. These ties emerged only in

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2012, when several years’ worth of correspondence between Plimpton, his staff and functionaries of CIA funded CCF was unearthed in the Paris Reviews Archives at the Morgan library in mid-town Manhattan. ‘Indeed, the Paris Review was one of the CCFs many active partners that agreed to syndicate “content”’. Though, these were magazines not necessarily founded or run by the CCF, the Paris Review was indeed founded by one agent, but their editors were willing to work with the CCF on a slew of collaborations large and small . . . more than two dozen official magazines like Preuves in France, Der Monat in Germany, Encounter in London-plus, the lesser known Quest in India, Mundo Nuevo in Paris for Hispanic readers and Jiyu in Japan. These official [funded] magazines were conceived, created, named and even overseen by CIA officers who consulted directly with the like of CIA director Allen Dulles and a handful of other agencies or foreign intelligence officials about their editorial operations but unlike these official CIA magazine the Paris Review was left almost entirely to its own devices’ (p. 4). Plimpton consciously aligned his agenda with that of the CIA. Whitney mentioned a string of writers like Arthur Schlesinger, James Baldwin, Arthur Miller, Pablo Neruda Ernesto Che Guevara, Emir Rodriguez Monegal, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, JP, who were wittingly or otherwise drawn into the cultural propaganda and censorship enterprises of the CIA through the CCF. Some of them undoubtedly were drawn in unwittingly. ‘As such, India’s leaders refused to align solely either with the United States or USSR. Because of this the CIA sought to penetrate India. It would do so by using the local affiliate of the CCF as a foothold, and that affiliate would include Narayan and Masani among its members’ (p. 136).51 JP was not just an unwitting writer; he was to become honorary president of the Indian chapter of CCF. Whitney traced JPs progress and said, ‘What was unusual about the Bhoodan movement was that it was not only approved by anti-communists it was also co-led by a figure revered by CCF; the CCF has even put him on its stationery besides John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Reinhold Niebuhr. At the height of the movement, in fact, Encounter gave more space to Bhoodan with its Gandhian and religious tint and to its founder Vinoba Bhave than

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it gave to American desegregation or a long list of other important topics’ (p. 130).52 JP was a unique figure in the middle and late 1950; unique in that he was a hero of the CCF and at the same time, his involvement in a ‘redistribution’ drive however minor, was being praised by the CCF. Nowhere else did the CCF approve of or even flirt with the ideas of redistribution. JP in the 1930s as mentioned earlier, along with a few others like Minoo Masani whom he had met in the prison in pre-Independence days, had launched the CSP initially within the fold of the Congress for addressing issues of labour. After independence in 1948, JP launched what became a popular union in India in charge of a force of a million workers. The socialists then split from the Congress. His relationship with Nehru became increasingly fraught when the Congress party won the 1952 elections. Nehru invited JP to explore the prospect of socialists rejoining the Congress Party, but JP did not make that happen. Nehru was saddened by their departure, in his campaign speeches he praised JP, Kriplani, and rued the fact that he was campaigning in opposition to the socialists some of who were his old, intimate friends, that all of them were pulling in different directions and doing nothing in the end. Indira Gandhi however believed that the socialists were funded by American dollars 53 and JP was jealous of Nehru’s preeminence as a PM just as he also resented her being the Prime Minister.54 By 1955, JP went through another shift in his political orientation that made him dedicate his life to the Bhoodan movement that has been discussed earlier. In 1956, Nehru was initially silent in the face of Soviet invasion of Hungary and its accession, he spoke later. JP and the Indian branch of the CCF expressed their shock quickly. On 25 February 1956, Khrushchev as the new leader gave an account of the excesses of the Stalin period to the twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of USSR. The speech was leaked into the western press allegedly by the CIA which obtained it.55 Excerpts ran in New York Times on 5 June 1956. Radio Free Europe which was another instrument of the CIA played it up and helped to provoke unrest in Poland and Hungary. CIA had hardly any presence inside Hungary56 and Soviet forces entered Budapest. The Hungarian episode turned nasty with thousands of civilian protesters dead.

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Apparently though, JP had declared that he would dedicate his life lately to quieter grass root campaigns seemingly outside the political frame, however, as the honorary president of the CCF in India, he issued a statement: condemning armed intervention by Russia to impose its own puppets. He said that no one could question the right of Hungarian or any others including the Indian people to choose a communist form of Government if they so desired, but interference in domestic issues by a foreign power was to be condemned. His statements were carried in the CCF newspapers. JP’s anti-communism vs Nehru’s staunch neutrality became well established talking point among the intelligentsia. He took pains to underline it.57 Whitney said, ‘He became known as Nehru’s foremost critic, but he vacillated between his commitment to the poor and his role as public gadfly keeping in touch with political players and friends’ (p. 137). Nehru remained consistently neutral despite the best efforts of America. With the help of sympathisers, CCF kept trying to expand its influence in India. The editors of Encounter (the other CCF magazine) knew that India was mission critical and were told so by the headquarters. India was referred to as the last hope in Asia of the ‘free world’. The Paris Review, on the other hand, almost entirely ignored India and the developing world in favour of trans-Atlantic cultural alliance. To augment its influence and promote free world ethos in India, the CCF launched a new Indian magazine called Quest in August 1955. Its mission statement was recorded, for its funding agency the Asia Foundation, ‘Considering moral neutrality in the face of totalitarian threat to is a betrayal of mankind, the CCF opposed thought control whether concealed or active.’ Indian communists called it insidious American propaganda.58 Nissim Ezekiel, then a young and aspiring writer/poet became the editor of Quest. Nirad Chaudhuri also became associated with CCF. The western funders tried to control Quest through editorial orders besides directives to report on all the CCF conferences. In his second editorial, Ezekiel had to refute charges that Quest represented the American lobby. The third issue ran articles on Indian dance, poetry, music midst articles on India’s inability to buy more defence equipment and in praise of Henry Kissinger. Another magazine brought out in India was Imprint, this was by

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an International Organizations Division, responsible for non-intelligence gathering of covert operations of CIA specifically projecting soft power. It sought to project American literature, way of life, generosity and heroism, Indian poverty and recruit any anti-communist they could find. Alongside JP, Minoo Masani and others who were in the executive committee of the CCF included prominent socialists who operated all over India and opposed India’s neutrality. Masani, a former Mayor of Bombay and three time member of Parliament, was a democratic socialist who opposed monopolies, but none the less co-founded the Swatantra Party which was opposed to the nationalization of banks. JP was not alone in this mélange. Whitney said it was part of a view widespread in America’s CIA, that working journalists, in at least one newspaper in every foreign capital might justifiably do double duty as CIA agent so that the CIA may use the media in its many forms as cover and as a soft power for dampening blow back against its unpopular operations. Referring to their most famous magazine the famous Paris Review Whitney said, ‘Indeed, The Paris Review was one of the Congresses for Cultural Freedom’s many active partners and vast engine that agreed to syndicate content.’ The British answer to the claims of Soviet propaganda was also belatedly taking shape at that time. The Information Research Department (IRD) had been set up in February 1948 by Atlee’s Government. It was the fastest growing section of the foreign office. ‘We cannot hope successfully to repel Communism only by disparaging it on material grounds’, explained IRDs architect, Foreign Secretary Bevin,‘. . . and must add a positive appeal to democratic and Christian principles, remembering the strength of Christian sentiment in Europe. We must put forward a rival ideology to communism’ (p. 49).59 The IRD was a secret ministry of Cold War. It roped in British intellectuals whom it had used during the WW2 to build up a cosy ‘Uncle Joe’ image of Stalin – then a partner of the Allied forces. The main aim was to produce, circulate and distribute unattributable propaganda among the public. One of the IRDs most important early advisers was Hungarian born famous author and dissident Arthur Koestler; under his tutelage the department understood the usefulness of

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accommodating those people and institutions who, while in the tradition of left wing politics, perceived themselves broadly to be in opposition to the centre of power. The purpose was twofold: first to acquire a proximity to progressive groups in order to monitor their activities; second, to dilute the impact of these groups by achieving influence from within or drawing its members into a parallel – and subtly less radical forum. JP referred to Koestler as his friend60 just as later he was to refer to members of the Jana Sangh. The CIA had a bright idea: who better to fight the communists than the ex-communists or socialists? In consultation with Koestler, this idea began to take shape. Many such people were already lured into the state departments and intelligence circles, designated as a group – the non communist left. Indeed, for the CIA, the strategy of promoting the non-communist Left was to become ‘. . . the theoretical foundation of the agency’s political operations against communism over the next two decades’.61 The non-communist group was collected under the covers of the God that Failed a book with essays by six contributors who put together their personal experiences against communism. The Soviet propaganda establishment of the late 1940s was not so easy to overcome. There was need to create a permanent structure dedicated to organized intellectual resistance to communism. This was discussed in Germany, present among others were ex-members of the German communist party, officials of the State Department’s Covert Operations Wing called the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), and CIA agents. It was formalized in the shape of a large gathering in West Berlin of all ex-communists, anti-Stalinists, declaring sympathy for Tito and Yugoslavia and for the silent opposition in Russia and the satellite states. Funding came via Marshall Plan, which was a gush of fund for rebuilding war-devastated Europe, some used by the CIA. This became the CCF and held its first session in Berlin 1950. Saunders said, ‘Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs was so impressed by the whole thing that he urged the CIA to sponsor the Congress on a continuing basis even before the conclave in Berlin had taken place. For once, such optimism was not misplaced’ (p. 61). But since its first conclave in Berlin there were rumours surrounding the CCF that it was not the artless independent event that its organizers claimed it to

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be. ‘The grand scale on which the Congress was launched at a time when Europe was broke seemed to confirm the rumours that this was not quite the spontaneous, independent event that its organizers claimed . . . had so much money that he didn’t know what to do with it (p. 69). . . . Years later, Tom Braden of the CIAs reflected that simple common sense was enough to find out who was behind the Congress’.62 As it happened common sense was not the rage in India until CCF was definitively exposed in 1967 by western sources. Whatever goodwill the Indian collaborators would have enjoyed must have evaporated quickly because they rushed to express their indignation. JP had worked with the Indian chapter of the CCF since its inception, and wrote to his connected friends that ‘It was not enough to assess that the Congress had always functioned with independence. . . . The Agency was only doing what it must have considered useful for itself.’ His colleague, K.K. Sinha, wrote to announce that he was quitting the organization, adding, ‘Had I any idea . . . that there was a time bomb concealed in the Paris headquarters, I would not have touched the Congress’.63 It is difficult to imagine that JP had no clue about the funding. His name figured in the list of notables who contributed to their magazines. The magazine Encounters for example was linked to the intelligence world and lists him, as their sole contributor from the Asian world, alongside notable names in literature like V. Nabokov, J.L. Borges, Richard Ellmann, W.H. Auden, Arnold Toynbee, Bertrand Russell and Hugh Trevor-Roper as its contributors. In 1958, the CCF had organized a ‘western celebration of Tolstoy’. American intelligence had long had an interest in Tolstoy as a symbol of individual freedom and the CIA had funded the Munich based Tolstoy foundation through the contacts that the Tolstoy family maintained with the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) of the CIA. This eventually took the form of a lavish affair on a Venetian island of San Giorgio in June-July 1960. JP is listed as one of the luminaries who attended. Then in 1967-8 when there were public disclosures about the fact that CIA money had funded the CCF and its events there was serious fallout among those associated with it, and reports about that squabble appeared in the New York Times. Many people hastened to retrieve their reputation and express their surprise and innocence. The fact is that hardly anyone with some experience of the CCF was much deceived

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since it was a story that was widely discussed. While K.K. Sinha resigned, JP as Chairman of the Indian CCF wrote that he could not conceive how anyone who believed in freedom, open society and in the moral correspondence between means and ends could have thought it proper to accept funds from an agency of international espionage! By this time JP had been working on behalf of this front organization of CIA for at least 15 years. JP should have lost some of his Gandhian radiance by the time he plunged into the Bihar movement barely five years later. Somehow, he did not even get stained, he had long been an influential exemplar of the ‘saintly -idiom’ in Indian politics,64 his righteous image now resisted the international brouhaha over CCF. An astute media and public less overwhelmed with saintliness would have at least been apprehensive.

To Conclude The years 1973-4, therefore, were packed with both economic and political worries for Indira Gandhi’s government, a fact that was noticed internationally. A New York Times report in January 1974 had put India at grave risk from the oil price rise, anywhere from 50 per cent to 80 per cent of export earnings would be spent on oil imports up from 20 per cent. Cost of kerosene, the main cooking fuel had risen rapidly.‘Economists and Government officials were now convinced that the rising cost of oil imports placed India in a bleak position as the nation was beset by inflation, political dissension, lagging growth, a spiralling population and unchecked poverty. In the aftermath of the decision by Persian Gulf nations to double the posted price of crude oil, the Indian Government remained torn by uncertainty about 1974. Food production, a key to India’s stability, was expected to drop at least three million tons during the spring harvest because of the rising oil price and a shortage of petroleum based fertilizer’.65 From 1973 onwards a global slump brought on by oil price rise had the usual consequences for the working class with closures, layoffs, unemployment, rising prices but frozen wages. Up to the early 1980s, most developing countries underwent major economic turmoil, social unrest and extended periods of state repression, from Chile 1973, to

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India 1975, to South Africa 1976, to Poland 1977, to South Korea and Iran 1979. At least some of the problems in India like oil price rise and droughts were completely out of current domestic control. Besides India was just recovering from a war, massive refugee crisis. Food shortages were certainly a result of the internal contradictions in the development model adopted earlier, inability to push through any kind of agrarian reform, institutional or technological in the first three plans. In addition a rapidly growing population created an enduring condition of demand exceeding supply of food. This was coupled with the scarcity of other wage goods (basic consumer goods). An oil price shock had the potential to undo the economy. While, the north-eastern states remained highly volatile at Diego Garcia, not far from India’s southern tip, America was establishing a naval base. President Gerald Ford claimed the right to destabilize governments it did not approve.66 And given the complex antecedents and intentions and oriented leaders of the ‘Sampooran Kranti – total revolution’ movement, the response of the PM was conceivably either panicky or precautionary. Indira Gandhi announced her rejoinder to the activities of the opposition parties on 26 June and declared the national emergency. Soon after this the opposition movement collapsed with the arrest of its leaders. So, it was not as popular a movement at the grass roots as it was made out to be in the media. The organized working class, rural and urban poor, was not a part of it. In the later stages even students or the urban middle-class participation was on the decline. Large sections of the industrial working class were unionized and under the influence of the CPI which was from the outset, against the JP movement and its connections with reactionary forces of the far right. The underclass that provided recruits for the demonstrations disappeared when the organizers of rent a crowd were no longer there. A TPP was announced five days after the emergency to address rural poverty on an unprecedented scale. Steps were taken to raise agricultural production through more energetic implementation and spread of green revolution, to increase industrial production, clamp down on strikes, agitations and reinforce economic growth. All this

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was considered necessary to deal with the multiple pressures on the economy. Dhar said the adoption and implementation of these policies (TPP) became more feasible under the new regime than in the past, besides some of these policies were state subjects and many states had ignored them earlier.67 Indira Gandhi, however, did not use her emergency powers to set about implementing liberalizing polices that would stimulate higher growth to tackle poverty. Dhar who seemed to think these were appropriate strategies for ultimate self-reliance said, ‘She herself was unimpressed by the prospect of liberalization policies which were to put India on a high growth path, and which would ultimately eliminate poverty and make India a truly self-reliant power’ (p. 265).68 But she did not use her powers to push through land reforms. One suspects that there was no will at the state and grass root level besides the turbulence caused by bank, coal, insurance nationalization had almost unseated her. It would have been politically foolhardy to go onward. After all the state level Congress political leadership was still the entrenched in landed property. The emergency certainly became unpopular over time and excesses of bureaucrats, police were unreported and became indefensible. The economic policy that Mrs Gandhi had defined as her party’s campaign platforms so far also resulted in considerable apprehension within parts of her party itself. Reports seemed to suggest that it was the Ford Foundation sponsored, campaign for mass forced sterilization that became the central cause of popular disgust with the emergency. Indira Gandhi’s son Sanjay Gandhi got deeply involved in it’s over enthusiastic implementation. The major portion of JP’s funds came through the ‘Gandhi Peace Foundation, a ‘cultural center’ that also received its money from the Ford Foundation. Seventeen months later, in a brief national broadcast on 18 January, Gandhi announced the election and her ‘unshakable faith in the power of the people.’ She warned against misuse of election campaigns: ‘May I remind you that the emergency was proclaimed because the nation was far from normal. Now that it is being nursed to health, we must ensure that there is no relapse.’ Executive Intelligence Review (a journal that has links with the maverick La Rouche movement and to the US Labour Party) wrote

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‘This warning is well taken by the coalition front of opposition parties ( Janata Front), which in the pre-emergency period attempted to topple Mrs Gandhi from power through provoked strikes and mass disruption of the economy, in many cases with direct aid from the US CIA. JP, the opposition leader on the Ford Foundation payroll, called for the army to mutiny, which led to the declaration of the emergency in June 1975’.69 According to the report just cited there was a larger plot that included World Bank pressures on the government to forego independent development in favour of externally determined model mainly: borrow externally on soft or hard terms, earn foreign exchange to pay the foreign debt. Indira Gandhi saw it as a convergence of the forces of reaction and imperialism at the height of the Cold War in India. She claimed that there had been ‘growth of subterranean foreign influences in Indian politics and of deep penetration of the country’s institutions, bureaucracy, and political leadership . . . by foreign intelligence agencies . . . RSS’s influence over the JP movement . . . its penetration of army, police and bureaucracy. . . ’ (p. 5).70 Calling for JP’s release from prison immediately after his arrest was Willy Brandt (leader of Social Democratic Party), Chancellor of West Germany 1969-74 (pro-America) and later Chairman of the Socialist International, suspected to be close to American intelligence agencies. The Communist party of India was persuaded that JP and George Fernandes had direct links with the CIA.71 Soon after the Janata victory, New York Times and Washington Post wrote that American strategists were salivating at the prospect of a China-India-America alliance against USSR. They thought that the Janata victory represented something of a windfall for Washington DC.72 Whatever the truth might be about the 1970s, Indira Gandhi’s version does not seem too improbable now, given the evidence at hand. Nor are the after effects of the JP movement and resulting emergency unbelievable today, they consolidated the right and far right wing. They surround us today, calling us to consider her view. Interestingly, the Shah Commission of Inquiry set up by the Janata government, was given terms of reference that included misuse of authority and subversion of lawful process during the emergency but

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there has been no inquiry about the circumstances that led to the emergency.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

R. Guha (2017), India After Gandhi, New Delhi: Picador India. Amrit Bazar Patrika, 7 July 1977. B. Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, Gurgaon: Penguin Books. Ibid. J. Narayan (1978), Towards Total Revolution, vol. IV. G. Ostergaard (1985), ’The Ambiguous Strategy of JPs Last Phase’, in D. Selbourne (ed.), In Theory and in Practice, Delhi: Oxford University Press. D. Selbourne, ed. (1985), In Theory and in Practice, Delhi: Oxford University Press. B. Chaterji (1985), ‘In Pursuit of the Real Jayaprakash Narayan’, in D. Selbourne (ed.), In Theory and in Practice, Delhi: Oxford University Press. B. Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, op. cit. J.P. Narayan Correspondence, III installment, NMML Archives, Telegram, 23 November 1972. G. Shah (1977), Protest Movements in Two Indian States: A Study of the Gujarat and Bihar Movements, New Delhi: Ajanta Books. GOI, Ministry of Home Affairs (1975), Why Emergency? B. Chatterji (1984), Conflict in JPs Politics, New Delhi: Ankur Publishing House. J. Narayan (1977), Prison Diary 1975, Bombay: Popular Prakashan. J. Narayan (1978), ‘Total Revolution’, in Brahmananda (ed.), Towards Total Revolution, Bombay: Popular Prakashan. B. Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, op. cit. Mary C. Carras (1980), Indira Gandhi: In the Crucible of Leadership, Bombay: published in arrangement with Beacon Press, Boston by Jaico. J. Narayan (1977), Prison Diary 1975, op. cit. Mary C. Carras (1980), Indira Gandhi: In the Crucible of Leadership, op. cit. A. Roy (1981), Political Power in India: Nature and Trends, Calcutta: Naya Prokash. J. Narayan (1977), Prison Diary 1975, op. cit. B. Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, op. cit. Ibid.

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24. P.N. Dhar (2000), Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 25. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Archives, Jayaprakash Narayan, III Installment, Correspondence L.K. Advani, Telegram 23-11-72. 26. J. Narayan (1977), Prison Diary 1975, Bombay: Popular Prakashan. 27. B. Prasad (2007), Jayaprakash Narayan, Selected Works, vol. 7, New Delhi: Manohar. 28. A.G. Noorani (1974), ‘Crisis in India’s Judiciary’, Imprint , January 1974. 29. B. Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, Gurgaon: Penguin Books. 30. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Archives, Jayaprakash Narayan, III Installment, Speeches/Writings and Articles, serial no. 232, p. 2. 31. Ibid., serial no. 231, p. 2. 32. Ibid., serial no 232, p. 2. 33. P. Mukherjee (2015), The Dramatic Decade, New Delhi: Rupa Publications. 34. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Archives, op. cit. 35. B. Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, op. cit. 36. B. Prasad (2007), Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, vol. 7, New Delhi: Manohar. 37. Mary C. Carras (1980), Indira Gandhi: In the Crucible of Leadership, op. cit. 38. J. Narayan (1977), Prison Diary 1975, op. cit. 39. Ibid. 40. B. Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, op. cit. 41. L. Lifschultz (1979), Bangladesh: The Unfinished Revolution, London: Zed Books; L. Lifschultz (2005), ‘The Past is Never Dead: The Long Shadow of the August 1975 Coup’, The Daily Star, vol. 5, # 434, 15 August 2005. 42. J. Ramesh (2018), Intertwined Lives, New Delhi: Simon & Schuster. 43. https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2014/06/6-12-74-toasts-presidentnixon-president-anwar-el-sadat-egypt/ 44. Indian Congress for Cultural Freedom (1951), Proceedings 28 March -31, Kannada Press, Poddar Chambers, Bombay 45. B. Prasad (2007), Jayaprakash Narayan: Selected Works, op. cit. 46. F.S. Saunders (1999), The Cultural Cold War, New York: The New Press. 47. M. Sabin (1995), ‘The Politics of Cultural Freedom: Indian in the 1950s’, Raritan, 1 March 1995, pp. 45-65. 48. A. Scointi (2020), ‘I Am Afraid Americans Cannot Understand: The Congress for Cultural Freedom in France and Italy, 1950-1957’, Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 22, issue 1, Winter 2020, pp. 89-124.

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49. J. Whitney (2016), Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, New York: OR Books. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. R. Guha (2017), India After Gandhi, op. cit., p. 139. 54. P. Jayakar (1988), Indira Gandhi: A Biography. 55. M. Holzman (2008), James Jesus Angleton: The CIA and Craft of Counter Intelligence, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. 56. E. Thomas (1995 ), The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Days of the CIA, New York: Simon & Schuster. 57. J. Narayan (1956), ‘Nehru and Hungary’s Revolt’, The New Leader, 17 November 1956. 58. F.S. Saunders (1999), The Cultural Cold War, New York: The New Press. 59. J. Whitney (2016), Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, op. cit. 60. D. Selbourne (1985), ‘A Political Morality Reexamined’, in Selbourne (ed.), In Theory and in Practice, Delhi: Oxford University Press. 61. M. Warner (1955), ‘Origin of the Congress for Cultural Freedom’, Studies in Intelligence 38, no. 5 (Summer 1995). 62. F.S. Saunders (1999), The Cultural Cold War, New York: The New Press. 63. https://thewire.in/116189/cia-sponsored-indian-magazinesengaged-indias-best-writers/ 64. R. Guha (2017), India After Gandhi, op. cit., p. 492. 65. B. Weintraub (1974), ‘India, Slow to Grasp Oil Crisis, Now Fears Severe Economic Loss’, 20 January, New York Times. 66. Mary C. Carras (1980), Indira Gandhi: In the Crucible of Leadership, op. cit. 67. P.N. Dhar (2000), Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 68. Ibid. 69. Executive Intelligence Review (1977), Asia, pp. 55-6, vol. 4, no. 5. 70. B. Chandra (2003), In the Name of Democracy, op. cit. 71. Executive Intelligence Review (1977), op. cit. 72. B.R. Nayar (1977), ‘India and the Super Powers . . . ’, Economic and Political Weekly, 23 July 1977.

CHAPTER 4

Gradualism, Marginal Redistribution Confusion on the Left, Consolidation on the Right

Pandit Nehru has complained that China has unity while India lacks it. He should know why there is unity in China. Because, the people there are united to sweep away the obstacles that stand in the path of China’s advance towards the happiness of the masses; Chiang Kai-shek, despite his talk of unity could not achieve it because he was anxious to preserve those very things which prevented the improvement of the lot of the people . . . the mass of people cannot be united behind a policy which seeks to perpetuate the atrocious exploitation by the foreign and Indian vested interest. –Ajoy Ghosh: Communist Answer to Pandit Nehru An objective illusion may arise from what we can see from our particular position – how things look from there (no matter how misleading). Consider the relative sizes of the sun and the moon, and the fact that from the earth they look to be about the same size. . . . But to conclude from this observation that the sun and the moon are in fact of the same size in terms of mass or volume would be mistaken, and yet to deny that they do look to be about the same size from the earth would be a mistake too. –Amartya Sen1

Introduction To recapitulate Chapter 2; Mrs Gandhi turned to the left and undertook political and legislative maneuvres to push that agenda. Her left turn was more radical than Nehru’s who was perhaps far more preoccupied

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with difficulties of establishing liberal democratic institutions and maintain political unity in the aftermath of 200 years of colonial rule, one that ended in a bloody and chaotic Partition. Conceivably, gradualism and caution had been overdone in the 1950s and 1960s and some reforms that could have preceded her tenure had not happened during Nehru’s tenure, agrarian reforms being the principle issue. Her legislations included circumscribing the power of monopoly capital particularly in banking, insurance by nationalizing them, mineral resources and so on. Bank nationalization was also done to include smaller producers and farmers in the financial system and increase the production of food. The success of the Green Revolution was based on introduction of new seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, and credit in agriculture. Credit expansion and inputs of Green Revolution went to the land owning class. This was perhaps an essential supply side stimulus even though it was an adequate response to precarious food situation from the demand side. It was the only way forward from where Indira Gandhi found India. The situation was so dire that earlier, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had appealed to the nation to fast once a week to cope with it. Nationalization of natural resources like coal, coking coal; smaller shipping enterprises, gold and copper mining, and 46 textile mills followed. Earlier, a single holding company would control steel and associated industries. The management of Indian Iron and Steel Company (IISCO) owned by Martin Burn and the third largest business house in India was taken over in August 1972 without compensation. In 1973, the government also decided to take over wholesale trade in wheat and rice to deal with hoarding and speculation in scarce food grain (which had to be withdrawn in a year). The comprehensive anti-poverty agenda initiated was not a radical one. Given the scale of the problem it was merely a beginning, half the population was below the poverty line. But as a policy bundle it was nevertheless more radical compared to what had occurred before. Further, electoral victories of 1971 in the Parliament and 1972 in states seemed to reaffirm not just Indira Gandhi’s personal popularity but her agenda and campaign slogan ‘garibi hatao’. Her political opponents seemed to be marginalized. She proceeded to redeem the agenda and began with the Supreme Court, which had blocked her progressive

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policies for so long. In August 1971 the twenty-fourth amendment to the Constitution was passed affirming the right of the Parliament to amend even the fundamental right where the main contestation was over property rights, the Swatantra Party and Jana Sangh had continued to oppose it (mentioned in Chapter 2). Thus the irksome Golaknath judgment was defeated. The twenty-fifth amendment was passed in December 1971; Parliament’s power to establish guidelines for compensation payable when state acquired, or requisitioned property was not subject to judicial review. This had stalled the bank nationalization process earlier. This would enable other legislations that were designed to prevent concentration of economic wealth and power in accordance with the directive principles. Similarly, by 1972 the privy purses of the former princes were abolished. Twenty-sixth amendment passed in December 1971, which enabled this was vehemently opposed by the Swatantra Party and Jana Sangh. The twenty-ninth amendment in May 1972 included Kerala’s Land Reform Act in the ninth schedule of the Constitution to protect it from judicial challenge based on infringement of fundamental rights. Five constitutional amendments in two years reflected her commitment to her agenda. To protect her government’s progressive legislations, she appointed a like minded chief justice revoking the earlier practice of promoting the seniormost judges to the position. This resulted in the resignation of three senior judges and antagonized some in the profession. Also, it gave the opposition a handle against her. Mary Carras, who accompanied her electoral campaign, said that by 1972 in all her state election tours Indira Gandhi repeated that many of the 1971 pledges were redeemed.2 Unfortunately, too soon, to the economic cost of 1971 war were added two successive droughts, and more than doubling of petroleum price by OPEC. These resulted in food shortages by 1974, and social unrest. It was in this situation of multiple predicaments that the limitations of Indira Gandhi’s socialism by legislation alone became obvious. Both, the lack of a strong all India cadre based party organizations (dedicated to implementing a progressive agenda) and the travails of competitive electoral politics in a backward social milieu (plagued by ignorance, conservatism and resistance to change), proved to be an obstacle. All

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of it came to haunt her and she found herself quite alone. Even after the constitutional amendments of 1972, there was little follow up on land reforms. Agriculture was a state subject and Indira Gandhi said in an interview ‘. . . one can only bully state leaders so much and no more’ (p. 152).3 State leaders would not lend support to an amendment making land reforms a central subject either. For the problems in implementation, Indira Gandhi had no answer. Based on interviews with Indira Gandhi, Carras says ‘. . . clearly the problems of her political personality; the tendency towards very gradual reform; dim awareness of inherent contradictions between the imperatives of democratic procedure and socialist revolution; and reluctance to disturb the party organization on which her political and government power rested but of whose inadequacies she was painfully aware’ (p. 153).4 Imaginably, these constraints would have slowed down Nehru as well, triple inadequacies one within the Congress party, as largely consisting of land owning, conservative leaders with their respective regional and caste following, second, the constraints of frequent elections in an increasingly competitive liberal democracy, third, the problem of resource mobilization for public sector within the ‘mixed economy’ model. In India where already the economic divide between the haves and have nots was very deep since pre-Independence, issues of taxing the rich were very contentious. Indira Gandhi spoke of persuasion and legislation as a tool of restructuring social and economic relations in favour of greater social justice but in the absence of adequate number of like minded influential people who could help her do the persuasion, she had to rely essentially on legislation in the early 1970s. She did recognize that Congress had to become more than a vote gathering machine and pay more attention to field work and mass contact. Efforts in that direction began in 1969 at an AICC session in Bombay. Carras says that three years later the head of the AICC cadre building department (devoted to building an army of dedicated cadre) said that state Congress units had resisted the programme for fear that an alternate power base would be created inside their turf. Having got rid of the stalwarts (Syndicate), the party had however absorbed their protégés in the bloc at district and state levels thereby creating another right leaning lower flank within. But exigencies of the

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frequent elections perhaps make such decisions necessary for electoral survival. It does not allow for a long-term plan and procedure. Another problem was the increasing urban bias; too many urban upper-class members were inducted in the cadre building process and they were poorly informed about rural problems, processes, and possible solutions. The need of the hour was for creating a cadre of the poor to safeguard their own interests. These camps for cadre building were, hence, not remarkably successful. Nothing much was heard of them till late 1974 when they were revived to counter the threat of the JP movement. Even after that, gap between professions and deeds of many Congress leaders continued and they failed to create a solid cadre base for the party. There were rumours of corruption, yet such were the compulsions of elections that Commissions of Inquiry against political leaders were unheard of. This led to rampant rumours, only some of them would have been based on reality. Her government had failed to pass a bill, pending since 1968, for setting up an independent Lok Pal at national level and Lok Ayukta at state level. Something we still have not managed to do in 2020. This would have gone a long way in enforcing a cleaner accountable government while taking the wind out of the rumours. A report discussed at the AICC central training camp at Narora is important to mention. This background paper on the rural poor noted that the number of agricultural labourers as a proportion of the total population had increased from 16.71 per cent in 1961 to 25.76 per cent in 1971. The increase was a result of evictions that followed tenancy reform legislation. Despite the fact in all the states, enforcing land to tiller was not a general reality. Landlords everywhere acted swiftly and took back land from sharecroppers, often taking advantage of legal loopholes. The latter were too afraid, too ignorant, and ill prepared to resist the eviction. Nearly two-third of the agricultural households were indebted to their employers-cum-landowners. Only in Kerala and West Bengal, the communist governments were more successful in redistributing land – a success attributable to availability of a large, committed party cadre. Obviously, Congress state governments were not raising cadres to help tenants. Further, per capita earnings were extremely low. In the approach paper to the fifth five year plan the planning commission’s estimate was that the absolute number of people below the poverty line was just as

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large as twenty years ago (population was also exploding).These abjectly poor, were estimated to constitute between 40 to 50 per cent of country’s population. For these abjectly poor, food insecurity was a tangible issue. Benefits of cooperative credit, fertilizers, improved seeds and agricultural development had gone to the upper crust rather than the lowest that needed it the most. The gap between the rural rich and poor had widened. These were issues confronting the Congress party as a political organization and one that they should have seized and arrested. But, another major issue (not discussed in the report mentioned above) in a mixed economy is one of resource mobilization, taxation of the rich and hence politically influential, is considered another antagonistic issue and domestic resources outside the rich class are scarce. Inevitably the resource strapped state must turn towards external resources. The design of dependence on foreign aid and investment was well documented by the 1960s. So, when America suspended aid following war with Pakistan in 1965 there was a crisis. This came with American and World Bank pressure to devalue the rupee and liberalize the economy along western capitalist lines. ‘Food for Freedom’ shipments were to be approved monthly during the height of India’s worst droughts. Percentage of external assistance as proportion of total plan resources was at 28.2 per cent during the third plan. It fell to 12.9 per cent in the fourth plan. Besides, aid and concessional components were shrinking. This was likely a reflection of India leaning towards the USSR and securing their support during the 1971 war. It was viewed consequently as a drift from its earlier strict neutrality within the non aligned movement. This was a shift forced upon India by western indifference to the Bangladesh crisis. The private sector remained largely outside the control and planning process except through licensing and taxation. All in all, mixed economy was not amenable to large scale domestic resource mobilization for planning. Policy measures to curb consumer expenditure, increase tax collection was met with little success or support from the rural and urban property-owning classes. Evasion of direct and indirect taxes was widespread. Imports continued to exceed exports and when the oil crisis came and increased foreign exchange requirements in 1974-5, India was unprepared. Foreign exchange needs including debt servicing requirements rose rapidly.

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By 1974, the pressure was enough to make India approach the IMF to use Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) and negotiate credit. About half-a-billion dollars were drawn from the IMF in various forms during 1974. Such amounts cannot be raised without conditional ties of structural changes and macroeconomic stabilization plans like wage freeze, inflation control. Neither can a wage freeze when implemented in the midst of inflation, go uncontested by trade unions. The troubled waters of popular discontent and industrial relations in the period became pools where organizations of the far right began to fish. Already, across the spectrum political conservatives, business and landed interest were confronting a threat like never. One strongly feels, that given the situation of general economic crisis and food scarcity, social unrest was inevitable. This coalition of right wing forces chose that period to subvert the agenda of Indira Gandhi’s government. Their coming together would have been that much more difficult and visible without the façade provided by ‘socialists’ of various hues. Some of these socialist visions and activities are described in Chapter 3.

Travails and Dilemmas of the Communist Left An account of the rise of the far right in India is not complete without reflecting on initiatives of the communist left. It is the only socio-political force defined by its commitments which are in opposition to those of the far right. In India,‘What has come to be defined as the left in the historiography of the national movement and current political discourse is essentially the assemblage of all elements as owe allegiance to the socialist world view. It is an area in which Marxism exercised the dominant influence’.5 Some of its early history was narrated in Chapter 1. As described, the arrival of Marxism in India was an excruciating episode. Some copies of the Communist manifesto arrived by 1912, were read by some educated upper caste people. It was entirely a new fangled idea. Its novel agenda of creating a ‘people’s democracy’ on a national scale was historically unimagined, unheard of in India. No major social reform movements had even succeeded in shifting the consciousness of the people towards egalitarianism. Nothing resembling a widespread class based rebellion had ever arisen; lower caste assertions

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were local and social reforms if any were regional. A peasant rebellion with the ambitions and proportions of the Taiping Revolution of China that Mao and his leaders could later harness for their purpose was undreamt off in India.6 All the salient ideas of the left were alien to a society that was immeasurably dissimilar to that of Europe and Russia even its major religion was inegalitarian. Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, great working class struggles, the French Revolution, the WW1, Great Depression, the Bolshevik Revolution, great crisis of capitalism and yet another world war, all followed each other in distinct waves on the European stage. They were the subject of intense philosophical debates and literature. Repercussions of these wars and great depression and some other events were experienced only as a colony in India, integrated to the world economy through imperialism. These later events intensified national liberation struggles, but the big ideas reached India in a dribble and spread even more slowly because of poor literacy. India woke up to Independence without an armed or even a social revolution, relatively peacefully following a long colonial era. Unlike the ideas of left, the far right position was familiar in India. It was re-invented with elements from tradition, ancient scriptures, popular mythology, some strands of popular neo-Hindu literature from the Bengali literary resurgence, an imagined idealized, golden past, much of which was already familiar lore, so much so that the far right could live and organize like fish in water. In the 1920s, it acquired an organizational form that it retained and greatly extended, more or less, undisturbed into present times. To that mythos it just added along the way, created a militia of celibate men, made a certain history of Maratha kingdoms, rejuvenated some arcane traditions and merged them with newly minted nationalism. It had scarcely any new ideas. In 1871, when Karl Marx was the moving spirit of the General Council of the International Working Man’s Association, the association received a letter from an unidentified supporter. It was from Calcutta, highlighting the wretched conditions of the workers. Dadabhai Naroji who presided over the Calcutta session of the INC, made an appearance at The International Socialist Congress, 1904.7 It was the sixth Congress of the Second International and was held in Amsterdam. It called upon ‘all Social Democratic Party organizations and trade unions

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of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the 1st of May for the legal establishment of the eight-hour day, for the class demands of proletariat, and for universal peace.’ These were among the earliest contacts. While the communist manifesto had arrived earlier, Das Capital was first published in Marathi only in 1943, in Hindi in 1965, in Malayalam in 1968. Meanwhile S.R. Pillai had written a biography of Karl Marx in 1912, and young nationalists and trade union workers took up the ideas after 1921 and started groups and journals. In Calcutta Muzaffar Ahmed edited and published Navayug, in Bombay S.A. Dange brought out The Socialist, while from Lahore Gulam Hussein’s contribution was Inquilab and from Madras, Singaravelu Chettiar’s journal. They also led the local groups. The communist manifesto was published in Bengali and Marathi and in 1921 S.A. Dange also published an ideological critique titled Gandhi and Lenin.8 These started new discussions among the few educated, without much publicity and without becoming widely known. Paucity of original Marxist or socialist literature inhibited theoretical education and debate right up to the 1950s.9 In 1922, R.B. Lotwal brought out a series of pamphlets on scientific socialism; among them was the communist manifesto along with other booklets by Engels, Lafargue and R.P. Dutt. The March 1923, issues of The Socialist edited by Dange advertised these pamphlets.10 Slowly the library grew. The first Indian translation into a Indian language, of the Communist manifesto was in Bengali. Soumyendranath Tagore, grand nephew of Rabindranath Tagore did it and it was published in Ganavani the weekly paper of the Peasants and Workers Party of Bengal, edited by Muzaffar Ahmad. Six issues carried it during 1926-7.11 Namboodiripad (prominent leader, later Chief Minister of Kerala and General Secretary of the Communist party of India in 1977) was to say that he had no early access or exposure to Marxism and began his study only in 1935. The deficit was to become a serious bottleneck in generating a large base of informed participants, dynamic open debates on theory and praxis at the local levels. This may have resulted in a certain lack of maturity, dependency on Soviet guidance and some unfortunate decisions by the early communist leaders. Bombay and Calcutta had emerged as industrial centres in the 1870s-1880s and a sizable proletarian concentration had grown in the

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area. Living and working conditions were as bad if not worse as those in emerging capitalism in other parts of the world. Some basic forms of middle-class philanthropy had emerged in the form of journals highlighting working conditions making demands for improvements, night schools, self-help, and temperance groups but no labour class solidarity emerged even in these cities. Chakrabarti’s study of the Calcutta jute mill riots of the mid1890s, examined early labour consciousness; it indicates that embryonic labour protests would take the form of a kind of ‘communityconsciousness’ rather than a clear recognition of class.12 Workers would mount resistance through short lived strikes, assaults, and riots. These would easily relapse into or often even take the shape of inter-community riots over issues like Hindu or Muslim places of worship and cow protection or community based demands for Hindu and Muslim holidays. Working class strikes broke out in 1918 in many industrial towns like Ahmedabad, Madras, Bombay, Calcutta and Kanpur. Demands for higher and regular wages, reduction in working hours, lunch break and reduction in fines were the focal point. They did not have a unified leadership. The nucleus of AITUC came into existence only in 1920. Workers began participating in the national movement as a class through organized hartals (strikes). But the tendency for Indian working class, mainly first generation, impoverished peasantry and ruined artisans sucked into factories, to fall back upon sectional ties of region, caste, kinship, or religion persisted.13 This was not a feature unique to India. In other pre-industrial societies too, class consciousness was burgeoning though not yet developed. Among migrant workers from different regions, living in urban working class neighbourhoods, it is to this day, most deficient. They return to the village and resume their caste roles so frequently that they cannot develop a lasting class based identity. Since their jobs and wages cannot suffice to sustain the entire family in the city, the need to return to village is recurring. Their urban identity is never fully formed. So, one kind of combativeness would easily turn into another based on an older identity. In this kind of environment, workplace solidarities are fragile, labour takes an awfully long time to evolve anything resembling a purely class based trade union consciousness.

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It was only after the Soviet October revolution made a breakthrough that Marxism Leninism and the possibilities of a new order appeared in Asia and other colonized nations. It created news, a precursor, a vision and a praxis. ‘By the second decade of the twentieth century, one of the most complex problems faced by the communists the world over was that of determining their role in the context of national liberation struggles emerging in the colonies and semi-colonies’ (p. 1).14 Lenin laid out the discussion on this issue in ‘Preliminary Draft of the “Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions” presented to the second Congress of the Communist International in 1920. Lenin’s position was not rigid, he felt that the communist “must base policy on the national questions, not on abstract and formal tenets but, firstly on an exact appraisal of the specific historical situation”’ (p. 2).15 The understanding was that the anti-colonial revolution was a consequence of deep conflict between the imperialist nations and the exploited nations. It was national in character and not class based. Forces of national liberation include sections of the national bourgeoisie and other classes who tended to align themselves with imperialism and/or gradual reform when confronted by radical left wing threats. Revolutionary left wing parties, therefore, had to build up a presence among farmers and workers within the national movement. In India this was to be done under the watchful eye of British administration who viewed it as the foremost threat. Because among the colonies there did exist the possibility of both, rebellion against colonial rule and revolution (bypassing capitalism) to develop along non capitalist paths. Since that could not happen without building working class hegemony inside the anti-imperialist struggle it was important for the rulers to thwart it. It was done rather well, given the steel frame around India and its colonial status as ‘jewel in the British crown’. Was there a large enough pool of local leadership, not just to fathom the abstract principles of Marxism but translate it into local terms and employ it to practical ends? Would the state of social development, class consciousness of its workers and peasants, caste, diversity of languages, religions, customs, property/land relations, state of industrial development and all the related complexity of organizing such raw

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material create a gridlock too serious to enable a communist hegemony in the anti-imperial struggle? A brief history of the travails of the Communist party in colonial times is essential to answer these questions. Even the foundation of the CPI had to be laid abroad in Tashkent, in October 1920 and it had to wait five years to establish itself in India. M.N. Roy was a member of the Turkestan Bureau of the Communist International and the main Indian origin theoretician abroad; his wife Evelyn Roy, Abni Mukherji and wife Rosa, Muhammad Shafiq (the first secretary of the party), Masood Ali Shah, some muhajirs (Khilafat enthusiasts who had joined the hijrat that began in 1920 – emigration from oppression, in this case colonial rule of India) who crossed over through Afghanistan into Soviet territory and played a central role. The cadre was trained and educated by M.N. Roy and founded the CPI in Tashkent. The story of that band of muhajirs who set off on an odyssey to fight imperialism recounts the hazards communists faced thereafter. They entered Turkmenistan from Afghanistan and were taken captive by Turkmen, who thought they were British soldiers and mistreated. They were saved from certain death by the arrival of the Red Army and took refuge in the Kirkee fort with them. Turkmen rebels with reinforced strength attacked the fort and the muhajirs took up arms with the Red Army to defend the fort. Some, from that group went ahead to Tashkent of their own free will under the sympathetic but watchful eyes of the Russians. Others like Rafiq Ahmad, Trimul Acharia joined the CPI a little later. M.N. Roy said that in the political training of the muhajirs he first took those who had some suitable background and the results were beyond all expectations particularly on the military front but also on the political front. Some of these muhajirs wanted to join the Communist party. Several who had already declared themselves to be communists while in Kabul arrived later, among them were Abdul Rab and Acharia, who inspired others to set up the party in Tashkent.16 Some went further and decided to set up a CPI in India. Commenting on Roy’s memoirs (published in his journal the Radical Humanist), Ahmad said that it was very unlikely that the muhajirs were completely unaware of democracy or communism, if for

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no other reason than that ‘Islam was based on a brand of democracy’. ‘There was, and perhaps still is in the Muslim mind something like a feeling of international fraternity, and its symbol was the Khilafat’ (p. 74).17 Be that as it may, the list of early membership of the Communist party of India had many Muslims. In Uzbekistan, the military and political training school was a safe house for engaging and training. When hopes of penetrating India through Afghanistan faded away in early 1921, some of the new Indian recruits joined the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, at Moscow. And some more muhajirs gradually made the intellectual voyage from Khilafat to communism. Roy meanwhile, shifted his headquarters to Berlin in 1922 and published the fortnightly Vanguard of Indian Independence from there. These were the early stages of the formation of the CPI. By mid-1920s an important section of the Gadar Party in exile had also turned communist. By the end of 1922, Roy was able to set up links with small communist groups in Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Lahore with the help of emissaries’. Journals, weeklies, and newsletters of the left began appearing gradually. Meanwhile, some of the early Indian recruits made their way back to India from USSR suffering great hardships on the way back. They were to suffer more; they were arrested and prosecuted as soon as they returned. British spies were embedded in muhajir groups. The British had always been very wary of Russian ambitions in Central Asia and Afghanistan (now deemed even more sinister and dangerous as communists) and had made anticipatory arrangements to nip their influence in the bud. Thus, when the attempt was made by M.N. Roy and other Indian communists abroad to form a CPI unit in Tashkent with muhajirs in 1920, the British intelligence was not oblivious of it. Out of the 200 muhajirs who crossed over to Russia around the year 1920, some 40 to 50 joined the political and military school at Tashkent and later they joined the Communist University for the Toilers of the East in Moscow. Some were or became British informers and were suitably rewarded and protected later. From their foreign office, the British intelligence was warned that batches of trained personnel were being sent to India by the CPI in Tashkent. The first batch reached Peshawar on 3 June 1921. The British police arrested them as ‘Bolshevik agents’ and started the first in a series conspiracy

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cases. ‘The Home Political Files of 1920s are at times obsessed with the “Bolshevik menace”, the obsession far exceeded the real immediate significance of their activities and can be explained only by the world wide ruling class fear inspired by [the Bolshevik revolution] 1917, so reminiscent of the panic after the French Revolution’ (p. 214).18 The first two decades of communist existence in India was marked by British surveillance through the Central Intelligence Bureau, arrests, rigorous imprisonments release and re-arrests. From 1921 to 1927 five conspiracy cases were launched against those early communists and national revolutionaries. According to Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI(ML)) sources, ‘The distant town of Peshawar was chosen as the venue of the sham trials, so that it would be easy to fabricate news about Russian or Bolshevik “destabilization polities” and also the accused would not get the benefit of the Jury System. . . . No documentary evidence or exhibit was necessary to prove the guilt of the accused – to prove that a conspiracy existed to “overthrow the king-emperor from his sovereign right” and to merely claim that the accused was a member of it was considered enough for punishment under section 121-A, IPC for punishment’.19 These trials became both a consequence and cause of a simulated fear psychosis about Bolshevism and its potential. Class abhorrence of communist ideology facilitated the spread of fear and the prosecution did not invite any response from the nationalists in the mainstream media or otherwise. Only M.N. Roy wrote an article ‘Manufacturing Evidence’ – accusing the British government, which was published in the Comintern journal Inprecor. Nothing of this nature was ever faced by the RSS. Despite the repression, communist activities picked up in the metropolitan cities of Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and smaller cities like Kanpur and Lahore. Communist groups in these cities were involved in organizing workers, educating them and expanding the communist presence. Throughout this endeavour there remained a weak but continual link between communists in India and connections abroad. Though, fledgling communist groups functioned independently across India, any attempt to come together and become more visible was scuttled. This significant decade in India’s political advance was the period when the far right was organized as RSS. There was a

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discernable dissimilarity in their progress. That the communist presence grew at all, despite severe repression, is indicative of not just the commitment of those early communists but also perhaps of the resonance of Marxist ideology and its possibilities. The material conditions of toilers gave it traction. Communist groups also took a more radical view of the national movement from the very beginning with demands for complete independence (not just dominion status), end of feudalism and princely states. So when, after the withdrawal of the first non-cooperation movement, radical sections of the Congress became disenchanted with the turn of events, some of them became fascinated by Marxist ideology. According to Sarkar,‘. . . Indian communism actually sprang from roots within the nationalist movement itself, as disillusioned revolutionaries, non-cooperators, Khilafatists, labour and peasant activists sought new roads to political and social emancipation’ (p. 212).20 By the time of the next (Kanpur) conspiracy case in 1924 there was a little more organized protest. By then the list of 13 person originally (more added later) accused in the case included the who’s who of the movement in India like M.N. Roy, Muzaffar Ahmad, Shaukat Usmani, Ghulam Hussain, S.A. Dange, Singaravelu, R.L. Sharma, Nalini Gupta, Shamuddin Hassan, M.R.S. Velayndhun, Dr Manilal, Sampurnananda, and Satyabhakta. These setbacks in court notwithstanding, the first open Indian Communist Conference was held in Kanpur soon afterwards in December 1925. It was floated by different groups, but the structure created was soon taken over by determined communists like S.V. Ghate who functioned as general secretary till 1929. Much later, in 1959 the united CPI acknowledged the 1925 conference as having marked its formal foundation. Restrictions on the communists of various kinds – travel, correspondence and literature circulation remained and meant that in effect only a wispy thread linked the communist party of India to developments, literature and ideas abroad and to the Comintern. A point highlighted by the fact that when leading members of the Central Executive Committee (CEC) elected at Kanpur went to meet and invite Shapurji Saklatvala, a Communist MP in UK (who arrived in 1927) he did not pay much attention to them and issued a statement to the

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press that he would not preside over the conference of a communist party that was not affiliated to the Communist International.21 Even the British MP Saklatvala was under police surveillance for possible connections in India. Documents of the communist party in those early days are replete with records of police surveillance, searches and arrests. This, even though there were not more than 25 communists in Bombay, which was their main base. Such problems plagued them across India and confronted as they were, by the problem of state repression and legality, communists had to work out innovative ways to address issues of organization and dissemination. They had to make use of multi-class fronts since class based fronts were scanty. Multi-class fronts included petty bourgeois, workers, and peasant masses that had divergent interests. They had to do so to create an organization that could be a legal front of a more tightly controlled and knit core revolutionary communist party. The underlying core party was necessary to control and steer the mass front effectively. Yet, problems of legality and illegality, separation and control were to persist all through. Further, there was permanent police tailing and cruelty, not to mention other complications under police pressure, like betrayal, confessions, mutual suspicion, bitterness and splintering among communist groups. Even during the WW1, when British troop presence was at its lowest in India (at one point down to 15,000 men) revolutionary nationalists of the Gadar or Bengal variety were tracked down and eliminated. Communists were confronting the same state. This firm grip explains the sluggish spread and penetration of the communist ideology in the entire subcontinent in some measure, in comparison to say, China which was an independent country. Initially, as the communist movement tried to grow just by forming Workers and Peasants Parties (WPP) some were within existing organizations like the Congress. By 1927 the WPPs were emerging as an organized left wing which strengthened the forces of the left within. They managed to train a leadership and secured the adoption of programmes of mass action. Outside these, paucity of cadre was a perpetual damper. Hence, even though communist documents first raised issues of abolition of zamindari and redistribution of land, their appeal and spread in rural areas was slow. They remained small and as

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a smaller organization, needed to be part of a larger mass organization and political party like Congress, for national liberation. But working within the Congress was not without its pitfalls. The influence of landlord, and mercantile, capital-owning classes accelerated particularly after the WW1 and it was dominant within the Congress to begin with. But by the end of the 1920s, partially from an estimation of its own strength and partly from directions received from Comintern, CPI struck out on its own briefly, only, to recalibrate once again in the 1930s confronted by the growth of fascism in Europe. The need to bring workers and peasants into the national movement had led the Congress to talk of ‘Swaraj’ for the 98 per cent in 1922, even Gandhi shifted enough to demand universal suffrage and state ownership of such machine industry as may be allowed in the Gandhian system of thought. It was Nehru in the Congress who travelled more to the left in his public political and economic positions along with a radical section of the Congress by the 1930s. But they could never prevail over Gandhi and Gandhi never broke with the right, among other rationales he saw unity as a crucial weapon for the Independence struggle. Obvious indications of the dominant ideology within the Congress were recurrent. There was scant support for communists during the repression faced by them through various bans and imprisonments, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1929 did not seek any reprieve for Bhagat Singh and his comrades (soon to face a death sentence) or those convicted in the Meerut conspiracy case (enduring harsh terms of imprisonment). The resolve of the right wing to stem the rising tide of the left within the Congress and outside was palpable and they were never a minority. CPI was a part of the Congress again from 1936 to 1942. In 1942 they were expelled for their opposition to the Quit India Movement (the left took a distinctly pro-Soviet positon in support of fight against fascism). Progressively through the 1930s and 40s, as the grip of property-owing class interest tightened, it became difficult to influence the Congress from within. Communists were compelled to work outside the Congress and in 1934 in Calcutta the communists even helped to organize a League against Gandhism. They viewed Gandhism as a façade behind which all manner of right wing sentiments were veiled,

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an evaluation not too far off the mark as events in the 1970s were to demonstrate. The dilemmas of the left were exemplified by two shifting positions, one in relation to the Congress (which it could not neither overcome nor ignore) and the other in relation to the international communist movements. The secretary of the Indian Communist Party, Satyabhakta had at its inception in made an appeal, ‘After all the Congress is well established and influential institution and the best interests of the country require us to reform it and not go against it’ (p. 11).22 So, as mentioned earlier, communists first functioned inside the Congress. Forming WPPs and strengthening the left within the INC; pushing resolutions like boycott of Simon Commission; establishing contact with the League against Imperialism; and solidarity with other national movements like those in China. There were many radical congressmen, like Dange, Singaravelu, Velayudham, Joglekar, Nimbkar, Thengdi, Satyabhakta, and Bagerhatta who were communists, some holding congress party positions. Some of these were names which are associated entirely with the CPI. Secret conferences of the communists were held in 1928, 1929 to discuss and debate resolutions. In those early days some guidance came from Comintern and Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Three communists from Britain, Philip Spratt, Ben Bradley and Hutchinson, even came to India and worked closely with the CPI and find frequent mention in the literature. CPI also worked through AITUC of the Congress Party and maintained this approach with considerable success. Their influence grew rapidly, so much so that the intelligence sources of the government felt that there was hardly any public utility or industry that was not influenced. The Girni Kamgar Unions formed in May 1928 in Bombay, was part of a general strike that had lasted six months, this was the high point of the early influence of communists in the city. It also resulted in the penetration of communists into trade unions across sectors and regions, a massive labour upsurge and numerous strikes. The upsurge summoned a government and capitalist offensive. Pathans were called in to break the strikes in Bombay which was the hub of labour action, leading to a major communal riot in 1929. The government moved on multiple fronts urging the capitalists not to give in,

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arresting all the major leaders, deporting some, passing the Trade Disputes Act, setting up tribunals and banning strikes through Public Safety Bill. The Meerut conspiracy trials that followed lasted for four years, and heavy jail sentences were imposed (in January 1933). All attempts to weaken the powerful and emerging unions were implemented promptly. By December 1930, the Draft Platform of Action of the CPI said that the building of a centralized, disciplined and united mass underground communist party was the chief and basic long overdue task of the revolutionary movement for the emancipation of our country. The old phase of unity-cum-struggle within the Congress was phased out after the Sixth Comintern Congress. This new phase corresponded to the period when Stalin consolidated his position over the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU). The early 1930s also saw a reorientation, disagreements and splintering that slowed down the growth of the CPI. It was a phase, therefore, in which sectarian tendencies grew and the Comintern also withdrew the recognition it had given the CPI temporarily. A change came about in 1933-4, with a revival of labour activity associated with communist unions. Several trade unions merged under the communist banner after 1933. This was a renewed phase of the United Front strategy, associated with s shift in the Comintern line in the context of the rise of fascism in Europe. As a sign of renewed vigour, the number of strikes increased again. A new generation of famous mass leaders like P. Krishna Pillai, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, and A.K. Gopalan arose, who came into the movement drifting away from mainstream Gandhian nationalism. In anticipation of increasing unrest, the CPI was formally banned on 23 July 1934, using an older act against seditious associations. By the mid-1930s within the Congress,‘The stage had been set for a major confrontation between Right and Left within the national movement’ (p. 288).23 Meanwhile, the British government had honed a new range of tactics. It kept offering fresh prospects of enhanced Indian participation in the government through constitutional reform. This added a different facet to political developments and accelerated some changes inside the Congress. As usual business and landed property interest groups organized and grasped the possibilities of power and privilege rapidly.

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Opportunities to occupy positions of power perhaps encouraged the right to speed up its consolidation within the Congress. The United Front, a broad measure of unity in the national movement of the left within the Congress, was somehow preserved but with increasing difficulty, till 1942. With a few attempts to force the direction and leadership leftwards, they eventually parted company over a serious difference over the left support to the British war efforts (by then Soviets were Britain’s allies) calling it a popular anti-fascist people’s war. After the communist exit, Gandhian right wingers wrested even greater control of the Congress. Limited and delayed civil disobedience launched by the Congress during the war also landed all its main leaders in jail at a critical juncture while outside the jails the RSS and Muslim League were energetically supporting Britain’s war effort. After the war, the left too faced British repression as it had earlier. A lonely Nehru (who himself, could never make a break from Gandhi) was ultimately Gandhi’s chosen one to lead the Congress in a subcontinent hurtling towards a gory Partition and Independence. Soon after Independence, within the CPI, there was intra-party dissentions and confusion about the nature of Independence and balance of class forces. These confusions and their doctrinal implications began to push the CPI into two factions, one with a reformist agenda, supporting Nehru’s government and the other with some optimism about possibilities and efficacy of an armed uprising as against parliamentary system of government. Despite repression and these dilemmas, CPI membership was about 60,000 at the time of the second party Congress in 1948. Its influence in trade unions, student fronts and among the world of art and culture was considerably greater than its membership would indicate. Many less familiar with political history, assume that Congress after Independence was a hegemonic force and stayed so for thirty years. This assumption is tied up with legends of the nationalist freedom movement. This is in fact not the whole truth. Both the left newly arrived and just setting about expanding its influence, and the far right, an old force at home and consolidating their organizations rapidly, were contenders.

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Communists in Free India, Confined by Parliamentary Democracy In the first party conference in 1943, and earlier too, party general secretary, P.C. Joshi (1935-48) and the party had taken a soft line on the Congress by supporting it in its struggle against imperialism. The party reviewed the question of political situation in India soon after Independence and concluded that India had become independent and advised all progressive forces to rally round Nehru and against the reactionary communal and pro-imperialist forces. But soon afterwards, and according to Bipin Chandra, under new Soviet guidance, it declared that India’s Independence was false because Congress had not broken with feudalism and imperialism. The Constitution being framed, therefore, was a charter of slavery. They went so far as to suggest that Nehru had become a stooge of imperialism.24 These assessments were not based entirely on Soviet directives; there were indeed some objective conditions under which this reassessment was made. In the years immediately after Independence the government’s position on the issue of land reforms and on issues of foreign policy would have confounded anyone expecting a sharp break from imperialism and movement towards a genuine democracy. The left membership felt that Nehru was the leader who spoke one way, a way that the left appreciated, but the pack he was leading was entirely different. Some also felt, perhaps given the chaos of Partition, Kashmir war, and needed to stabilize and to control the new country Nehru was not able to do more. In 1948, Comrade Ranadive was chosen party general secretary. At the party Congress in Calcutta it was decided that the masses were let down by developments after Independence and particularly after the Partition. Its experience, as expressed by party members from Bengal was particularly bitter after the Partition. Party members also expressed similarly angry experience regarding the Telangana struggle. In their anger they were perhaps ready to move away from ‘only peaceful’ means of resistance. There were external factors at work too; a backwash of the cold war between USA and USSR resulting in an intense battle for influence in Asia, while the impulse from the Comintern (International Communist Movement) also seemed to have strengthened

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this antagonistic push away from the Congress. The party did give an overzealous call for immediate armed uprising. Two developments followed; its decision to continue the armed struggle in Telangana which had been going on against the Nizam of Hyderabad since 1946, but now it got directed against the Indian government and in 1948 Indian army was sent in. That resulted in an armed struggle with deaths of thousands of leaders and communist cadre. This was another juncture where K.M. Munshi had allegedly played a dubious role. Then on 9 March 1949, CPI declared a national railway strike hoping that it would culminate in a national uprising. The strike was not a success. CPI also participated in a number of terrorist acts, and as a consequence it was banned in several states, got isolated and decimated organizationally because of expulsions, resignations and its membership declined from a high of 60,000 in 1948 to 18,000 in 1951. However, there was more to the crisis and confusion in CPI at this stage, aspects that might have been ignored by historians. Records of the meeting of CPI leaders of the Central Committee – Rajeshwar Rao, Ajoy Ghosh and S. Dange with comrades in USSR on 4 February 1951 revealed a genuine conflict and confusion within the rank and file of the CPI, confusion regarding serious questions about the balance of class forces in Independent India, stage and prospects of a revolution and armed struggle.25 In that meeting it became clear that at the time of the second party Congress the CPI cadre were engaged in an effective armed struggle in Telangana, over a territory that included 3000 villages. Intensified struggle had been going on for at least ten months. This struggle was being stalled by the general secretary and the Central Committee who were urging comrades to ‘be cautions and leave a loophole for retreat’. It is likely that situation on the ground did not permit an orderly retreat. It is an acknowledged fact that ‘Telangana between 1946 and October 1951 saw the biggest peasant guerrilla war so far of modern Indian history, affecting at its height about 3000 villages spread over 16,000 square miles with a population of three million’(p. 379);26 quite unlike other similar communist led struggles ‘tebhaga’ in Bengal and Travancore. In its origins, it had a broader dimension of liberation struggle against the oppressive feudal regime of the Nizam, where locals were involved. It probably would have already been almost impossible to stop such a struggle suddenly, on

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Central Committee’s call. The last party Congress had been held in 1943, too long ago. The main speaker at the second party Congress, Com. Ranadive was perhaps not the one pushing the line of aggression. According to Com. Punnaiah’s report, (made in the presence of and not repudiated by Ghosh or Dange) delegates from Andhra and Telangana were carrying out propaganda work among party delegates. Com. Ranadive made all attempts to avoid the question. A draft speech was circulated by them; it was rejected by the Central Committee and Politburo. Many problems that were not clear before the second Congress remained unresolved despite attempts by the Andhra delegates to force a discussion. Thereafter, discussions stopped, but armed struggle continued then on in the form of a defensive struggle. Then in May 1950, Peking Conference of trade unions of Asia took place and a famous article ‘For a Lasting Peace, For a Peoples Democracy’ was published in the journal by a top ranking theoretician and leader of the Chinese Communist Party Liu Shaoqui; it advanced the Chinese model of revolution for Asia. After this, differences among CPI members just kept increasing. In the same month, the plenum of the Central Committee took place; of the 31 members only 19 were available, the rest were in jail. The new General Secretary P.C. Joshi defended his reformist position and proposed putting an end to the Telangana struggle when the Indian armed forces entered. The Central Committee somehow did not have an identical view. It approved the line of armed struggle but only after the scrutiny of written documents, presented by party members from armed struggle zones detailing how they were organized, their rules, how land was divided and so on. By June there was a shortage of cadre at the top, of the nine elected to Central Committee , four had to leave their provinces for safety. The comrades who were released from jail did not appear for six months after release. This hampered the resolution of conflicts that seems to have deepened between factions. Some agreed with the Soviet view that perhaps the Chinese path could not be applied to India in the absence of a well armed and trained left army. So far even locally successful armed struggle could not be taken forward, and often could not even protect the gains made locally (on behalf of the landless and

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lower castes) and hold out against the Indian army. Com. Ranadive and the Central Committee seemed to disagree over the fundamental position. According to Com. Rao (during the second Congress) the view was that even though Ranadive was calling for rebellion, but in reality, he was obstructing the armed struggle in a number of regions where masses were ready for one, including Kerala. Arms were not available for a large scale armed struggle anywhere but Bengal and Ranadive had even taken weapons out of circulation. So, it’s not clear what exactly Ranadive’s position was. The failure of the earlier general strike also had a lot to do with this division within the party. Com. Dange was a vocal voice against the armed struggle, he thought under the circumstances it was political adventurism, conditions for it did not exist in the rest of the country and other forms of struggle were necessary and possible. The second Congress did however review and change the party constitution adopted in 1943 at the first Congress. After 1948, after the Indian army arrived in Hyderabad and began its operations, the number of combatants declined steadily, to onefourth. The armed struggle became sporadic and retreated from Andhra into Telangana. Moreover, the degree of disarray and disconnect within the party can be judged from the fact that estimates of the armed struggle, numbers and weapons, provided even by the party members is based on foreign media as the Central Committee of CPI did not have information from provincial units. Looking back at the sources of confusion, Ajoy Ghosh, the next General Secretary of the CPI (1951-62), said that in the early years, the government of India had repeatedly announced its closeness to Britain and America. He quoted Nehru’s speech in Delhi on 22 March 1949 where Nehru had asserted that India had far closer relations with the countries of the western world than with others due to historic and other factors and that relationship would develop and ‘we will encourage them to develop’.27 The left saw them as the key imperialist powers. Then in 1950, India sided with the Anglo-American block in the Security Council of the UN, when it voted that North Korea was an aggressor and thereby provided support for the American invasion of Korea. In March 1951, India signed the Mutual Defense Assistance Pact with America. The US Secretary of State made it clear that the

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aid given under the pact was required by the Government of India to maintain its internal security, its legitimate self-defence or permit to participate in the defence of the area of which it was a part. The entire statement spelled out that this transfer would occur in accordance with the interests of the US national interest (p. 3).28 In 1949, Nehru visited Malaysia and attacked the freedom fighters in a speech – they were mainly communists. There was an arrangement by which Britain could recruit Gurkha troops on Indian soil for use against Malaysian patriots. The transit facility continued even after protests forced the government to stop recruitment on Indian soil. Nehru denied it in the Parliament in 1952 but had to admit it when communists brought it to light with evidence. French imperialists were using Indian airports for dispatching troops to defend their colony in Indochina. This too was exposed by the communist party which compelled the government to stop them. Various forms of US aid were flowing into India in the name of conquering communism. Before departing for China, while Nehru denounced the American backed South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), he declared that its motives might be good, the governments of countries in Asia and outside might have fears about the communist parties and the spread of communism. This was his position even though much of the aggression faced by Asian countries form Malaysia to Indonesia, including Vietnam was being inflicted by the imperialists at that point. But all of a sudden, in 1954 Nehru’s position seemed to have shifted and there was a Chou-Nehru (Panchsheel) declaration for peaceful co-existence and sovereignty. India also took a stand against expansion of war in Korea into North Korea beyond the 38th parallel. The altered stand followed the progress of the Korean War; six months after the outbreak it became clear that the imperialists were not invincible. The anti-imperialist sentiments were high and rising. Indian communists praised Nehru for the shift in his policy. Nehru in turn praised China following his visit but he simultaneously attacked communists in India. He criticized them for following the dictates of USSR and China while lacking a strong base in India. By the mid-1950s there was a clearer comparison emerging to the paradox ridden middle path of the Congress in the more rapid changes and development in China. The contrast with India’s slower pace was obvious, as was the

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unmet expectations of the masses. On the other hand, big business was full of apprehension about the spread of communism and this was frequently and effectively communicated to the Congress. When the CPI accepted parliamentary democracy, electoral competition between communists and Congress (at the state level) would be another cause for repeated outbreaks against communism in the years that followed. The communists in reciprocation would ratchet up their rhetoric. Besides the tasks of anti-imperial and anti-feudal struggles would bring them into conflict with Congress state governments. Although a new line was adopted after 1951, it was not based on a new Indian reality, or a new understanding of the reality among CPI cadre. The transfer of power from British to Congress representing landlords, big bourgeoisie, was still viewed as a betrayal of the masses by them. Armed struggle to overthrow the state was still on agenda, but a far future agenda, because the masses were not yet prepared for that. The immediate task was to withdraw from the armed struggle and participate in the general elections in 1952. Nehru had taken a matching step and legalized the CPI all over the country to enable its participation in elections. Focusing on the areas where they had a presence, the CPI emerged as the single largest opposition party with 23 seats in Parliament and 4.6 per cent vote share. In 1957, it won 27 seats and 8.92 per cent of votes in 1962, 29 seats and 9.94 per cent. In 1957, they had also got a majority in Kerala and formed the first democratically elected communist party led government in the world. Gradually and perhaps also because of participation in the elections, the CPI moved its position around. First, by accepting that although India was following an independent foreign policy, internal policy was still not wholly independent. In 1953, at its Madurai Congress, it acknowledged that India was a sovereign republic; in 1956 at its Palghat congress it reported that India was building capitalism, however in 1958 in Amritsar when Dange was general secretary, it was accepted that advance to socialism through parliamentary and peaceful means was possible. In 1961, at Vijayawada it decided to follow a policy of struggle and unity towards Congress but only for its progressive policies.

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However, agreements in the party congress concealed deep differences within regarding attitude to parliamentary means, international developments like the Soviet critique of Stalin under Khrushchev, Russia-China differences, and Indo-China relations. Over these issues, CPI split in 1964. The left faction now called CPM did not believe that parliamentary means were enough. Some historians of modern India are of the opinion that the communists failed to realize their political potential. This happened despite the favourable socio-economic conditions.‘Despite toiling hard in the anti-imperialist cause and being a part of the mainstream national movement led by Congress and Gandhiji, both before and after Independence, the party failed to appreciate correctly the character of the freedom struggle as a massive national revolution, comparable to the Russian and Chinese revolutions’ (p. 263).29 They did not pose the real problem and discussed it thoroughly in the communist party. For instance, what did it mean to be a social revolutionary in postcolonial, democratic India? In their opinion CPI in the early days, failed to understand the significance of nationalism in the context of an anti-colonial struggle. They did not involve themselves in the development and consolidation of the nation while people looked to a strong and consolidated nation to improve their social conditions. As a result, both the communist parties split further, and have more or less stagnated, remained small, they formed governments in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura in a left front and made their presence felt in the parliament. But after 2014, only Kerala remained. Outside these states, they have not been able to expand or form a broad national level mass movement. Perhaps, their response to Indian realities had been slow. If viewed from a position that recognizes just how diverse and divided the subcontinent actually was in the decades leading up to 1947 and how backward socially, culturally and economically. What was achieved in those decades by the national movement was indeed immense. The movement for Independence was the biggest social force of its time and all other forces had to adapt themselves around the movement, its dominant leaders, their ideas, and their compulsions. The forces of the left had to organize and wait for their turn. Meanwhile the RSS stayed united, unobstructed. It had grown much in

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organization, reach and influence in those decades before Partition, more so than the left. After Independence too there was little obstruction from the state and hardly any self-imposed constraint on procedure, norms, and funding, all this is vastly different from the left. Early electoral success of the CPI also tied it down to constitutional means, drained its resources and manpower continually. For the longest time its energies were consumed by maneuvering around the Congress. Though Congress was the dominant organization in the struggle for Independence it was by no means the only potentially significant force in India, the far right had a manifestation that was not entirely apparent in the electoral outcomes. ‘The results of the first general elections (1952) showed that the monopoly of power enjoyed by the Congress at the time of 1947 transfer of power being challenged by the parties of the democratic opposition (the Communists, Socialists, various groups of left democrats) on the one side, and such parties of right revivalist opposition as the Hindu Mahasabha, the Ram Rajya Parishad on the other’ (p. 31).30 Meanwhile at the state level, friction between the Congress party and its own governments had been increasing. Ambitions and corruption of some of its members also accelerated. Tension between Nehru and his recalcitrant chief ministers was another factor well illustrated in his letters to the chief ministers, they contained his anxiety and warning about the activity of the RSS. E.M.S. Namboodiripad (prominent ideologue and leader of the Communists) said that at that juncture, the Congress repositioned itself to deal with the competition from the left.31 Interestingly it did not confront the far right perhaps because its parliamentary presence was marginal at this point. The Congress began to acknowledge that it was late in declaring itself on the side of socialism and that it had in fact treated the formation of socialist and communist groups in the 1920s with hostility. It declared that it would begin the journey from Ramraj, cooperative commonwealth to socialistic pattern of society and socialism at the famous Avadi Congress in 1955. This and several practical measures, including the second five-year plan (a paradigm shift), were announced. A contingent of socialist planning experts from socialist countries, were involved as were left oriented political

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economists in the planning process. The first plan had been a collection of proposals made by the British government as part of the Colombo plan and made no major changes in the economy. When the more comprehensive second plan was tabled, following the Avadi session, the right wing feudal land owning section of the Congress broke away and formed the Swatantra (freedom) party. This split was the first assertion of the anti-left segment of the Congress. It had remained dormant despite that fact that the manifesto of the Congress for the 1952 elections (which they won handsomely) had stated the intention, ‘It is not possible to pursue a policy of laissez-faire in industry. . . . It is incompatible with any planning. It has long been Congress policy that basic industries should be owned or controlled by the state. This policy holds and must be progressively given effect to. State trading should be undertaken wherever the balance of advantage lies in favour of such a course. A large field for private enterprise is, however, left over. Thus, our economy will have a public sector as well as a private sector. But the private sector must accept the objective of the National Plan and fit into it’.32 However, at that point the large capitalists/industrialists were not perturbed by the public sector dominated heavy industry model introduced and initiated by Nehru-Mahalanobis. It mirrored their needs as evident in their own document known as the Bombay Plan. They were only somewhat apprehensive about the doctrinaire priority of the public sector and land reforms. As for the rest they were more or less confident of their equation with the influential segments of Congress leadership, their equation with the right wing in the opposition and ability to prevent Congress from going ‘too far’ to the left. Their confidence was not misplaced. The balance of forces in the economy did shift in favour of the traders, rentiers, big farmers and the big capitalists as various reports had pointed out.33 This repositioning in 1955 of the Congress towards the left was primarily a tactic to mirror the popular will and strategy against the left. It was a clever approach. Despite perceiving the class character of the Congress party this repositioning did throw the CPI into a great deal of confusion regarding how it should place itself in relation to the Congress in the future. It did not help the Communists in India that leaders from USSR visiting

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India praised the leftward shift of the Congress. One of the immediate consequences was that in one of its strongholds, Andhra Pradesh (built over years of land struggle, bloodshed) the CPI already depleted, received a big setback in the March 1955 elections from which it could not recover. However, in other states the setback was less marked than in Andhra. In its strongholds like Kerala and West Bengal there was much debate over how to understand and cope with the Avadi shift. In Kerala, the CPI was able to rebound; in the state elections in 1957 it formed the first democratically elected communist and the first stable non-Congress government in India. Although its majority was very thin it nevertheless bolstered confidence of communist party there and vindicated its approach of conditional and issue based ‘revolutionary and flexible’ support to the Central Government. But what followed was a bitter struggle between the Congress and communists at the state level. The Congress was prepared to use its position in the centre to bolster its party in the states. It let lose a rush of obstacles against the Government of Kerala accusing it of having a minority vote share, being dangerous for the law and order situation, etc. It tried to shake off left allies but failed. The Government in Kerala went about implementing the policies that the Congress and its Central Government had announced but its own state governments had failed to implement elsewhere. Learning from the failures in other states the communist led government plugged loopholes in the land reform bills, made comprehensive legislations covering all kinds of tenancy arrangements and banned eviction of tenants from their lands. For this mobilization of peasants and control over state administration and police were needed and it was accomplished, eventually landlords had to concede. This angered the middle-classes who made it their business to raise the fears/bogey of lawlessness. The government followed up its agenda with the Education Bill to put some curbs on the private management of education institutions. The Christian Church and the Nair Service Society had a practical command over most educational institutions. These groups raised a storm about the curbs. With the support of landlords and religious associations, the Congress confronted the communist government and provided support to the ‘liberation struggle’.34

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Food deficiency in Kerala was used to create more trouble for the state government. The Central Government directed it to acquire food grains from surplus states, when it did so from Andhra, allegations were made that this was done to enrich the Andhra communist party, followed by allegations of corruption about the Andhra Rice Deal. Under pressure of the opposition, a commission of inquiry on the rice deal was instituted headed by a judge, and it came to the conclusion that while the government needed to purchase 5000 tons in AugustSeptember 1957 the situation did not warrant a purchase made in the manner that it was or with the urgency that it was. In doing so the inquiry commission perhaps disregarded the fact that festival seasons were around the corner and stock maintenance was the responsibility of the government.35 This episode gave more ammunition to the opposition. The left government was toppled in 1959. The toppling game was played again in 1967-9 in both Kerala and West Bengal against the communist lead United Front governments. In both states, the communists had won in democratically held elections and were engaged mainly in implementing the avowed policies of the Congress government at the centre, perhaps considerably more effectively. Animosity between electoral rivals was rising precipitously. Political leadership against the communist state government in Kerala was provided by the then Congress President, Indira Gandhi. Although she was a newcomer to the field of active political work she succeeded. She was able to rally all the reactionary and communal forces for the sole objective of toppling the communist government (p. 58).36 In 1957, the Congress had declared that it would paralyze the administration in Kerala with no less than the PM praising the efforts of his daughter in doing so. Relations being so strained between the Congress and communists at the state level did not auger well for their relationship at the centre. Meanwhile the victory of the CPI in Kerala state elections in 1957 had sent alarm bells ringing loud in the American CIA establishment; preventing additional such outcomes became an essential aspect of arguments to increase ‘assistance’ to India.37 Moynihan, US Ambassador to India spoke of a demi-raj that the US had set up in India in the mid-1950s and 1960s, which ended rather badly later during his tenure 1973-5.38 Haksar too had commented on

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the situation with specific reference to activities of University of Chicago in Varanasi, in a letter to Indira Gandhi in 1970 saying that ‘. . . we allowed a certain amount of flabbiness to creep into our system of governance and let Americans loose in our country. . .’ (p. 166).39 The story in West Bengal was far more vicious. Bengal had an early history of revolutionary terrorism and left radicalism. Its status as centre of colonial rule till 1911, many generations of western education and industrialization made it a special case. The role of its landed elite was unique; it took to modern education, occupied key professional positions and perused literary, artistic, scientific and political interests to constructing a social-cultural renaissance. The Partition of Bengal and the turmoil it created in 1905, sharecropper’s movement in the 1940s, the great famine of 1943 and frailty of Congress and weakness of Gandhi’s influence allowed space for communists. The Bengali elite in considerable numbers, unlike the elite elsewhere, moved on to Marxism for its promise of liberation from both colonialism and capitalism. In 1930, CPI was recruiting actively in the jails of Bengal. Its membership in pre-Independence Bengal rose sharply from 37 in 1934 to 20,000 in 1947 on the basis of its relief work in 1943, and Tebhaga movement of sharecroppers. Many left parties grew. After the Partition of 1947, their support to the Hindu, East Bengali refugees enabled them to recruit new members. The left won 18 per cent of the popular vote in the first assembly election and 47 per cent in 1971 when they overtook the Congress. The process expanded with the arrival of more refugees after the 1971 war. The Congress had ruled the state since 1947. By 1967 the Congress failed to get the majority and was replaced by a United Front with significant representation from left parties. The coalition did not last beyond a few months, it was replaced by Presidents’ Rule. In 1969 re-election, the same coalition returned with greater representation of left parties. The government was dismissed in a year, subjected to severe repression during 1970-1, particularly after the Congress won almost three-fourth majorities in the 1972 elections. There were allegations of rigging by the Congress. CPM boycotted the assembly for five years. In Bengal,‘In 1977 the left parties emerged from what they consider as one of the darkest periods. In the preceding years, their cadre had been systematically hounded out of trade unions, ousted from the living quarters, prevented from

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holding public meetings and subjected to all manner of harassment’ (p. 123).40 Given this ferocious, no holds barred electoral competition at the state level, it was unlikely that Indira Gandhi would be seen as a promoter of socialism to the communists. This was the state of heightened antagonism between the Congress and the CPM when some leaders from Bengal gravitated towards JP’s movement in the years leading up to the emergency. Its political prisoners alone were estimated to number 40,000 during the emergency. Neither communists nor the Congress leadership looked particularly accurately at the political forces at play to the right of the Congress. And, therefore, they did not consider them to be either potent or threatening. At that point they were not manifestly so. In the aftermath of the ban it faced in 1949, the RSS fashioned itself as a cultural force and till Golwalkar passed away in 1973 it did not spread its political wings too wide. Jana Sangh, its political affiliate was a relatively marginal force while communists were the principal organized opposition in a few states. The first chapter refers to foreign scholars who had written about the role of militant Hinduism in Indian politics in the colonial period and some others kept up the examination in post-colonial times.41 Nevertheless, few inside India perceived the potential of the Jana Sangh. At least not as shrewdly as Craig Baxter, an American Foreign Service officer. He had spent time in Bombay, New Delhi and Lahore, studied developments in Jana Sangh up to 1967 and remarked, ‘The Bharatiya Jana Sangh enjoys a unique position among the national parties of India: It is the only party that has increased its percentage of popular vote and its share of parliamentary and assembly seats in each successive election from 1952 through 1967. Despite the party’s strong position; in the Western world it has been undoubtedly the least studied and the least well known of the major Indian political parties’.42 Baxter said that after the 1967 elections, the Jana Sangh had matured into a potent force on the Indian political scene, both in the national Parliament and the legislatures of several Indian states. Soon after Baxter (another foreign office connection), in the early 1970s, wrote extensively about the RSS, that will be examined in the last chapter. The role of CIA and the RSS in assisting the toppling of the first communist government in Kerala is known in left circles. It is hardly likely that CIA would have been indifferent to the rise of communists

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in India that too through successive elections! Some suggestions about the role of CIA and that of the RSS in the anti-Indira movement have also been made and examined in Chapter 2 and 3. It is not yet established as to what extent they worked in partnership in the 1970s and perhaps never will, given that covertness is a norm in both.

Rupture in the Communist Party Reasons that weakened the communist movement are broadly three; one, the constant confusion around the shift in Congress towards the left. The dilemma was how to respond to its shifts and maneuvers. Associations with the Congress had been a source of disagreements within the communists since the very beginning but after the Avadi session of 1955 they got worse. Second, the far more intricate issue unresolved since its early years was, how would the communists expand, strapped within a parliamentary democracy committed to supporting a capitalist economy? ‘Intra-party situation was marked by tensions and disagreements that burst forth after the Andhra defeat in 1955 mid-term elections and they were not resolved sufficiently in the party Congress at Palghat; they roiled the members till the party split in 1964’ (p. vi).43 Radicals within the movement rejected the possibility of peaceful transition to socialism formally adopted in 1958 while the moderates insisted that it was the only way possible (especially after the Telangana armed struggle was crushed by the state and army) and supporting progressive congressmen was necessary to sideline the reactionary segment within and so on. The third major problem erupted around the rift in the USSR-China and then Indo-Chinese relationships. In the post-war era, USSR was a major power. Later, China was an emerging one in the Asian region. Both were led by communist parties that supported each other broadly, though, their differences caused CPI factions to pick one over the other – tensions rose. In India, as mentioned, the Communist party was in no position to seize power after Independence. In the early 1950s, they had decided to work within parliamentary democracy and Constitution. They had no role in framing the Constitution and the framework in which they now decided to work. In 1946 provincial elections had voted the Congress with a large majority and they inherited India directly from the British,

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administration and the instruments of state power. Quite naturally their vision and ideology were encapsulated in the Constitution. The communists also consented to form the constituent assembly without a direct election for the same. During such an election they might have argued, contested, and strengthened their case against the Congress. In the years after Independence, the Communist party of India, therefore, had neither the size nor position to be wholly independent of international support or advice, which it continued to get from the USSR. This enabled the charge of international alliances beyond nationalism and a foreign hand to be hurled at them. Whenever an external threat like China was sighted both right wing within the Congress and the far right would orchestrate such allegations. The Congress too was not above using such forces in its struggle to retain and expand power. The build up to the India-China war of 1962 was one such occasion because a faction within the CPI was the only voice demanding a peaceful settlement of the territorial disputes with China. Since, boundaries between the two countries had been determined by the British, rulers of India and the Chinese were not willing to accept them, notwithstanding a thaw in the relationships with China and the grand success of the Bandung Conference. In this context the call for peaceful settlement by the CPI became the basis of an anti-communist storm. The party split over the issue into CPI and CPI(M) and the latter bore the brunt of the anti-communist tempest. India’s rather humiliating defeat in the 1962 India-China War was a political disaster for Nehru and the Congress party. The role that Jana Sangh and the right wing Congressmen played in forcing Nehru into the war which India was ill prepared for, has been well documented.44 Hyper-nationalism has been an important smoke screen for rightwing just as ‘anti-national’ has been a tool to fight political enemies for a long time. Communists in India have long been accused of finding inspiration outside India. The far right found inspiration in primeval glory of Bharat and in the mythology of old Hindu kingdoms, while the centre right Congress looked for inspiration entirely in the person of its leadership. Some leaders also espoused an indigenous version of secular and socialist nationalism. The Communists alone were found looking outside for inspiration and often direction as well. Hardly

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anyone questioned that the very idea of ‘liberal democracy’ was an inspiration from outside, as was the idea of a modern ‘nation’. Essentially the models for reference and imitation or adaptation came from outside, from the successful and powerful nations. The west that had dominated the world for a few centuries, USSR which had become a superpower within 50 years and China which was quickly finding its own way in the socialist world. Be that as it may, after the split in the Communist Party in 1964, leading to the formation of CPI and CPM, the Home Ministry launched a country wide attack on the latter, arrested thousands of middle and top rank cadres under the Preventive Detention Act and issued a ‘white paper’ giving the reasons for these arrests.45 The Calcutta conference of the October-November 1964 marked the birth of the CPM. More than 900 of its leading members were arrested by the central government in late December 1964 on vague charges of promoting an internal revolution to synchronize with a fresh Chinese attack, this was done under emergency powers of preventive detention and these leaders were in jail for one-and-a-half years.46 On the eve of the mid-term elections in Kerala in 1965, it also used the material that CPI faction had used to attack the CPM, the hysterical anti-China patriotic campaign in which Congress, Jana Sangh and Socialists had eased off only with the setback in the Indo-Chinese war of 1962, but the anti-national label remained wedged in to be used whenever needed. In 1965, another war, this time with Pakistan, with whom China had meanwhile established friendly relations was yet another occasion for patriotic fervour. These wars, as all wars do, had drained national resources, created scarcity and popular discontent in the post-war years. The left and other parties participated in mobilization programmes against price rise. On the eve of the fourth general elections, the CPM took the lead in uniting as many left and democratic parties on issues of civil liberties (since the cadre of CPM was still in prison) and prices of essential items which had risen sharply. It was this that led to the formation of many non-Congress governments at the state level and the phenomenon of what came to be called ‘anti-Congressism’ in 1965-6, which in the next decade under leaders like the Socialists Dr Lohia and later JP assumed a hostile, even perverse dimension.

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In the fourth general elections in 1966, the Congress lost many states, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Pondicherry, Delhi and Manipur. This was almost 68 per cent of the Indian population. But the going for the non-Congress governments was tough because they were not united by an agenda or ideology. Exceptions were Kerala CPM, Orissa and Tamil Nadu (DMK). Jana Sangh, Akalis, and the CPI participated in various unstable fronts. Defections were frequent as were rotations of parties that formed successive governments; all of it created much cynicism about the nature of the political system and leaders (this has been discussed in Chapter 2). Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal had to hold mid-term elections in 1969. It was in this election that the United Front emerged in West Bengal with more seats than in 1967. This breakdown in the Congress hegemony through the 1960s and the ability of the left to wrest a few states was the background in which Congress had to reorient its strategy once again. In doing so, Indira Gandhi resorted to a strategy akin to what Nehru had envisioned after 1952; that is to reposition Congress firmly to the left. Again, to enable the sharper left wing, the Congress split. A large segment of the top echelon in Congress was inclined to shift right. Unseen beneath this left-right tug of war within the Congress was the struggle for power of ambitious politicians after Nehru’s passing (dealt with extensively in Chapter 2). Within the left there was turmoil all over again just as in the years after Avadi. One set saw the Congress rift as representing two different class forces, one representing monopoly capital and the other, under Indira Gandhi progressive and inclusive, that would help the people fight the feudal and monopoly control. The other section thought that while tactically it would be a useful to support the Indira Gandhi Congress it did not in fact, represent a different class force. The differences among the left were based on the degree of support that should be extended to Indira Gandhi’s Congress, all out or only issue based without abandoning own agenda and struggle. The presence of left governments in West Bengal and Kerala in 1969, complicated the situation. These governments had waged long years of local struggles against the Congress governments in the states and against the centre

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which had dismissed left governments in the past and did so once again just before the formal Congress split came in 1969. Eventually, two main clusters went into the 1971 elections. CPI and some socialists (PSP) went with the Congress under Indira Gandhi. The other referred to as the grand alliance was composed of the syndicate Congress, Jana Sangh, Swatantra Party, SSP. The CPM opposed both these groups and in West Bengal most of the left groups supported CPM. While the Congress under Indira Gandhi went into the elections with a radical left agenda claiming to have cleansed itself of the right wing elements, the grand alliance went into it mainly with an anti-authoritarian, anti-Soviet line. Indian monopoly capital played the hedging game, of opposing the left leaning Congress under Indira but at the same time funding the Congress, preparing the ground for favours that would consolidate class interest. They funded both the Congress under Indira Gandhi and the right. The Congress under Indira Gandhi won handsomely, and the grand alliance was routed. CPM was able to get the largest number of seats among the opposition parties in the Lok Sabha, followed by CPI which was supported by Congress. In three states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura the CPM got the largest percentage of votes polled. However, despite this early burst of success, eventually, it appeared that splitting of the communists and the disruptive behaviour of the socialist supporters did weaken the presence of the left on an all India level, a fact also analyzed in a CIA special report in 1966.47 The report talked of the communists being the greatest threat to the democratic government of India with the greatest will, discipline, and considerable public support but much weakened by intense factional fighting among its ranks and repression by the state. It noted that they now posed a serious challenge only in three states identified as West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and were not in position to shape national level outcomes or policy.

External Pressures Yet Again Despite the left ward shift of the Congress under Indira at the centre and the many legislations that hemmed in monopoly capital and its

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victory at the polls, land reforms (state subject under the Constitution) were not followed through. What happened instead was that another war occupied national attention, this time on the eastern front over the issue of Bangladesh (discussed at some length in Chapter 2). The dispute was a power struggle between Bhutto who won the elections in West Pakistan and Sheikh Mujibur Rehman of the Awami League who had won resoundingly in East Pakistan and gained majority in the national parliament. Eventually India went to war with Pakistan because of the military atrocities on the supporters of Awami League, the resistance movement there, and the burden of over ten million refugees who had poured into India across the eastern border. India was caught in a situation with the western powers’ hostile to the issue of East Pakistan and unwilling to come to India’s support for the cause. Muslim countries sided openly with Pakistan. In these circumstances India turned to the USSR to accept the offer of a mutual treaty of friendship that had been offered a few years earlier. The Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was signed, this guaranteed arms and diplomatic support to India in the event of aggression. Reciprocal support from India was assured to USSR. This was a pronounced turning point in India’s foreign policy orientation. Bangladesh became an independent nation, and this outcome, because it was supported indirectly by USSR, was a diplomatic setback for USA. America under Nixon was trying to normalize relationships with China and USSR. There were now three powers on the world scene, each interested in maneuvering against each other. India’s support became important for USSR and vice-versa. What followed the 1971 war, could well be called a phase of intense diplomatic rivalry between the USSR and America – war by other means. 1970s saw a series of dramatic international developments wherein the American military might was defeated in direct confrontations in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia (1975), countries under the influence of USSR/China. These countries saw the reemergence of communist parties at the helm. This midst the general and continual retreat of western forces from Cape Verde, Guinea, Mozambique, armed struggle in Zimbabwe, Namibia and growing resistance in South Africa. The long war in Indochina also known as the greatest proxy war of the cold war era ended quite badly for America in terms of time, cost, and eventual

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defeat. For a while thereafter, American efforts to restore their spheres of influence consisted of more indirect means like coups in Thailand, Chile (1973), assassination of Mujibur Rehman (1975) and creating or backing puppet regimes in Saudi Arabia and Sadat in Egypt.48 All this geopolitical turmoil was accompanied by a serious economic crisis for western countries, set off by oil price hikes, arrival of Japan as a major manufacturing rival in international trade. Stagflation accompanied by increasing unemployment beset the western world. The intensity of the slowdown in the west, rise of Japan in the east and the rising prices of crude oil were to have profound socio-political consequences across the globe resulting in the end of the full employment, working class unrest and gradual retreat of welfare state in capitalist countries. The burden of this slowdown in the western economies was being redistributed everywhere not just among its own working class, but to the debt ridden third world (by raising interest on debt) and through trade manipulations by multinational corporations and via technology transfers deals (these came to be recognized as the tools of neo-colonialism). Weapons manufacture was the only steady source of profit and weapon sales rose sharply, ostensibly to counter communism. The socialist bloc was not without its internal tensions, when it was not warding off an intervention from the CIA or battling economic problems, it was dealing with the tensions emanating between the two giants Soviet Union and China.

Complex Reality At the height of the complicated international situation the Indian domestic economy took a turn for the worse following yet another war. There were food shortages, oil prices hikes, all this leading to popular unrest. The left trade unions could have hardly ignored these issues without losing their relevance. The situation in West Bengal was the most complex, The Congress had held West Bengal since 1947. But after 1966 the state elections resulted in Bangla Congress (break away from Congress) with Ajoy Mukherjee as Chief Minister and the CPM with Jyoti Basu as deputy Chief Minister and assortment of left-wing parties sharing power. Within the CPM there was disagreement about participation in such

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a government between Jyoti Basu and Promode Dasgupta. The former supposed that the government could be shaped from within the latter was against it.49 The Congress, as opposition was the single largest party. Within a year contradiction emerged in the shape of the Naxalbari movement for land redistribution in Naxalbari region in Darjeeling district. These Himalayan foothills had particularly fraught land relations with large tea plantations owned by British companies. With communists in power there were raised hopes for redistribution which could not be addressed. The peasant organization that led the struggle under Kanu Sanyal met with state repression. Many hailed the rise of the revolutionary struggle including leaders in communist China. This spread to include other communists groups disenchanted with their role in parliamentary democracy. Andhra Pradesh was one such region. The CPI(ML) was formed, a break away group of communists and their differences which can fill volumes, multiplied.50 Meanwhile the government collapsed under its contradictions and President’s Rule was imposed from February 1968-9 for a year in West Bengal. In the next state elections CPM came back with more seats but had to form a government with Bangla Congress once again. Some years of deep turmoil and lawlessness51 followed while the ruling parties struggled against each other, among each other and the centre. Once again Presidents Rule was imposed in March 1970 which lasted till April 1971. In West Bengal elections soon after the 1971 war, matters got worse than in Kerala (where state government of the left had been toppled a second time in 1969). The left parties were denied the right to approach the electorate. The irregular manner in which the elections were organized has been commented on by observers.52 Despite the fact that Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Mujibur Rehman of the newly created Bangladesh (then riding a wave of popularity in West Bengal) addressed an election rally from the same platform. Political analysists and Intelligence Bureau did not give the Congress anything but a slight majority which would have been an uneasy situation for the Congress.53 The political leaders who got involved in criticizing the Congress included Jayaprakash Narayan. He addressed a press conference in Calcutta on 14 May 1972 on the issue. JP’s correspondence reveals that some opposition parties including the CPM approached him to

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initiate a Commission of Inquiry headed by distinguished jurists into the conducting of elections to the West Bengal state assembly and possibly one or two other state assemblies. However, the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee refused to participate in such an inquiry and suggested that the opposition approach the election commission or the court of law (p. 49).54 Within seven days of the polling, 20,000 workers and leaders of the trade union movement were forcibly evicted from their houses; many homes were then looted and burned. Left trade unions and some 360 of Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) branches were uprooted, their offices were occupied, and their members were told to join unions of the ruling Congress party. In West Bengal even before the June 1975 emergency there were 15,000 to 20,000 political prisoners many of them alleged Naxalites and held without trial since 1970-1. This account is not to deny the intense friction between the factions of the left. The Congress like other political parties including CPM seemed to be in a no holds bar contest at the state level. The Congress, nationally the most powerful, was making enemies out of the opposition parties and making the quest for an alternative to Congress more urgent for their survival. In Maharashtra, the Congress was not averse to aligning with the far right, nativist formation called Shiv Sena, who in turn gave them ample assistance in breaking the sway of left run unions in Bombay. More about that saga will follow later in the chapter. Internationally, the alliance with USSR was firm (the west not having forgotten or forgiven the break up of Pakistan) and plenty of central legislations both gave Congress a left leaning position. Implementation of some policies was sketchy as states ignored the centre. The centre’s harassment and dismissal of opponents, particularly the elected communists, severely dented public perceptions about the Congress. Indira Gandhi in turn was perhaps too preoccupied trying to consolidate Congress electoral victories, her own position earlier within the Congress and then in her breakaway Congress. Indira Gandhi’s reply to the Commission, set up to inquire into the excesses of the emergency period, was that if the purpose of the Commission was to check abuse of power in the future, the circumstances that created the chaotic conditions and led to the emergency

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must also be enquired into. She blamed the opposition for creating unrest and anarchy because of which the government had to take such an action to save the country. Responding to it Namboodiripad said, ‘Can Indira Gandhi argue that the talk of ‘civil war’, ‘bloodshed’, ‘taking things to the street’, etc., indulged in by the Congress (I) leaders including the Chief Ministers of two states is something better than the alleged threat of direct action by the opposition leaders in 1975’?55 This in sum, was the depth of fury and dismal outcome of the electoral competition. The urgency to create an alternative to the Congress at the centre just kept growing. Some programme, as a base, upon which such a coalition could be built up was outlined at the ninth party Congress of the CPM held in 1972. It had four basic points. The first set was, combating the dangers of firstly, Congress party dictatorship, protecting constitutional liberties, free and fair elections, right to vote, withdrawing of all repressive legislation like Preventive Detention Act, MISA, Prevention of Violent Activities Act, Defence of India Act and Emergency Rules, Arbitrary Power of Dismissal available to President and withdrawal of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), military from West Bengal and release of all arrested under those Acts. All these were political demands based on the experience of repression. The second was economic demands that included the rights to minimum wage, full trade union rights, land reforms, fair price shops for essential commodities, housing sites for rural poor, credit to agriculture and so on. Third, educational and cultural demands included free education up to secondary stage, hostels, and scholarships, safeguards for rights of women, minorities, schedule castes and tribes and protection of Urdu and fighting communal passions on all sides. Fourth, foreign policy demands included anti-imperialism and support to all struggles against imperialism, for friendly relations with all socialist countries including China.

Self-Analysis by the Communists Looking back scholars say, ‘The emergency marked a turning point in Indian politics. It weakened the forces of the left and also led to further deterioration in the CPI-CPM relations’ (p. 97).56

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CPM collaboration with other parties both in pre- and postemergency period was a subject of great dissent within the party. General Secretary, P. Sundarayya resigned in protest. His letter of resignation dated 22 Augusrt 1975, two months after the emergency was declared, states clearly the first reason that ‘joint actions with pro-imperialist Jana Sangh and para military fascist storm troopers like RSS in the name of fighting emergency would isolate the party from anti-imperialist and socialist forces in the country and abroad’ (p. 1).57 In his judgment, Jana Sangh and other rightist parties were keen for the left to join because they would reap benefits from political agitations against the government in the company of the left democratic forces without any commitment to the causes of the left or democracy. He was upset that CPM tactics were tacitly shifting from loose collaboration, to action committees to campaign committees to united fronts as time progressed. He quoted the party’s own programme at that point in which Para 109 identified right wing forces collaborating with one another like, Swatantra Party as being reactionary and counter revolutionary while the Jana Sangh had an additional character of being communal. These parties were known to sabotage all agricultural reforms, attack the public sector viciously, and damage trade with socialist bloc, to advocate open door policy for foreign capital and concessions for monopoly capital and military alliance with America. His opinion was not heeded; it was not the majority position in the politburo. In the 1978 Draft Resolution (for tenth Congress of CPM),58 the party reflected on the 1970s, and acknowledged its role in the agitations before the emergency along with other opposition parties. They were against what it described as tendencies of one-party dictatorship, anti-democratic measures taken by the Central Government against working people in the form of wage, bonus freeze under pressure from the IMF. But essentially the conflict that led to the emergency was described as one between two rival bourgeoisie-landlord parties to seize government machinery by all possible means where ‘both groups were prepared to violate their cherished parliamentary norms, thus throwing the system into crisis’. The opposition parties‘chose extra parliamentary activity and not only appealed to the masses for direct action but also appealed to the police and the military to disobey illegal orders.’ One

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fraction of the communists in the CPI had already identified the more reactionary of the two bourgeoisie-landlord parties and decided to support the Congress. Report from Ministry of Home Affairs recorded the role of the CPM in cooperating with the opposition ‘to launch peripheral and converging agitations’; it often cited Jyotirmoy Basu being the CPM’s point person.59 CPM was not part of the national coordination committee set up in November 1974, but on 25 June 1975 attended the meeting of the programme committee of the opposition parties. This peripheral association was before the emergency was imposed and it increased during the emergency. The logic of this association had not been thoroughly analyzed although internal disagreements in the party were mentioned. Some dissenters were especially unhappy with the indirect collaboration with Jana Sangh and dissenting views were expressed by P. Sundarayya first general secretary of the CPM.60 The 1978 draft resolution nevertheless went on to suggest that the struggle against emergency helped in resisting forces of dictatorship in favour of democracy, That the ‘danger of authoritarian dictatorship’ had been lifted with the electoral defeat of the Congress and restoration of democratic rights and civil liberties. That it was a struggle for restoration of the rights of people and civil liberties. It also described the pre-emergency and emergency period as the biggest upheaval since Independence. On the other hand it said that the post-emergency ruling Janata Party was one which had yet to develop a coherent ideology and organization. With its conflicting traditions and heritage of its constituents it was riddled with ideological and organizational problems. The draft predicted that those internal conflicts within the Janata party would continue, as would conflicts with the Congress since the latter had considerable strength among the people. In this assessment it proved to be accurate. The anti-emergency struggle and the electoral victory did not lead to a shift in the in the balance of forces in favour of the working class, they were not moving away from the influence of the bourgeois parties and rallying around an alternative leadership. As in 1971, in the 1979 elections too, there was polarization around the two bourgeois-landlord combinations, the Congress and the Janata Party, the left had not emerged as a viable force. Attempts to unite the left forces before the

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emergency proved less than successful as the CPI stayed away and the socialists joined the movement led by JP. The final assessment of the CPM was that in the Janata government, communal and obscurantist ideology of the RSS was in a position of influence within. The Janata government did not alter the economic policies of the Congress in any significant way other than those directed by the WB. It acknowledged that the antecedents of the main constituents of the Janata Party were anti-democratic and reactionary. They were the same parties that represented the grand alliance in 1971, and those whom the party had then characterized as extreme reaction, right reaction. While the Congress-O was the representative of the landlords-monopolist combine, the ideology of the RSS-Jana Sangh was reactionary in the extreme. The Congress-O had taken a position on the sacredness of the right of private property, against abolition of the Privy Purse, bank nationalization, etc. Both were avowedly anti-communist. The draft resolution of the CPM ended with a call to struggle for a left-democratic alternative. Seizing power in West Bengal seemed to have been the principal gain for the CPM from the entire cataclysm. But then in 1978, who could have foreseen the manner in which forces of religious fundamentalism would be unleashed on the subcontinent and gain momentum so rapidly? Under code name ‘Operation Cyclone’, CIA funded mujahideen (Islamic militants from 1979-89) to fight in Afghanistan against soviet influence.61 In neighbouring Pakistan politics was sucked into the vortex of Islamic fundamentalism that threatened that country up to the present times. Arms and militants in the neighborhood escalated militancy in Kashmir and enthused Sikhs in Punjab for a separate homeland, with alleged CIA assistance.62 The long standing organization of the far right Hindu fundamentalists in India, with generous funding from its sympathizers in the west, was also electrified in the 1980s. Was it all just a coincident? While Sikh militants waged a war for a separate state in Punjab, the RSS went all out with programmes of religious agitations to communalize society (that journey will be charted in the last chapter). An overlapping surge of religious fundamentalism, in cycles of reaction and response engulfed Indian politics through the 1980s. By the end of that decade the left was caught in the claws of caste and communal

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politics with diminishing scope for class action. In less than two decades after the collapse of the Janata Government the RSS would make a major bid for political power on the national stage, through their political front. In time, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its disintegration after 1991, there was an even more serious forfeiture for the Indian communist movement. Communist movements all over the region had to face not just questions about the failures of the USSR but also about of their own relevance and existence. Then the blitz of neoliberal propaganda began with great intensity. What happened next was a well orchestrated international broadcast of various critiques of socialist ideology, public sector and labour rights, tailed by a valourizing of economic efficiency, profit motives, free markets by professional classes like economists and technocrats, often trained in the western world. This created the setting for the arrival of a belligerent variety of capitalism which was by now well-developed as the ruling doctrine in the America and the Anglo-Saxon world. It was swept directly into Indian policy making. In the west, capital had perfected the art and organization for harnessing the elected governments to their cause. India would not lag behind. Consequently, in the colonial past, communists who had in comparison with the Congress and RSS, struggled with teething troubles through early years, suffered much in the post-liberalization era as well. They struggled, first for recruiting members and creating a dedicated, skilled, tightly knit revolutionaries able to work among labour and peasants. This was a challenge inherited from the past, locals were difficult to recruit and train given the overall rate of illiteracy and social backwardness in the villages. The social and economic condition among the workers and peasants was adverse but the challenges of organizing them as a class across the divisions of caste was even more so. Funding full time party workers was the second challenge as cost of living rose rapidly. Paucity of cadre would also slow down the penetration of CPI into other social and cultural forums or to create new mass fronts. The late start, fierce competitive opposition and shortage of high-quality recruits were to become a cumulative problem, a problem, that was highlighted as early as 1953 in a party document, evaluating its weakness in the face of the enormous task of shifting social consciousness

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through movements, cultural interventions while simultaneously participating in elections. ‘To discharge even a fraction of the new responsibilities, to carry out even a part of the immense tasks, the party needs cadres . . . cadres ideologically trained and politically developed who have capacity for initiative and leadership. . . . Of such cadre we have too few. And those few are overburdened with work’ (pp. 185-6).63 This was also the reason that in the early years it could not stand alone, independent of ideological guidance and support from CPSU and Communist Party of China (CPC). It was only in the 1950s that it could begin a departure from ‘revolution by analogy’, away from placing all debates about the revolution in India in terms of Russian path or Chinese path. The Congress was the largest and best organized anti-imperialist front in India before Independence and remained the largest albeit a diminishing political opposition to the far right (RSS and its political front) after 1980s.

Socialists Disintegrate The idea of a distinct socialist ginger group working within the Congress trying to push it leftwards, was floated in meetings in 1933 between JP, Achhut Patwardhan, Yusuf Meherali, Ashok Mehta and Minoo Masani in Nasik jail. Some of these names came up in Chapter 2 and 3 as part of the JP saga. In April 1934, the UP-Congress leader Sampurnanand drew up a tentative socialist programme for India, and the CSP was formally started the very next month, at a conference chaired by Narendra Dev. ‘The ideology of its founders ranged from vague and mixed up radical nationalism to fairly firm advocacy of Marxian ‘scientific socialism’, which Narendra Dev at Patna meeting distinguished sharply from mere ‘social reformism’ (p. 285).64 Its activities created tensions within the Congress, midst the dominant right wing. In June 1934, the Congress Working Committee condemned its ‘loose talk’ about confiscation of private property and the necessity of class war, as contrary to non-violence. Gandhi wrote to Narendra Dev to say that Nehru, who gave Indians the mantra of socialism and would be the natural successor for the leadership of the Congress, would not hasten to talk of class war. Historians of modern India

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suggested that CSP activities and discussions did force the Congress to think of issues like agrarian reform, problems of industrial labour, future of princely states and non-Gandhian methods of mass mobilization and struggle. CSP activists were able to develop a close relationship with Kisan Sabha movement and its training in Bihar and Andhra. It also acted like a bridge that was used by some activists to cross over to full fledged Marxian communism, particularly in Andhra. Numerous young people were attracted to the ideology and its theoretical base. The educated classes led and the masses followed. This was because of the real problems of exploitation and injustice they faced in their livelihood and daily existence which corresponded to the creed or at least what they thought the leaders were talking about. At no point was there a widespread grasp of the basic ideas in the Congress let alone its absorption among the masses. According to Sarkar, the late 1930s were marked by an interesting pattern in Indian politics which would be repeated often, before and after Independence. Outwardly, all the signs were of a significant lurch to the left; growing socialist and communist activity (despite 1934 ban on CPI), numerous labour and peasant struggles, the formation of several left led all India mass organizations, and Congress presidential addresses by Nehru at Lucknow and Faizpur (April and December 1936) which seem to formally embody all the radical aspirations and programmes of the left. ‘Yet in the end, the right within the Congress was able to skillfully and effectively ride and indeed utilize the storm, and by the summer of 1937, Congress ministries were being formed to work a significant part of the Constitution which everyone had been denouncing for years’ (p. 290).65 Later, another event that caused much confusion about the nature of Congress under Nehru was the Avadi session of the party, mentioned above. Like the communists, CSP formed in 1934, began its career within the Congress, and remained a part of the Congress but with its separate constitution, membership, and ideology. It remained a minority and faced discrimination at the local levels within the Congress; more so after Independence since the common task of Independence that united everyone was no longer at hand. It also sensed the reluctance of the Congress to make a purposeful, programmatic commitment to

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socialism. In March 1948, most members left the congress although some stayed on. Historians have lamented that decision. It weakened the socialist left within the Congress and Nehru was surrounded by conservatives and right wing congressmen. ‘Neither the socialists nor the communists or the two together – an impossibility at that time – were capable of replacing Congress or bringing about socialism or social change in opposition to Congress’ (p. 254).66 However, socialist leaders claimed that immediately after the death of Gandhi the Congress amended its constitution in a way that the socialists had no choice but to leave and Nehru did not stop them. Some non-Congress ministers like Dr. Ambedkar resigned and so did C.D. Deshmukh.67 They were isolated and this divorce occurred despite the fact that most socialists concede that Nehru was the best among the leaders within the Congress. Nehru ‘s proverbial loneliness within the organization probably had something to do with their exit. Personal agendas and ambitions played no mean role in the socialist muddles throughout. It took them multiple ways and into many unseemly alliances. While the larger questions, like the necessary structure of a socialist state and means to create such a state in the context of the real existing balance of social forces in India, remained unresolved. It needed theoreticians and leaders that socialists could neither generate in large enough numbers nor hold on to. Besides with all and sundry pretending to be a socialist, the term lost its special meaning and eventually sounded hollow. In the general elections of 1952, the Socialist Party won 12 seats in the Lok Sabha and 10.6 per cent of the popular vote. Many of their important leaders however lost. Meanwhile a Kisan Mazdoor Praja party formed by some Congress dissidents and led by J.B. Kriplani also performed poorly with only 9 seats in the Lok Sabha and 5.8 per cent of the votes. The two later merged to form the PSP with Kriplani as chairman and Ashok Mehta as general secretary. But since its formation in 1953 and up to 1964, it was rife with dissidence and factional differences on the nature of its position against the Congress, its own role in nation building and correct means of protesting. The stance of Dr Rammanohar Lohia was of aggressive opposition to both Congress and communists. Unable to arrive at any consensus or lasting agreement among the leaders, there were splits and departures. Jayaprakash

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Narayan withdrew soon afterwards from active politics. Lohia and his group left the party in 1955. He formed his own party which was markedly militant and extremely anti-Nehru. After 1962 elections, the socialists were an even more dejected lot. In 1963, the socialist leaders were struggling to educate the public and create an alternative to Congress. They justified their existence with the argument that more than one national party was necessary for parliamentary democracy to function at all, and, perennial hegemony of Congress was unhealthy. In 1967, Lohia was seeking support from Swatantra and Jan Sangh and the communists to defeat the Congress; by 1971, the electoral fortunes of the PSP had waned. In 1971, half members of the PSP joined the Congress.

Was there a ‘Liberal’ Right in India? Was there ever a self-confessed liberal right wing in India on the lines of conservatives in Britain? Sixty years after it was formed, the digital press in India was celebrating the birth of a right liberal political party, called the Swatantra Party, little known and non-existent today. Recalling how it challenged Nehru’s socialism, prevented the famine in India that would have followed collectivising land (what was proposed at the Nagpur Congress was actually cooperative farming) and claimed that India was finally put on the road first mapped by the Swatantra Party in 1991,68 referring to neo-liberal reforms, which in less than a decade brought the far right to power as dominant partner, in Delhi for the first time. Scholars like Erdman present the Swatantra Party as the closest parallel to a right liberal that India ever had. He then highlighted significant differences. To quote, ‘It has been part of the conventional wisdom about Indian politics that right-wing political activity has been extremely ineffectual. Certainly, a few writers, apart from Marxists, have argued to the contrary’ (p. 10).69 Hardly any commentators thought that the ancient regime, the princes, and aristocracy could generate a reaction in 1947 or even after the first two general elections. . . . Nehru, however, was more circumspect; he thought that that the resistance of those attached to the old aristocracy and princely states was passive not active. ‘No

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one denied that that there existed privileged classes with a vested interest in maintaining the ancient regime, but they seemed quiescent; and the passivity and inarticulateness of these groups were paralleled, ostensibly, in the case of modern elite in land and industry’.70 The Congress remained the dominant party for 25 years after Independence, whether or not it was capable of forging a long term unity of purpose out of divergent social, linguistic, caste and religious groups, or, if it could overcome the weight of centuries of tradition necessary to modernize was another question. From the late 1920s, Nehru had given enough cause for the conservatives to be apprehensive, he aligned himself with the more radical elements and against the defenders of socio-religious orthodoxy and stagnation in rural India. It was obvious and Eardman also mentioned that an effective government led by Nehru could have provided a formidable threat to several important privileged social groups. As it was, post-Independence, the princes lost their states, and then gradually their residual political power as their status suffered and economic position deteriorated severely. The same was substantially true for the landed aristocrats, the big zamindars, both within and outside the princely states, who were eliminated as intermediaries between the peasant and state. The middle peasantry had to confront prospects of ceilings on land holding, higher taxation, vague threat of (Nagpur Congress session) cooperative agriculture and measures to improve the condition of the lower classes. Similarly, the industrial licensing system, attacks on the managing agency system, intimations of nationalization and higher corporate tax, quotas and demarcation of some sectors for public sector, could not have failed to cause some unease even if not seriously regarded. Rajagopalachari, or Rajaji as he was called, launched a new political party called Swatantra Party in 1959. Backing it were the initiatives of two lobbies; one was the Bombay based Forum for Free Enterprise and the other, the All India Agriculturist Federation formed in 1958, a body of large land owners formed to oppose Land Ceiling Laws and alarmed by the Nagpur resolution of the Congress on cooperative farming. Many feudal lords and princes joined it. These elements together adopted party principles at its first convention that stated, ‘The party holds that the progress, welfare and happiness of the people

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depend on individual initiative, enterprise and energy.’ The party also declared that it stood for maximum freedom of the individual and minimum interference by the state.71 Rajaji who was at its helm declared that it rejected the techniques of socialism which brought forth statism which meant that democracy run by a single party quickly became a tyranny.72 The actual party formation was announced in Madras and its first convention was in Bombay in June 1959. But all the groups within the Swatantra Party were diverse, with inter and intra group cleavages, far from aggregated and divided by caste and region. The same was the case of modern industry organized largely on family and caste lines. Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) was the first pan-India business organization of any kind. The Congress, was the only successful relatively well organized pan-Indian institution based on coalitions of interest groups. It proved to be the broadest possible rallying point for a long time. Under Gandhi, this unity of purpose was maintained tapping into some traditional currents of thought in India while providing no direct threat to class or caste interest. Only the aristocrats and princely states viewed the Congress with some unease and remained aloof from the nationalist movement, more so as the party broadened its base among the middle and lower-castes and classes. The princely groups turned to the British to defend their interest. Their capacity for mischief was great and the possibility of spinning the new country into anarchy and chaos was clear, so much so, that Sardar Patel also commented on the privileges (like tax free privy purse, right to personal property and wealth, succession, etc.) that were granted to them constitutionally in exchange for merger, as being a small price for a ‘bloodless revolution’ that affected the lives of millions of their subjects. Perhaps the same caution against the possibility of reactionary resistance, drove the land reforms. ‘. . . The anti-colonial struggle drove a wedge between the indigenous aristocracy and industrial commercial classes, precluding the emergence, at least in the short run, of a fascist type alliance between them. It is significant, too, that while there was a growing concern over the rise of socialist elements, the threat from the left was not so acutely felt that the gap between these classes was

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bridged’ (p. 18).73 This is the foundation of the moderate elements in the Congress coalition. None of the elements that Nehru had inveighed against were driven to the wall without compensation and this is the reason why what happened after Independence, was far from radical in the revolutionary sense. None of the government legislations in actual implementation provided a real or imminent danger to the landed classes. No coercion would ever be used to bring about any redistribution or reorganization of agriculture. Thus, diverse methods to democratize and improve the lot of the lower-classes in the villages were heavily bounded by the considerations for the property owning classes. In many cases, projected reforms remained totally unimplemented. The same security was available to the business-classes. In fact, the public sector eventually provided inputs and infrastructure to the private industrial groups and private industrial clusters prospered around giant public enterprises. In due course some aristocrats did join the Congress as ministers and the system tried to and managed to absorb its opposition in its drive for electoral victories but not without damaging its coherence. Indian conservative ideology had multiple intertwining strands. For the privileged castes and aristocrats, their divine rights were sanctioned and embedded in religion, dharma and hereditary. Among the rest of the conservatives the following strands of beliefs can be noticed, firstly, that real India was to be found in the unchanging village communities, secondly, that these self-governing village communities had been the nucleus of Indian life since the ancient times and thirdly, that the ideal traditional family (endorsed by religion) and community were located within these villages. Somehow in that notion these villages were also the bastion of Indian spiritualism and resistance to westernization of education, legal and democratic political processes. They were simultaneously fortressing against competitive politics brought on by ideas of socialism, democracy and against the new order emerging out of dislocations caused by early industrial, commercial economy. This conception entered mainstream discourses of nationalism when it recalled the ‘lost golden past’. It is a part of Indian variations of Gandhian socialism as well. Here it got tied up with the brahminical idea that piety and high thinking was inconsistent with complicated material life, and voluntary restriction of material wants was a hallmark

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of high civilization. This strand was often mixed up with preference for spiritual solutions to problems rather than administrative or material ones. The sum of these was an inevitable cloud of nostalgia, muddle, and preference for status quo at all levels. Given overlapping caste and class segments and multiple levels of hierarchy in Indian society, only those at the lowermost levels of the hierarchy would stand to gain and not lose anything from a reversal of this status quo. And they did not know anything about the possibility of a new order. For the conservative, revivalist RSS agglutination (whose social base comes from the various dislocated and dispossessed remnants of the ancient system) whose notions of past Hindu glory was founded not on the self-sufficient village but on another tradition of military might, a monarchical state founded on religion, culture of obedience and discipline in the service of the hierarchy. Its particular champions here were the ‘Chitpavan Brahmins’ of Poona area- a specially militant and political class associated with the Maratha kingdom; its closest allies in the conservative spectrum were the usual, princes and the high, brahmin caste. The new capitalist class of India formed only in the last few decades of colonial rule, did not represent a significant liberal position. It had prospered in tightly monitored colonial environments.They were rooted in caste and regional centres. They supported the Congress to overcome the constraints of British control and competition of foreign capital, and quickly gained state support in the post-colonial period. Born as it was under colonial rule and (later maturing under the shadows of Marxist revolutions in Russia and China) it never confronted the feudal order but simply tried to align itself wherever its gains could be maximized. For at least a decade or two after Independence, the Congress was an adequate vehicle for them. Besides, no political party comparable to the Congress could emerge on the national scale. That a strong right-wing opposition outside the Congress did not emerge does not imply that right wing forces (and their support base) did not exist outside the Congress. By 1959, Erdman noted that there were at least five political parties which had been classified as right wing, the Hindu Mahasabha, the Jan Sangh, the RRP, the Gantantra Parishad (GP), and the Janata Party, but, except for the GP which had ruled for a few months in Orissa with the Congress as coalition partner,

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none of the others had any experience even at the state level, they were poorly organized, mainly local, and confined to the north. The first three were of a cultural communal ideology. Only the Jana Sangh backed by the para-military RSS had a more extensive and disciplined organization. The RSS was also the only organization of its kind with a large, disciplined cadre before Independence and with prospects as vehicle for the militant far right. In 1951-2 and 1957 elections, these parties did not do well. But then, these electoral outcomes did not reflect the depth and width of the right wing sentiment in India. As long as the Congress could garner votes based on its historic role, it remained the ruling party. Early defections from the Congress were to the left. This is one indicator of the well entrenched right wing within. Interestingly, it was the Hindu Code Bill (discussed in Chapter 1) introduced in the Parliament in 1949 which brought heterogeneous strains in Indian conservatism closer together inside and outside the Parliament. It was this Bill by which relations and property of Hindu families was affected that challenged the orthodox in every social class by granting property rights to women. It was resisted across the country by upper-castes from the village to the Presidential level. The first President, Rajendra Prasad, refused to give his accent to the Hindu Code Bill without modifications. The episode caused significant unease for Ambedkar (and Nehru who supported Ambedkar’s Bill). One has only to revisit the sequence of events over the passage of the Bill to grasp the conservative, right wing clout. The business of codifying Hindu law had through time grown into a complex web that defied codification. It was an onerous task to which PM Nehru had committed Dr Ambedkar and himself. It sought to reform the whole gamut of laws that governed Hindu marriages, divorce, adoption, inheritance of property in favour of women, a major step in the direction of gender equality. But it was opposed and the bogey of ‘Hindu religion in danger’ was raised. An old editorial said ‘The gesture of accommodation he (PM) showed to the House was prefaced by the challenge that the Government would make an issue of it, and would be prepared to resign if the Hindu Code Bill was thrown out. . . . That the Government of the day should think of making an issue of the bill, when the Congress, which is supposed to run the Government, is so much divided

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about it is a mystery that has never ceased to surprise students of parliamentary procedure. It is not the President of the Congress alone who has openly opposed the measure. The erstwhile President of the Constituent Assembly Rajendra Prasad made no secret of his own feelings on the measure’ (p. 3).74 The article goes on to say that the President threatened to use his power of veto unless the Bill was withdrawn. It was altered and passed in 1955 with many within the Congress still reluctant to support it. The episode is proof of the fact that society is shaped and changed by forces largely outside the legislative chambers, and law plays a limited part in the process. Indian statute books were full of laws that did not change social customs and equations fundamentally. Comparable cases from land reform, protection of untouchables, economic policies reflect the powerful clout of the right wing within the Congress. Four years later the Swatantra Party was formed, its ideology stressed importance of market economy, freedoms, constitutional rights, and rights to compensation in the event of nationalization or appropriation. It did not project a Hindu militant image and had greater acceptability as a conservative party. One of its prominent leaders, Masani, is reported to have said ‘that the Planning Commission was usurping the democratic powers of the cabinet and that the party sought to abolish the five year plans and return to planning by the annual budget’.75 Interestingly, this was one of the first major policy decisions of the Hindu nationalist BJP government that assumed power as the single largest party in 2014. Masani was also to become a collaborator and colleague of JP the Gandhian Socialist in the CIA backed CCF and in the anti-Indira movement led by JP. Another leader was K.M. Munshi, a Cabinet Minister in the Congress government in 1947 whose role in the campaign for rebuilding of Somnath temple soon after 1947 (amid the worst communal riots and human migration in modern history) is recorded in his book Pilgrimage to Freedom. In joining this temple campaign, he had disagreed with the PM, and followed his own convictions. He had declared that his own Hindu faith, and the ‘collective subconscious’ of India was rooted in Hindu dharma. Later, he started the journal of Bharati Vidya Bhavan and institutions for eclectic education to further the Hindu cultural cause. So his association with Hindu revivalism was not

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surreptitious. Munshi’s book and its description of Somnath reconstruction was invoked by the general secretary of the RSS in 2018 for the reconstruction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya.76 Others in the leadership included C. Rajagopalachari, N.G. Ranga, B.R. Shenoy, Piloo Mody and V.P. Menon who were anti-communists of various hues. The fact that the party as such did not project the Hindu religious view is the only reason why it is often categorised as a liberal party in a ‘classical sense’. In 1962, general elections, the Swatantra Party established itself as a significant and a controversial political force. It was composed of feudal, communal, and conservative elements. Its financial backers were capitalists from western India and rich peasants in the south. Polling about 8 per cent of votes, it formed the third largest contingent to Lok Sabha and the second largest total of state assembly seats. It became the main opposition party in Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Orissa. Barely a month later, an editorial in the American magazine Life declared that ‘the Swatantra program could really get that huge country moving in a different direction favourable to free institutions. The free world can wish this little party a big future’.77 The CPI labelled it as the dark forces of right reaction. Later when CPI split in 1964, the Swatantra Party became the main opposition in the Lok Sabha as well. Swatantra Party now represented the first successful right wing electoral aggregation but in its specific performance, there was little to recommend it as a liberal democratic force. Its founding leader was C. Rajagopalachari a veteran leader of the independence movement and associate of Gandhi. Senior Vice-President was K.M. Munshi, constitutional lawyer and Hindu revivalist. Other leaders included N.G. Ranga, an Oxford educated economist, conservative and anti-communist. Its General Secretary was Minoo Masani, another Oxford educated economist, ex-socialist and now anti-socialist, Treasurer Homy Mody prominent businessman and financer, V.P. Menon, retired senior bureaucrat as well as other retired civil servants, judges and military men were among the other high profile members. Minoo Masani described it as a ‘national democratic party of all elements and communities in India which could not agree with Jana Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha, DMK and Akali Dal in so far as they are sectarian parties’. It was projected as devoid of

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defenders of Hindu orthodoxy and its 21-point fundamental principles are predominantly classical liberal in tone.78 It tried to position itself as a progressive liberal party distinct from ‘messiahs of backwardness’ like RRP, Hindu Mahasabha and Jan Sangh at the same time, positioning themselves as different from the Congress, PSP and socialists. In Masani’s view, communists were the dark forces and most if not all non-communist opposition parties, were acceptable electoral allies. The party, however, was so constrained by its leadership, its conservatism, poor organizational ability, and finances that it did not survive the test of time. Although in some modest degree, some liberal ideas were articulated by a section of its leadership, the party was by no means a liberal right-wing force. In the north its membership was in fact, dominated by traditional conservative forces of landlords, aristocracy and princes. ‘The Swatantra liberals have consistently emphasized the statist threat and have understated or ignored the weight of tradition and dangers which lie to the right; and in so far as they continue to do so they will represent at best a very truncated form of liberalism’ (p. 257).79 In 1967 elections also Swatantra Party made gains. It secured 44 seats in the Lok Sabha as against 18 in the 1962. It improved its standing in its strongholds of Gujarat, Orissa and Rajasthan. Gains were made in Mysore, Madras and Andhra. In Gujarat, Orissa and Madras the Swatantra Party gained more seats than the Congress. In Andhra, Rajasthan and Mysore it occupied the second place. In state legislatures the Swatantra Party improved its position although it lost the second place to Jana Sangh in terms of total seats won. It was the largest single party in Orissa. By now it was freely making alliances with RRP, Jana Sangh, and Hindu Mahasabha admittedly to defeat the Congress. It was also making foreign policy statements against neutrality in the Cold War and against China. The Swatantra Party and Jana Sangh came to represent the right; the struggle between them would define the ideological orientation of the right and the nature of struggle it would mount. ‘A most obvious fact is that there is more to Indian rightism than meets the eye – at least the eye which scans only electoral data and

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official party propaganda. In the future, there should be ample scope for both moderate and militant rightism . . . although it is impossible to specify what the balance will be’ (p. 258).80 N.G. Ranga of the Swatantra Party joined Golwalkar (RSS chief at that point) in addressing the RSS annual meeting in Nagpur on 30 September 1968.81 According to observers, the RSS gained a foothold in the countryside through its appeals to religious group and through the Swatantra Party at least in the north. Eventually, social forces and their balance in different states would lead to mergers of the Swatantra Party and Jana Sangh and the right wing of Congress. Eventually Swatantra Party was dissolved, and most members joined Congress (O) after its 1969 split, while some others might have drifted off to other parties including Jana Sangh. C. Rajagopalachari leader of the party had famously said ‘The heart of the rich is with us but their money is with the Congress’.82 Social forces that had supported right wing parties had hedged their bets well. Since, the Swatantra Party did not focus on building a team and cadre nor could it attract the vast masses of mostly poor people, with its ideas, its early electoral success lasted as long as, its feudal leaders could command a vote in their constituencies and till their hereditary social influence endured. By 1971 that grasp had weakened. Erdman analysis suggests that the Swatantra Party could not equal the task of fighting the religious conservative right basically because ‘broadly liberal classes simply do not exist in India and the impact of colonialism and worldwide Marxism have probably thrown India into a situation in which classical liberalism is not likely to flourish’. The Swatantra Party lasted as an independent political entity till 1974.

The Bombay Model, Daybreak for the Far Right Bal Thackeray, the first far right politician of national repute was born and brought up in Bombay (now Mumbai). He is famously known to have said,‘I don’t want to read books and spoil my thinking’.83 He did not find it difficult to raise a legion of like minded people in the metropolis of Bombay. It was in the cities of India that the first fascist groups based on religion emerged.

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Mumbai is the capital city of the western Indian state of Maharashtra, a state that is the highest tax contributor to the national kitty and home to two very successful far right movements – the RSS, with its centre in Nagpur and outpost in Pune and the Shiv Sena (SS) with its centre in Bombay and reach into, Raigadh, Konkan and parts of rural Maharashtra. Both are deeply anti-left, and both use representations of national and local history to project a ‘sense of living as a historical being, rightful inheritors of the deeds of the past’ (p. 20).84 The past is most often portrayed as a righteous, religious war. Both maintain a ready to use army of rubble rousers and muscle men. The RSS is undoubtedly a more elaborate and ambitious organization, but it was the SS that first made a dramatic political breakthrough and that too in India’s most cosmopolitan city, its industrial and financial centre, Bombay. Stories of the eighteenth century warrior, Maratha king Shivaji, whose armies created a Maratha confederacy and went on to play a leading role in subcontinental politics from its capital in Pune are the most important inspiration for the SS and RSS too. So is Shivaji’s emblem, the saffron flag. Nativism of various scopes and anti-enlightenment rhetoric were central to both organizations. For an all India appeal, the RSS eventually reached out to include accounts of glory of other erstwhile Hindu kings. Their wars against ‘Muslim’ domination are a common source of pride. Ultimately upon the formation of the state of Maharashtra in 1960, Shivaji was depicted as the father of the state and the original source of its clout and numerous statues of him were put up. This reclaiming of a past began in the nineteenth century, perhaps soon after the kingdom was lost and annexed by the British. High-caste intelligentsia in Pune originally advanced the notion of a single Marathi linguistic identity rooted in what was represented as a relatively homogeneous culture of the Deccan plateau. Gradually, a consortium version of interpretations of ethno-history and Maharashtra dharma emerged. Much later in 1939, an organization called Samyukta Maharashtra Sabha was formed by a group of writers and intellectuals with diverse political orientations, among them was K.S. Thackeray father of SS chief, Bal Thackeray. The continual, often violent assertion of this identity however seemed to indicate that a shared identity was

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unreal. The divide between the Marathi speaking Brahmins and lower-caste Marathas is sharp enough. Marathas, who do not form a homogenous jati in a typical sense, have significant differences among themselves, as the brahmins differ in their ambitions and among themselves, not to mention the sharp divide between Dalits and everyone else. A very recent instance of such bitterness among the Marathi speaking society was the inter-caste violence at Bhima Koregaon on 1 January 2018, Mahars (Dalit caste) were celebrating the bicentennial anniversary of defeating Peshwa brahmins in a regiment under British leadership. This celebration by Dalits was violently opposed by other castes under an RSS front. Be that as it may, the first successful far right political advance was made in Bombay by the SS. The reasons for this are not hard to understand, the city had grown under the influence and encouragement of the British rule into a huge, cosmopolitan centre of textile, chemical, mechanical and other industries, with analogous growth in immigrant labour. The ownership of industry was not local but mainly in the hands of non-Marathi speaking business communities like Marwaris, Gujaratis and Parsis, the traditional business castes of India. People of different regions and religions coexisted in this business centre. The first influx of manual, industrial labour was mainly from neighbouring Konkan, a relatively poor agricultural region of Maharashtra. They came in the latter-half of the nineteenth century and later the labour came from other parts of the state and other parts of India. In the post-Independence period (1950s) when states were divided on linguistic lines, the issue of carving a Maharashtra for Marathi speaking people was the focus of a mobilization called Samyukta Maharashtra Movement (SMM) under a wide umbrella leadership of P.K. Atre, B.R. Kothari, S.M. Joshi, Senapati Bapat, Madhav Rao Bagal, Appa Pendse, S.A. Dange, Keshav Thackeray (Prabodhankar) and other leaders. It was a multi-party front, the PSP and CPI played a visible role. The SMM was formed to give a focus to the demand for a unilingual state of Maharashtra to be carved out of a bilingual province of Bombay with the city of Bombay as its capital. The SMM played a catalytic role in cementing the demand, from 1955 to 1960. By invoking history, culture, language and citing progressive leaders like Ambedkar,

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Phule, and nationalists like Tilak, Gandhi and above all Shivaji, they managed to rally locals. The boundaries of the state with Karnataka and the inclusion or exclusion of Bombay became prickly and a source of complex disputes. Eventually the movement succeeded in carving out a state and obtaining Bombay as its capital. The city was by now even more so, the industrial and financial core of India. This prize of Bombay could be obtained only after an intense and emotive struggle marked by riots, mass activity and violence in which over a hundred lives were lost. Maharashtra was carved out on 1 May 1960. The movement had however acquired a sharp regional, chauvinistic, nativist turn, even though the communist left played a leadership role in it as part of its strategy for regional growth. A class divide between a largely Marathi speaking working class population and Gujarati speaking and Marwaris who formed the capitalist class existed before the movement began. This gave it a linguistic regional angle. The communists could either remain part of the popular mass movement and influence it or stand isolated, they chose to remain. The SMM as a political front had fought the assembly elections of 1957 and gave a hard fight to the Congress, which could only scrape through because of its support in Vidarbha and Gujarat.The same year it swept the Bombay Municipal Corporation polls, routing the Congress. But soon after the formation of the state, fissures appeared in the ideologically disparate SMM. The Congress helped engineer a split in it to isolate the CPI, raising the Indo-China border dispute in 1962 to malign it.85 Six years after the state was formed, in 1966, the Shiv Sena was born. There followed by coincidence, some years of drought and industrial stagnation. SS made the most of the emotional storm that had just abated over state formation. They claimed that formation of the state had not yielded any concrete benefits for the Marathi speaking working class in Bombay and their problems were compounded by food price rise and industrial slowdown. At that point, a little less than 43 per cent of the population of Bombay was Marathi speaking followed by 19 per cent Gujarati speaking persons, the rest were from southern states and the north. 64 per cent of the 4.5 million residents of Greater Bombay were born

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outside of the city. 59 per cent of this population was literate. Although the literacy rate in the city was high, among the Marathi speaking population it was the lowest. The highest level of literacy was among the south Indians who were hence selected for most of the white collar and higher-grade supervisor jobs. Distress of Marathi speaking immigrant labour was owed to the push factor in rural Maharashtra where poor investments in social sector, irrigation, infrastructure like electricity were causing waves of distress migrations to Bombay. Bombay along with the Bombay-Pune belt was guzzling the bulk of investments in industry and infrastructure (at that point almost 70 per cent of the infrastructure development budget). Southern states on the other hand were investing more in the social sector and hence migrants had a higher level of literacy and education. They were better equipped for urban life, qualified for white collar jobs and in general were over-represented in better jobs. This point was highlighted very comprehensively by a faculty member of the Mithibai College, Bombay, R.S. Sabnis in his pamphlet published in 1967.86 The upper-caste, Marathi speaking family of Thackeray, well connected, living in a relatively affluent quarter of the city had been associated with the SMM. In the aftermath of the struggle for a linguistic state, they brought out a weekly publication called Marmik. Through this publication, the family played a leading role in arousing the awareness of Marathi speaking people about their subordinate position in the city, a situation they claimed did not exist in any other state capital. All the major business enterprises and all senior positions in banks and other institutions were held by non-Marathi speaking people. Gradually the publication turned to incitement and provocation on a regular basis. The literacy level in the city was high (38 per cent for Marathis, but over all 59 per cent) and the approach of the publication using a mixture of simple cartoons, humour, satire and rancour appealed to the Marathi speaking population. Dhawale said ‘The Target of the Marmik was never the Congress government policies; nor was it ever the anarchic capitalist development that was turning Mumbai into a stinking cesspool of misery; the target was invariably the “outsiders” who were snatching away the jobs from the “sons of the soil”’.87 The anniversary functions of the magazine were attended by various

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Congress chief ministers and ministers, names like Vasantrao Naik, Balasaheb Desai, and Vasantdada Patil, A.R. Antulay are often mentioned.88 With these leaders Thackeray and family built strong relations, received much support and protection. By 1966, the Thackerays had formed an organization called Shiv Sena (SS) to fight the injustices done to the sons of the soil and promote their aspirations. Bal Thackeray, the son of Keshav Thackeray was chosen to be at the helm of SS. The young man was 39 years old, a cartoonist by training, had attended RSS Shakhas for a few years and had dropped out of school in the sixth grade. Paucity of funds is the explanation available in his biographies.89 This is hard to imagine given the option of cheap municipal schooling (first-rate in those days) would have been available to the family. He had worked briefly in the Free Press Journal, which was a leading newspaper, had resigned more than once, and then had branched out into the family publication in 1960, soon after formation of the Maharashtra. Once shaped in June 1966, the Shiv Sena grew very rapidly immersing itself in Marathi religious functions, cultural and social activities. Exhorting Marathi youth to educate themselves, seek jobs and establish businesses across the city. SS formed self-help groups and local assistance centres and shakhas (branches) in localities where the community dominated. By a successful combination of local self-help groups, who gave ready assistance, Mitra Mandals (friendship groups), gymkhanas which were already a part of male social life they spread their presence. Religious-ethnic appeal, populism, and clever strategy where the ruling Congress leaders were seen to provide support (Chief Minister, V.P. Naik was the chief guest at its inaugural public function in Prabhadevi) the organization flourished. Almost instantly the SS found an object of hate and began a campaign against south Indians. Within four months of its formation a public meeting was announced in their publication Marmik in the form of an appeal to pay obeisance to Maharashtra’s deity Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj; the meeting itself was to be held on the issues of injustice at Shivaji Park on Dussehra day. The meeting was packed and grew when a massive Dussehra processions joined it, it swelled to an estimated crowd of over a lakh. Congress leader Ramrao Adik addressed it. This was just four months after the formation of SS and it was achieved with a handful of seconds in commands. By 1967, SS had 60

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centres/shakhas formed all over Bombay and Thane. Thackeray went about building an organization, with followers most of whom were younger than him. The average Sena member in the early days was 26 years old, literate, often educated and an enthusiastic. They were admirer of the supreme leader’s crusade against injustices they perceived to be against their kind. Lumpen proletariat was not the dominant category. What was required of the young male followers was unconditional loyalty, discipline, eagerness to do anything commanded. The entire organizational set up was one of tight command, control and orderliness. But ‘Even the meeting of Thackeray and his confidants with vibhag pramukhs [department heads] and shakha pramukhs [branch heads] was characterized by orderliness: office bearers were asked to sit in a particular order, individuals were asked to report their division and branch activates and voting was not even the exception to the rule’ (p. 34).90 Here the resemblance between the RSS and Shiv Sena is striking. Bal Thackrey had indeed attended the Dadar Shakha of the RSS from 1941to 1944 at his father’s urging to get some physical training.91 Thacheray went to the Dadar shakha for three to four years as young lad. Scholars also think that since Thackeray was a one-time member of the RSS, the first model that came to his mind was that of the RSS, and so he asked his supporters to open shakhas and his associates went about organizing them.92 Among the young men in shakhas however there was a cheerful club like male bonding. Thackeray openly demanded that he be recognized as the leader and derided democracy. By 1968, the SS was contesting municipal elections in Bombay, it won in 42 wards, a phenomenal feat within two years. In 1969, one Datta Pradhan joined the SS moving from the Jan Sangh but retained his strong ties to the Jan Sangh. He was appointed the sangathan pramukh and given the task of formalizing and expanding the organization. Later he was removed and an advisory body with nine members loyal to the chief was appointed and the student wing was disbanded perhaps because it was harder to control. These measures were probably directed at consolidating the control of the chief and preventing conflict of loyalties. He looked upon the

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sainiks as his children. A family can only run when one man makes the decisions, he is known to have said. Like the RSS, no formal records of membership are available or mentioned, however, according to their leaders, at this juncture in time, there were 80,000 Shiv Sainiks. But unlike the RSS no formal process of training or screening of members seemed to be in place except for a selection interview with senior leaders for electoral posts in the corporation or state assembly. Five major organizational components of the SS were the shakhas that were local branches, used along with the party mouthpiece Marmik, for passing information downwards-upwards and mobilization through group leaders, the corporation members, the Bharatiya Kamgar Sena (labour union which worked assiduously to cut the membership and break strike actions of the communist run unions), the employment bureau which worked actively to promote employment of Marathi speaking people and the Chitrapat Shakha which established a Sena front in the prosperous and influential Bombay film industry ostensibly to promote Marathi language films. This organizational set up was supplemented by groups of bodyguards and toughs from the gambling and liquor dens, which was by no means a thin or fragile network in Bombay. The SS soon got access to huge funding. The 10 September 1967, issue of Marmik, declared that one of the main objectives of the SS was emasculation of the communists. Till that was achieved, any violent attack on the communists was justified including murder. The chief had on numerous occasions voiced his ambitions in that direction as well as openly congratulating Sainiks at public gatherings for murdering communist MLA Krishna Desai. He was vehemently opposed to the class struggle and declared that anyone who gave employment to locals was to be respected. So, he condemned all forms of strikes and industrial actions. In 1969, the SS chief visited the RSS headquarters and met the RSS chief Golwalkar, it is not clear if this meeting was before or after Datta Pradhan left the Jan Sangh to join the SS. After that meeting, Thackeray delved wholeheartedly into Hindu-Muslim confrontations. The conflicts were woven around sites of worship, and to raise the temperature, Bhiwandi riots of May 1970 were organized, in which

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both Jan Sangh (the political wing of the RSS) and Shiv Sena were reported to be deeply involved. After emulating the model this is early evidence of collaboration with RSS. On the other side, it raised its profile among the workers with its union Bharatiya Kamgar Sena (BKS), and, set about confronting the left trade unions. This it did in predictable ways by creating discord among workers on lines of identity. It succeeded well in the 1970s economic environment where food prices were rising, as was migration into the city and employment was shrinking. Many of these issues had been underscored for fuelling unrest among students and workers in the rest of the country. The industrialist-Congress nexus was reported to have helped SS in breaking up the left unions. A furious and destructive battle among the unions ensued that wrecked the left presence. Hansen said, ‘The sustained, though informal proximity to the Congress party has, throughout Shiv Sena’s tumultuous life, proven to be valuable for the consolidation and survival of the party’ (p. 66).93 This was valid in its early years specially, as local Congress leaders used the organization to decimate the communist hold over industry, SS leaders including Bal Thackeray himself were treated with velvet gloves. He saw the inside of a jail only once in his long career despite provocative statements inciting violence and SS involvement with large scale violent acts. All this while the Congress ruled the state and the centre. Within three years of its formation, on the issue of a border dispute with neighbouring Karnataka, the Shiv Sena engineered a major state crisis. There were riots and deaths, the city of Bombay shut down for five days in 1969. Finally, Bal Thackeray was arrested, and more violence rocked the city. The army was put on alert and the CRPF was brought in from other states. Eventually, Thackeray had to issue an appeal from the jail. The issue was raised in the Parliament and later in the state assembly. In the Parliament the Congress government of the state was criticised vehemently by the opposition. The Communist party was vehement in its criticism accusing the state level Congress ministers and the Home Minister (Y.B. Chavan, a Maharashtrian) of having sympathies for the Sena. The Chief Minister had not even mentioned the Sena in his radio address to the state after the crisis. Bhupesh Gupta of the Communist party alleged that the American embassy provided

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funds to the Sena. Chief ministers from the south demanded that their people working in Maharashtra should be safe. And so, the SS acquired a nationwide recognition by the end of the drama as yet another arrival in the free market for political enterprise that liberal democracy in effect was in India. This was to be the only time in his career that Bal Thackrey was incarcerated. While Indira Gandhi and her home minister condemned the Sena, they did nothing to stem the rise of the organization. It was the period during which Indira Gandhi was fighting for control over her own party as the Congress was edging towards a split, personal loyalty and electoral utility might have counted for more than ideology. Chavan was known to be loyal while other leaders from the state like S.K. Patil were known to be otherwise. Immediate survival needs and utility of SS might have overcome disquiets about possible future dangers of sheltering such an organization, a pattern to be repeated continually by all parties to the extent that there remained no constant partners or allies and no collective national objectives. In December 1967, the CPI headquarters in Parel was attacked by SS and savagely damaged. It became increasingly obvious that the SS agenda was buttressed by powerful people. By 1967, the SS fought the Thane Municipal elections (a suburb of Bombay), made a breakthrough by winning 17/40 seats and installed a Mayor. The next year, they made a bid in the Bombay Municipal Corporation. The SS and the PSP made an alliance of opportunity. By May 1970, the Bhiwandi communal riots flared up, 43 people died and 39 in Jalgaon as the riots spread far beyond to include Mahad. The Madon inquiry commission found that SS leaders including Thackrey made inflammatory and provocative speeches. The SS and Jan Sangh and other fronts of RSS, Hindu Mahasabha, Muslim fronts like All India Majlis Tamir-e-Millat were all involved. At a fast and furious pace the SS established itself as the muscle power of the city. To proclaim its arrival, in June 1970 a prominent Communist MLA, four times municipal corporator, union leader Krishna Desi was murdered by SS henchmen in a brazen attack. The boldness of the attack and the reaction of the state was evidence of the fact that communists were now a common enemy. From then on, SS agenda of burning the red flag, ushering in Thokshahi and Shivashahi (force and

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autocracy) were to proceed with diminishing obstacles. They made on and off alliance across the political spectrum with Socialists, Congress and eventually the BJP to make successful bids in the Municipal Corporation and state elections. By January 1974, they had turned on to other Marathi speaking people; there was a clash between the SS and Dalit Panthers in the Worli Bombay Development Department (BDD) chawls. (The Dalit Panthers, modelled on the Black Panthers of America, were a breakaway group of the RPI; they took up class and caste issues more militantly). Riots spread to other parts of the city and continued for a week. Bhagwat Jadhav their leader was also murdered by SS. The early rise of the SS was thus marked by frequent, energetic and bold action against their opponents with support from the ruling party and big industrialists of Bombay. In 1984, for the first time, SS had an alliance with the BJP for the Lok Sabha elections. They launched this alliance with yet another Bhiwandi communal riot in May 1984. This riot was even more massive, 258 people were killed. Jamaat-i- Islami and the usual RSS and its fronts were involved. According to Dhawale, this time the carnage did not even meet with basic condemnation from all opposition parties except the Left.94 By 1985, SS was ruling the corporation of Bombay, the largest in Asia. They leveraged this clout to spread out into the state. For a long time, they had remained a Bombay phenomenon. Their aggressive thrust into rural Maharashtra was staged around both the symbols and trappings of Shivaji’s rule and Hindutva. In 1986, it organized a saffron week across the state in a move choreographed with the escalation of communal fervour by the BJP, RSS and its larger Sangh family. Its use of religion for elections was quite barefaced by now, as was the use of its honorific title of ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ for Bal Thackrey. Around this point the leader also changed his formal garb to saffron with religious beads around his neck. Convergence of strategy between the BJP and SS becomes more obvious in the 1980s. Ten years later in 1995, they were ruling the state in alliance with the BJP, whom they had embraced wholeheartedly in a saffron blaze of agitations that led up to the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992. There were deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in Mumbai thereafter. In an issue of their daily newspaper Saamna, right in the midst of the Bombay

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riots of 1992-3, Bal Thackeray had announced the beginning of an era of retaliatory war which would change the history and geography of the country and the world to create an Akhand Hindu Rashtra. Either he was an oracle, or he was an insider to the grand strategy. Among the electorate, blood letting and machismo seemed to get them more admirers than brickbats. The mayhem and rioting made it possible for the SS to win the next state elections (in a partnership with the BJP) in 1995. The riots had left more than 500 people dead, destroyed state and private property worth lakhs of crores of rupees. After the Babri Masjid demolition, BJP leaders were arrested but there was no such trouble for Bal Thackeray, the Chief Minister Naik did not touch him. Thus, while the Congress Chief Minister V.P. Naik was a well wisher at the SS inauguration in 1966, another Congress Chief Minister, Sudhakar Rao Naik was to let them run amuck in the 1992-3 riots. Justice B.N. Sri Krishna headed an inquiry into the circumstances of the riots and that process itself lasted many years. It came up with a significant 700-page report, indicted 31 policemen and top leaders of the Sena including Bal Thackeray. The leader and his organization seemed to remain well sheltered throughout. In the 1970s they were useful to break up the control of left unions over working class in Mumbai and later, by the 1990s they were too big to tackle perhaps. During 1992-3 riots across India, mayhem, bloodshed and public anxiety was the background midst which policy shifts towards liberalization, globalization and their repercussions for working people became blurry.

RSS, BJP and SS Looking back, it is worth recording that almost all through their early rise, the bulk of SS top leadership (in the advisory group for example) came from the upper-caste and the bulk of their following came from the Other Backward Castes (OBC) category, with some exceptions. Thackeray used to bemoan the caste-oriented positions and cultural purism of the RSS; he positioned himself at variance from this caste purism from the beginning but he could not shake it off completely. SS had larger number of OBC leaders then RSS. Thy did managed

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to combine the upper and lower castes in Maharashtra within the SS fold under the Marathi Manoos (people) banner. The Maharashtrian community came to support what was ultimately a one-man’s power gambit in large numbers. Although RSS preceded the SS by some 40 years, they had an all India presence before the SS was even formed but the SS had quickly maneuvered an urban caste consolidation and made electoral gains, first in the richest corporation of Asia and then used it to leverage a rural expansion. It emerged as the dominant partner of BJP in Maharashtra state politics by 1995. But this family run enterprise suffered on multiple fronts, during its uninspiring governance while in power, the SS lost reliability because it could not solve the job crisis of Marathi Manoos, it eventually split in its ranks especially between the son and nephew, both intended inheritors of Thackeray, allegations of corruption and finally from the death of its charismatic leader Bal Thackeray in 2012. It remained a largely Maharashtra presence and became the firm junior partner of the BJP that swept the whole nation in 2014. Caught in the wedge of BJP’s national presence and its own need to preserve a hold in Maharashtra, SS wriggled till 2019. It fought the 2019 state elections with BJP but formed the government in alliance with election rivals Nationalist Congress Party (another mainly local party) and Congress to oust the BJP. There were some skills the SS leader had perhaps learned in the RSS Shakha he attended as a boy. But the RSS was much better developed as an organization than the SS; it had worked harder and longer on cultural fronts. It had wrapped its thrust to power in some more fantastic recalling of past glory and it had all the more familiar emblematic features of a far right movements95 like systematic identification of the ‘other’, anger, hate, drive for discipline, authority, anti-communism and union busting. But above all else it was committed to training cadres of noticeably young people and harnessing frustration of the unemployed. All those looking for a saviour were inducted and trained for various jobs, the rough ones into the militia and storm troopers for Hindutva. Like all the ultra right wing parties of our times, the RSS is devoid of sophisticated social theory or reasoning and modern expertise needed to govern efficiently. The SS had even less in that department. Over a

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period of time RSS/BJP also became more dependent on outside expertise and funds like other (non-left political parties) mainly big business – as the SS had before them. What it could deliver to its constituency became more and more unsubstantial and questionable. It must rule by delusion and polarization. The riots of 1992-3, the worst that the city had ever seen, had marked a deep change in Bombay. It actually changed Bombay to Mumbai,‘from being the preeminent symbol of India’s secular, industrial modernity to become a powerful symbol of the very crisis of this vision (p. 8).96 A shift in the social consciousness, created a dominant public discourse of antagonistic confrontations; it pitted one religious community against another. A communal consciousness in the public administration and police force arose, a phenomenon that every observer of the city commented on. It was an occurrence which no subsequent government could summon the will and executive ability to combat. No truth and reconciliation worth its name ever took place. It was in no one’s immediate interest. Administrative bias and social perceptions shifted so much that although, during 1992-3 riots of Mumbai, 900 people were killed in mob rioting and police firing, 2036 people were injured and thousands of people were forced to move into relief camps, the administration did not swing in for relief work. Most of the relief work was done by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and individuals.97 Another precedent that would be repeated continually across the country, the state wilted and the citizens became fearful and cynical at once. ‘The riots have led to many people going to live in the extended suburbs of Mumbai or in the neighboring Thane district. New colonies were created by this migration, which in the course of time developed their own identity and culture. These areas are now labelled as terrorist hot beds and many people accused of ‘anti-national’ crimes are picked up from these localities . . . Indian Muslims to, being targeted because of the perception created that it is the Muslim terror that poses the gravest threat to India and that there is no differentiation between the individual and the community’ (p. xii).98 The riots were followed by serial bomb blasts on 12 March 1993 that killed 257 people and injured 713. These blasts were a revenge for the riots and the public discourse that followed was converted into a

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contest. The Congress government appointed Sri Krishna Commission to investigate the riots and an extensive document was produced and shelved while the serial blast accused (whose victims were mainly Hindus) were arrested under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) (now repealed). The state conducted a highly publicized and prolonged trial which began on 30 June 1995 and resulted in 100 convictions including death sentences. Menon recounted that in the Dadar police station out of a total of nine cases against the SS mouthpiece and its editor Bal Thackeray, six cases ended in acquittal, while three were closed. Applications against acquittals were fielded in the Bombay High Court and were dismissed in 2007 on the grounds that no ends of justice would be served by digging up the old cases after seven years, they would only revive communal tensions. Even appeals in the Supreme Court led to disappointment. There was a huge difference in the law, order and justice system between the treatments of what was labelled as terror versus rioter. Application of law and justice was so uneven that 15 years after the riots, only one political leader of the SS, a former MP, was convicted and awarded one-year simple imprisonment and fine of Rs 500. The Sri Krishna report had listed 31 policemen who participated actively in the riots, communal incidents; looting, etc., police firing had been a major cause of deaths. One of them was a former Joint Commissioner of Police. The court acquitted the police for lack of adequate evidence against the named policemen. The SS projected themselves against Muslims, non-patriots, and outsiders so successfully that they went on to win the 1995 state elections. Observers say that not just Mumbai, but the entire state was engulfed in cycles of violence increasing tension and antagonism between Hindus and Muslims, Adivasis and communities of high caste persons. During the entire period leading up to the Ram Janambhoomi movement, demolition of Babri Masjid, riots, bomb blasts, political tensions mounted and what followed in Maharashtra was a far right joint government of the SS and BJP. The shadow of that gory past hung so low and dark over the state that many years later it was still being talked about in mainstream media seventeen years later and this time in relation to a police officer who was the target in an attack from both Islamic and Hindu terrorists.99

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The SS stint in power was marked by cultural chauvinism, attacks on artists like M.F. Hussain, authors like Vijay Tendulkar, Y.D. Phadke and films like Fire by Deepa Mehta, or attacks on Dilip Kumar, Sunil Dutt, deemed objectionable only a decade earlier, became routine during the SS rule. So did disruption of the cricket match between India and Pakistan. Inserting regional history with a bias in school curriculum was another cultural intervention. Rumour was that no major cultural activity could be organized in Bombay without the approval of the SS. All of this provided much distraction in the media. The Maharashtra model was tried out in Gujarat next. The 2002 riots in Gujarat became the pivot around which extreme polarization of society occurred. The same strategy was launched on an all India basis in 2014 by the BJP, this time targeting minorities and attacking anyone who objected to their treatment of minorities or their notion of nationalism. It is significant that economic agenda of the SS, while in power, was replete with promises of jobs, housing for the poor; it remained largely unfulfilled. Personal corruption of their ministers was quick to take off and much has been said about it.100 There was a flurry of projects with foreign collaborators and sale of public assets to private parties. The earlier Congress government had negotiated a deal with Enron for power generation. The SS renegotiated the deal, expanded its scope and guaranteed a higher purchase price by Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB). Deals were signed with Monsanto to partner with private companies like Mahyco to sell seeds and agricultural inputs. Sale of mill lands to private builders and infrastructure projects were initiated – all this was integral to their far right wing agenda. Not much transformation or innovation was observable in social or economic sectors. Hold of the SS over the vote banks of Mumbai and Maharashtra was fragmented only by the arrival of BJP as the principal far right wing political player after the 2014 election. The SS thereafter became the junior partner in Maharashtra. The RSS appears to have learned from the early triumph of SS and eventually used this caste management of the upper-caste leading the lower into a saffron horizon- on an all India scale. Lower-castes, craving for upward social mobility and recognition joined both organizations in large numbers. Upward mobility was not realized quite as easily with neoliberal economic growth as with Hindutva politics. This type of politics helped more enterprising

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members to acquire or grab property, displace minorities and their enterprises over and above the direct benefits of state power and privilege. On the whole Hindutva did unite and continues to unite as it made the believers and followers experience enhanced psychological encouragement, social influence, and political power.

Conclusion The significance of the coming together of SS and BJP in the late 1960s in collaborative action and in altering political discourse cannot be disregarded. It built into events that eventually led to the destruction of Babri Masjid and biggest post-Partition riots. The cumulative effects were such that Indian polity was ripped apart. Looking back, political scientists studying the long term trend said, ‘Communal forces kept under check under Nehru’s leadership surged forward. . . . The last phase of Indira Gandhi era witnessed a marked polarization of Indian society on communal and sectarian lines’.101 Thereafter, in the period 1980-4 alone, deaths in communal riots was four times higher than in 1970s. The number of districts affected increased from 61 in 1960 to 250 in 1986-7. Rioting previously a mainly urban phenomenon spread to rural areas. In Uttar Pradesh alone, 60 major and minor riots occurred between early 1986 and 1988. The SS did not participate in the JP movement perhaps because in 1973 it fell out with the Jana Sangh over electoral issues. The SS did not join it in the anti-emergency movement either.102 The SS chief said that a Congress – SS alliance was necessary in Maharashtra to keep the communists at bay. He received a lot of flak from his friends and Hindutva proponents. His decision apparently demoralized the rank and file. He praised Indira Gandhi’s leadership during the emergency and paid heavily when she lost the next election. The period after the emergency saw a shift in the political balance, with the Congress system temporarily scattered after its 1977 defeat. It managed to regroup somewhat under Indira Gandhi. After winning the election again in 1979, having spent some years out of power, she tried to follow a more ‘pragmatic’ course. The pragmatic course had shifted to the right. She moved into ‘terrains which was traditionally occupied by the

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right-wing parties’ to draw in the social support garnered by them in 1977 (p. 144).103 More about that in the last chapter. After her assassination, under her son Rajiv Gandhi the pragmatism persisted, to it was added inexperience. Both were returned to power with resounding majority because of the popular leadership provided by the family. Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination on 21 May 1991 vacated the political arena to opposition. Speaking to students in 1969, Indira Gandhi had said, ‘In India we have too long sought individual salvation. Perhaps that is why as a country we came to grief. We now realize that there cannot be salvation for the individual without social salvation’ (p. 155). But that road to social salvation needs to be thought out and prepared with mass campaigns, movements, political education, priority goals and planning. Implementation and monitoring capability are indispensable components. That in turn needs capable human resources and leadership from the local to national level. It cannot be conjured up in a social and cultural vacuum. History of revolutionary changes has shown us that much. Even gradual change that the Congress leadership was hoping for, needed that same ingredient in perhaps smaller but dependable measures. Besides, the change ought not to be so gradual or slow as to be overwhelmed by reactionary movements even before it is strong enough to resist it successfully. Indira Gandhi was leading a party organization incapable of substantially disturbing a social and cultural order that it embodied, no matter what its party manifesto said. Its leadership was mainly upper-caste, upper-class and far from radical in its own private vision. That had been the case since its inception, apparent in Chapter 1. The left position was a minority position within the Congress. Even the socialists of inexact hues as there were, broke away soon after Independence and some went on to play a suspicious role. Indira Gandhi alone with a hand full of loyalists would be incapable of reconstructing the Congress National Party from within, while participating in recurrent elections and at the same time resisting the pressures from electoral competition. All this within shifting domestic and international troubles. As Chapter 2 highlighted, the anti-Indira movement

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was typically from the right. Though the Communist left, for a while, was the principal opposition in Parliament, it saw itself as a major political challenger in the electoral system. That with the benefit of hindsight, turned out to be an ‘objective illusion’. The left was no doubt the principal opposition in the Parliament when Mrs Gandhi took the left turn. But it is well known that interest group formation among the few, wealthy, and powerful is quick. The logic of collective action favours smaller cohesive interest groups. A study of the anti-Indira agitations in the days leading up to the emergency confirms that logic. On the other hand, methods of the left in liberal democracy – mass education, shifting social consciousness, mass mobilizations – takes an exceedingly long time. The logic of collective action has been the entire reasoning and defence for radical revolutionary change. Revolutions too are made by well-knit, well organized, creative thinkers. But they need revolutionary patience, revolutions need to be preceded by shifting social consciousness and followed through with mass movements and political education. Electoral systems in parliamentary democracy create pressures, compulsions and urgency to maneuvre quite incompatible with a ground breaking approach or persistence.

NOTES 1. Amartya Sen (2018), ‘Marx 2.00’, Indian Express, 5 May 2018. 2. Mary C. Carras (1980), Indira Gandhi: In the Crucible of Leadership, Bombay: published in arrangement with Beacon Press, Boston by Jaico. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. I. Habib (1998),‘The Left and the National Movement’, Social Scientist, vol. 27, nos. 5-6, May-June 1998. 6. A. Smedley (1972), The Great Road, Monthly Review Press, New York. 7. I. Habib (1998), ‘The Left and the National Movement’, op. cit. 8. N.E. Balaram (1967), A Short History of the Communist Party of India, Trivandrum: Prabhatam Publishing. 9. P. Bidwai (2015), The Phoenix Moment, Noida: Harper Collins. 10. G. Adhakari, ed. (1974), Documents of the History of the Communist Party, vol. 2, 1923-5, New Delhi: Peoples Publishing House. 11. P. Karat, ed. (1999), A World to Win, New Delhi: Left Word.

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12. D. Chakrabarty (1976), ‘Communal Riots and Labour: Bengal’s Jute Mill hands in the 1980s’, Centre for Study in Social Science, Occasional Papers no. 11, Calcutta. 13. S. Sarkar (2014), Modern India, Noida: Pearson India Education Services. 14. A. Mukherjee (1983),‘The Workers and Peasants Parties 1926-30: An Aspect of Communism in India’, in Bipin Chandra (ed.), The Indian Left, Ghaziabad: Vikas Publishing House. 15. Ibid. 16. Muzaffar Ahmad (1961), The Communist Party of India and its Formation Abroad, Calcutta: National Book Agency.. 17. Ibid. 18. S. Sarkar (2014), Modern India, op. cit. 19. http://cpiml.org/library/communist-movement-in-india/introductioncommunist-movement-in-india/peshawar-and-kanpur-conspiracycases/ 20. S. Sarkar (2014), Modern India, op. cit. 21. G. Adhikari, ed. (1979), Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India, vol. iii B, New Delhi: Peoples Publishing House. 22. S. Sarkar (2014), Modern India, op. cit. 23. Ibid. 24. B. Chandra, M. Mukherjee and A. Mukherjee (2008), India Since Independence, New Delhi: Penguin Books. 25. Wilson Centre, Digital Archives, ‘Meeting of Top CPI and CPSU Comrades’, 4 February 1951, History and Public Policy Program, http:/ digitalarchive,wilsoncenter.org/document/119262. 26. S. Sarkar (2014), Modern India, op. cit. 27. Ajoy Ghosh (1954), Communist Answer to Pandit Nehru, Communist party publication, revd. and rpt. from New Age Weekly, New Delhi: New Age Printing Press. 28. Ibid. 29. B. Chandra, M. Mukherjee and A. Mukherjee (2008), India Since Independence, op. cit. 30. E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1974), Conflicts and Crisis, Pune: Orient Longman Ltd., Sangam Press. 31. Ibid. 32. V. Ramakrishnan (2012), ‘Long Way from Avadi’, Frontline, vol. 29, issue 19, https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl2919/stories/ 20121005291902500.htm 33. RBI (1973), Report on Currency and Finance 1972-73.

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34. E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1974), Conflicts and Crisis, op. cit. 35. Economic Weekly (1959), https://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/1959_ 11/13/the_rice_deal.pdf, Our Kerala Letter, March 28, 1959, pg 435-436. 36. E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1974), Conflicts and Crisis, op. cit. 37. H.B. Schaffer (2014), Ellsworth Bunker: Global Troubleshooter, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Vietnam Hawk, The University of North Carolina Press. 38. D.P. Moynihan and S. Weaver (1978), Dangerous Place, Columbus, USA: Little Brown and Co. 39. J. Ramesh (2018), Intertwined Lives, New Delhi: Simon & Schuster. 40. P. Bidwai (2015), The Phoenix Moment, Noida: Harper Collins. 41. J.A. Curran Jr (1951), ‘Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics, A Study of the RSS, Institute of Pacific Relations’, New York; D.E. Smith, ed. (1960), South Asian Politics and Religion, Princeton: Princeton University Press. 42. C. Baxter (1969), The Jana Sangh, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 43 M. Sen, ed. (1977), Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India, New Delhi: Peoples Publishing House. 44. R. Guha (2017), India After Gandhi, New Delhi: Picador, pp. 324-35. 45. E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1974), Conflicts and Crisis, op. cit. 46. D. Hiro (1976), Inside India Today, New York: Monthly Review Press. 47. CIA (1966), ‘The Communist Challenge in India, Special Report’, Current Intelligence Weekly, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/ docs/CIA-RDP79-00927A005500090002-3.pdf 48. E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1974), Conflicts and Crisis, op. cit. 49. J. Basu (1999), Memoirs: A Political Biography, Calcutta: National Book Agency. 50. B. Sengupta (1972), Communism in Indian Politics, New York: Columbia University Press. 51. R. Gupta (2004), Crimson Agenda: Maoist Protest and Terror, New Delhi: Wordsmiths. 52. EPW (1972), Editorial, 25 March 1972, p. 663. EPW (1972), Editorial, 1 April 1972, p. 691. 53. D. Hiro (1976), Inside India Today, New York: Monthly Review Press. 54. Jayaprakash Narayan (2009), Selected Works, ed. Bimal Prasad, vol. 10, NMML, New Delhi: Manohar. 55. E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1978), Put Them in the Dock, Communist Party of India (Marxist).

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56. P. Bidwai (2015), The Phoenix Moment, Noida: Harper Collins Publishers. 57. P. Sundarayya (1991), My Resignation, New Delhi: Indian Publishers and Distributors. 58. https://www.cpim.org/content/excerpts-10th-congress-pol-resolution. More extensive form in Peoples Democracy 59. Ministry of Home Affairs (1975), Why Emergency? GOI, pp. 5, 10, 16, 55. 60. P. Bidwai (2015), The Phoenix Moment, Noida: Harper Collins Publishers, p. 98. 61. https://www.counterpunch.org/1998/01/15/how-jimmy-carterand-i-started-the-mujahideen/ 62. B. Raman (2013), The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down the Memory Lane, New Delhi: Lancer Publishers and Distributors. 63. M. Sen, ed. (1977), Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India, New Delhi: Peoples Publishing House. 64. S. Sarkar (2016), Modern India 1885-1947, Noida: Pearson India Education Services. 65. Ibid. 66. B. Chandra, M. Mukherjee and A. Mukherjee (2008), India Since Independence, op. cit. 67. S.M. Joshi (1963), Socialist’s Quest for the Right Path, Bombay: Sindhu Publications. 68. J. Rao (2019), ‘60 Years Ago, a Right Liberal Swatantra Party had Challenged Nehru’s Socialist Raj’, The Print, 7 June 2019. 69. H.L. Erdman (1967), The Swatantra Party and Indian Conservatism, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, UK. Digitally printed version 2008. 70. Ibid. 71. D. Hiro (1976), Inside India Today, New York: Monthly Review Press. 72. C. Rajagopalachari (1959),‘The Case for the Swatantra Party’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 16 August 1959. 73. D. Hiro (1976), Inside India Today, op. cit. 74. Editorial (1949),‘The Hindu Code Bill’, Economic Weekly, 24 December 1949. 75. N. Rajadhyaksha (2019), ‘The Contemporary Relevance of Swatantra Party’s Liberal View’, LiveMint, 28 May 2019. 76. M. Vaidya (2018),‘Temple, Then and Now’, Indian Express, 1 December 2018. 77. Life (1962), ‘For Nehru: An Opposition,’ 16 March 1962, p. 4. 78. H.L. Erdman (1964), ‘India’s Swatantra Party’, Pacific Affairs, vol. 36,

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no. 4 (Winter, 1963-4), pp. 394-410. 79. H.L. Erdman (1967), The Swatantra Party and Indian Conservatism, op. cit. 80. Ibid. 81. Lasse Berg and Lisa (1971), Face to Face, Fascism and Revolution in India, Berkeley, California: Ramparts Press, p. 103. 82. Sawantra Newsletter (1960), March. 83. T.B. Hansen (2001), Wages of Violence, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, p. 214. 84. Ibid. 85. D. Gupta (1982), Nativism in a Metropolis: The Shiv Sena in Bombay, New Delhi: Manohar. 86. R.S. Sabnis (1967), Some Issues Raised by the Shiv Sena, Ahmedabad: Seth Printers (available in the Gokhale Institute’s Servants of India Library Pune). 87. A. Dhawale (2000), ‘The Shiv Sena: Semi-Fascism in Action’, The Marxist, vol. 16, no. 2, April-June 2000. 88. Ibid. 89. V. Purandare (2012), Bal Thackeray & The Rise of the Shiv Sena, New Delhi: Roli Books. 90. Ibid. 91. J. Maharav (1995), Thackeray Family, Prabhat Prakashan. 92. D. Gupta (1982), Nativism in a Metropolis: The Shiv Sena in Bombay, New Delhi: Manohar. 93. T.B. Hansen (2001), Wages of Violence, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 94. A. Dhawale (2000), ‘The Shiv Sena: Semi-Fascism in Action’, The Marxist, vol. 16, no. 2, April-June 2000. 95. Rosenberg (1934), Fascism as a Mass Movement. 96. T.B. Hansen (2001), Wages of Violence, op. cit. 97. M. Menon (2018), Riots and After In Mumbai, New Delhi: Sage. 98. T.B. Hansen (2001), Wages of Violence, op. cit. 99. S.S. Virk (2019), ‘Rest in Peace, Hemant’, The Indian Express, 23 April, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/hemantkarkare-sadhvi-pragya-mumbai-attack-lok-sabha-elections5689220/ 100. V. Purandare (2012), Bal Thackeray & the Rise of the Shiv Sena, New Delhi: Roli Books. 101. Z. Hasan (1991),‘Changing Orientation of the State and the Emergence of Majoritarianism in the 1980s’, in K.N. Panikkar (ed.), Communalism

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in India, New Delhi: Manohar. 102. V. Purandare (2012), Bal Thackeray & The Rise of the Shiv Sena, op. cit. 103. Z. Hasan (1991),‘Changing Orientation of the State and the Emergence of Majoritarianism in the 1980s’, op. cit.

CHAPTER 5

Far Right at the Centre

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity. –Jawaharlal Nehru Surely history is one of the most important things for us to imagine and to realize that we are imagining. –Wendy Doniger Hinduize all politics and militarise all Hindudom. –Savarkar

Long March to the Centre of Political Power through Culture While the origins of RSS were discussed in Chapter 1, its colossal growth to become the world’s largest ‘cultural NGO-cum-paramilitary’ are sketched here. But this growth without any scrutiny and noisy public debate of its agenda against the Indian Constitution is remarkable so are the lack of transparency about its financial accounts. This remarkable growth happened even though its plan of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ or religious nationalism violates the letter and spirit of the Indian Constitution. Its ethos of ‘hate thy neighbour’ violates the spirit of religion itself. That should have caught the attention of the guardians of the Constitution and raised national alarm if not its incitement in various commissions of inquiry set-up after communal riots.

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Organizations and social groups that buoyed the RSS within and abroad are described as well. Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) was spawned by RSS in 1964 as a cultural outfit to follow migrant Indians into America and UK and created a successful worldwide web of temples, supporters and devotees. Here too the RSS had the advantages of an early force abroad. Non-resident patriots, devotees, their skills and their wealth were harnessed through global NGOs. Projection of temples, rituals, priests, festivals and conjectures about a pre-historic past as the sum of Indian culture did not raise too many heckles. Some of these NGOs like Overseas Friends of BJP (OFBJP) started delivering foreign citizens and material on Indian soil for elections in India by 2014.1 The VHP and its activities are charted in the final chapter. Why was its expansion unbridled? Nehru had warned and Indira Gandhi too battled them for a while. Yet it is as though it had always been around, like our past, our shadow. Perhaps that is why the entire maneuvre was invisible, imperceptible. And all the while, first the Congress and later, after 1989 a debilitated Congress with coalition partners ruled at the centre.

Why does this Narrative Ends with 2002 and Not 2019 From the demolition of the Babri Masjid to the Gujarat riots (often described as a pogrom for its scale and design) of 2002 all the way to 2014 is a rather straightforward trajectory where the Gujarat model2 is just scaled up, public opinion is prepared, law and institutions of democracy circumvented or seized from within and patronage of biggest business houses consolidated for political power first at the state level and then propelled to the centre. Ten years before the Gujarat model was put together there had been a comparable experiment in what was then, Bombay.3 For the last leg leading up to 2014, at hand were some of America’s largest Public Relations (PR) agencies, social media, mobile phones, voter data base and record-breaking election budgets and Non-resident Indians (NRIs) calling themselves Overseas Friends of BJP. The rest is obvious. Power at the centre in 2014 was used to acquire power in the states, where the battle continues to this day between an opposition

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that is splintered into regional players and BJP the behemoth. There was hardly any surprise in their route or policy this far except perhaps effortless capitulation of institutions and rather notably poor quality of economic policy making and implementation, so that Indian economic growth rate slowed down. Contraction in the COVID-19 scenario has been the most marked not just among emerging nations but in South Asia as well. Moreover, the more recent developments in the ascent of the far right are all around us in India now; they have been a subject of extensive media coverage and scholarly commentary on the end of secularism,4 attacks on minorities and Dalits;5 cut back in effective government spending on public education, health, welfare, blindsiding of informally employed and the end of liberal democracy itself as it has been seized by the extreme right from end to end through its very institutions.6 Over the last few years, they have been the subject of international news as well. But with hindsight, it appears that not just Gujarat 2002 but the audacious act of destroying Babri Masjid in 1992, in defiance of the law, with television projecting the spectacle on the national scene, was the symbol of arrival. It also marked a significant shift in the public perception of what it means to be a Hindu and what may be considered legally wrong but not morally wrong. Public opinion was fashioned and formed then. Gujarat disturbances went further, divided the people of the state very deeply, corrupted and perverted many law makers and law enforcers by making them complicit in the murder of 1044, 223 missing, 2500 injured people (majority being Muslims) that it was impossible for the people, state functionaries and political class to extract itself from its immediate past, even if they wanted to. Nobody (who mattered) was blameless. The Supreme Court and Indian Human Rights Commission were annoyed, ‘In the aftermath of the riots, independent observers and human rights groups accused the Gujarat Government led by the Hindu nationalist BJP of turning a blind eye to the riots. The police were alleged to have simply refused to intervene or, in many cases, arrived too late to prevent the violence. More than a year later, the Gujarat Government is being accused of doing little to bring the rioters to justice. . . . In July, the US-based group Human Rights Watch said

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that more than 100 Muslims had been charged with involvement in the alleged attack on the train at Godhra. In contrast, no Hindus have been charged over the violence against the Muslims’.7 Cases being tried in Gujarat courts fell apart as witnesses withdrew under pressure of intimidation. Some cases were moved out of the state. Western press covered the issue extensively as did sections of the Indian press only to find that not more than the usual left, secular intellectuals were distraught within India. Gujarat violence did help BJP electorally and it won the next state election with many more seats. Indeed, within the next ten years, the Chief Minister whose administration had been reprimanded by none other than the Supreme Court, was projected a prime ministerial candidate of the BJP. In that decade courts and weak institutions of the state muddled around the issue and hardly any of the guilty were punished.8 In 2008, Congress government at the centre announced compensation of $80 million (Rs 560 crores) to the victims. But the business of going to the roots of the pogrom to bring to book all the guilty was not accomplished. A compelling account of the extensive cover up induced through fear of punishment and rewards for complicity both in the pogrom and encounter deaths of alleged terrorists that followed has been made by many journalists.9 For the far right, the road ahead was illuminated. Events like the Babri Masjid and Gujarat communal riots also produced images that are unforgettable. The spectacle too stayed etched in memory for its strangeness. Most of the images were a compelling display of how surplus humanity, the poor and partially literate may be used in the name of religious identity, images of tens of thousands of the ‘unwashed’, ash and tilak smeared ‘Kar Sevaks’ who appeared to be acting as foot soldiers of the assault on the mosque. Urging them on, it appeared were various well-groomed, well fed, upper caste/class leaders. This was an impression that was confirmed many years later by former ‘Kar Sevaks’.10 Meghwanshi, described his training in RSS and journey as a young, Dalit boy of 15 from Bhilwara, Rajasthan to Ayodhya in October 1990. They were going to build the temple midst a fever pitched campaign. ‘As the train started to slide out of the station, all the important functionaries slid out of the train. . . . I saw how one by one the big folk, the industrialists, the Sangh pracharaks, the leaders of VHP and

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BJP, all excused themselves. Having wished us well they went back to their homes. Only people like me remained-impassioned Dalits, Adivasis, other young people from the lower-castes, and a few sadhus and sants, sages and ascetics’ (p. 18). Later, he described how the sadhu-sant category got high on intoxicating substances in the jail. A similar use involving tribal populations urged on by various RSS based organizations transpired in Gujarat. An analysis of the cover up that followed suggests that lower-caste police officers were used to break the law and then made scapegoats. This is not to say that the upper-castes were not involved directly, they were simply outnumbered, an ominous prospect foretold not just by seasoned politicians, Jawaharlal Nehru when he flagged the fascist potential of communal organizations in the subcontinent, but even by prescient scholars of Indian’s labour market, has come to pass.11 The spectre of social backwardness had slipped out from under the mat, too large to be hidden away. It was converted with zeal into a frenzied mob. After the Babri Masjid demolition a small circle of intellectuals were truly alarmed (small even in terms of the size of the university educated population in India) but even as they took every public platform to caution the nation, their minority position on secularism was truly exposed. The thriving far right called them ‘Pseudo secularists’ and the label seemed to stick. Secularism was being shaken to its foundations in the 1980s and was tottering in the 1990s (in a sequence described later); so there was no mass public outrage after destruction of the mosque nor was there any significant civil protest. Instead, communal riots ripped across India. These were the worst since the Partition of the sub-continent in 1947. A sizable majority had also come to accept that while it might be legally wrong to break the mosque, it was a valorous act of restoring Hindu confidence and prominence in India. By attacking the symbols of historic Muslim rule, Hindus were getting even. In their uncomplicated imagination it manifested itself as a step onward in their individual ascent. This alteration and capture of Hindu perception was the single most important achievement of a rather long march by the far right over time, culture and institutions. Not just the generation that suffered the horrors of country’s Partition in 1947, but (thanks to the cultural exertions of the RSS) even the ones that followed were not released

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from this manner of constructing their identity in post-colonial India. RSS had effectively moulded public perception over half-a-century, at first by positioning themselves as saviours of Hindus in the tumultuous period before 1947; then through regular interventions on cultural issues – the national language issue, cow protection and temple renovations after Independence. In the 1980s, they ramped up their presence by intervening more and more aggressively through religious-cultural agitations and using narratives, images on TV, and more recently on computers and cellular smart phones. Colour television arrived in India only in 1982; the government-controlled channel was the only one. Secular TV programmes were the norm. By the late 1980s, TV access had spread to many more middle-class households. Two TV programmes, the Ramayana (1987) and the Mahabharata (1989), based on religious epics, were TV series produced and broadcast for three years in a row. They made some sort of world record in viewership numbers. This broadcast of a dramatic version of Hindu religious epics, to spellbound audience was noteworthy. It was telecast in 55 countries (wherever Hindus lived one presumes) and at a total viewership of 650 million, it became the highest watched Indian television series by far. News reports declared that when the series was telecast every Sunday morning, ‘streets would be deserted, shops would be closed, and people would bathe and garland their TV sets before the serial began’.12 Others recalled that ‘In villages across South Asia, hundreds of people would gather around a single set to watch the gods and demons play out their destinies. In the noisiest and most bustling cities, trains, buses, and cars came to a sudden halt, and a strange hush fell over the bazaars. In Delhi, government meetings had to be rescheduled after the entire cabinet failed to turn up for an urgent briefing’.13 This astonishing popularity of religious mythology on TV laid bare the cultural code of ‘modern’ India. Why was public broadcast used in this cultural projection and who did it benefit? Was it simply a revered epic which was televised? Was it a coincidence that the RSS had already adopted Ram and his temple in Ayodhya as its mission? Narasimha Rao’s (Congress PM when the mosque at Ayodhya was demolished in 1992) lucid account of the events leading up to 6 December 1992 mentioned that dispute over Ayodhya had remained

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at low ebb till 1986.14 Through this period, in fact from 1982 up to 1989, the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry was held mostly by ministers of the Congress. It is however worth recalling that the president of the Jana Sangh LK Advani (an old RSS member) had opted for the I&B Ministry in his Janata Party stint in the late 1977-9s (astute politician that he was, he remained interested in the functioning of the I&B even during his stint as Home Minster during the BJP rule in the period 1998-2004). The director of Ramayana, Ramanand Sagar, was acknowledged with a high national honour in 2000 and awarded the Padma Shri by the BJP government. The other religious epic televised, B.R. Chopra’s Mahabharata too had a similar effect in terms of the viewership, but it is a more complex epic of battle, mass destruction and death. It did not have a central hero who could be useful as an immediate religious mascot nor was its director similarly rewarded. Though Krishna, its central figure, might well be the next electrifying deity of the Hindutva movement now that the Ram temple at Ayodhya is being built exactly where the RSS wanted it.15 BJP used the popularity of the TV serial and Lord Ram for their political purpose, fairly swiftly. After having preserved the cultural war on the ground, they grasped it on TV. Subsequently their use of TV and other modern technologies of communication anticipated the trend in India. Their rise was inexorable since. Meanwhile a class of big wealth owners had grown much wealthier and more ambitious since economic liberalization began in the 1990s; they might have found the authoritarian structure of the RSS, its conservative ideology and storm troopers much more useful than the disorder of the ruling Congress coalition governments. Ironically, in the age of the global free market competition and opportunity the state played an even more fundamental role in safeguarding the capitalist. State capture was crucial for capitalists to endure. RSS and BJP seemed to have been attracting funds nationally and internationally like never before, what was it that they deliver to their financers that other political parties could not? This will be discussed later in the chapter. Six years after Babri Masjid demolition and riots that followed, the BJP was the single largest party in the Parliament in 1996 and two years later it was in a position to form the government in an alliance, claim power at the centre and hold on to it till 2004. ‘After 1989, the

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BJP did not stop or look back. So the question naturally arises: what was . . . the extraordinary ocean of service that the BJP continued to drown the people in (unmatched anywhere in the world presumably at any time in the history of democracy) so that its Lok Sabha tally soared from 2 (in 1984) to 88 (in 1989) to 119 (in 1991) to 161 (1996) and to 181 (in 1989) in almost geometric progression? . . . It is crystal clear that there was a strong emotional religious dimension constantly assisting the BJP and motivating the people in a manner that was not available to other parties . . .’ (pp. 186-7).16 Writing his side of the story (which was published after his death as per his wishes) the ex-PM raised serious questions about the constitutionality of this manner of winning elections and was pessimistic about the future. It appeared that the BJP and Hindu Mahasabha had not been functioning within the frame of the same constitution as the Congress, communists, and other parties. He felt it would be impossible to set things right after allowing this trend to continue for such a long time. Indeed, it had been allowed for too long .

A Shadowy Organization Becomes an Immense Shadow of Our Past in Our Present Two Swedish journalists travelled through Indian villages and cities in third class train compartments through 1968-9. They talked to the toiling class and political leaders of varied persuasion and wrote,‘Since the Hindus are the largest single group in India, the Hindu fanatic group now operating in the country constitute the greatest potential danger’ (p. 93).17 In the cities they saw the growth of several fascist groups. Not too many Indian’s saw what they saw. If they did see, too few cried ‘wolf ’ or else, one would have heard them. Fifty years later, loyal chroniclers of the RSS, Anderson and Damle write,‘The RSS has grown into one of the world’s largest non-government association with an estimated 1.5 - 2 million regular participants in its nearly 57,000 local daily meetings, 14,000 weekly meetings, 7000 monthly meetings across 36,293 different locations nationwide as of 2016’ (p. xi).18 When their political affiliate the BJP won with a historic margin the 2014 general elections,‘Some fifteen months into Narendra Modi’s new BJP’s ideological godfather, the Hindu nationalist RSS

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held a widely reported “coordination” meeting with some two dozen of its affiliates in New Delhi in September 2015; their purpose was to consider a wide range of significant, and sometimes controversial-public policy issues facing the Indian nation. At the end of this conclave several of the most senior government ministers including Prime Minister arrived to discuss these issues in person . . . what lent this meeting its singular significance was the confluence of three unprecedented factors; the unusually wide spectrum of often contentious policy issues that were included in the discussion, the organizers’ willingness to publicize these meetings, and the difference of opinions on display, both among the RSSs affiliates and between them and the government proper (Introduction, pp. ix).’ Insiders told the author that the Modi government was more willing to discuss policy concerns of affiliates. These 36 full affiliates and over a hundred more subsidiaries, almost all the affiliates had ‘Pracharaks at the helm – senior level fulltime members who had gone through extensive training. There were 6,000 such Pracharaks who worked among a wide variety of groups that included its political wing the BJP, its largest student group ABVP, its trade union BMS as well as among farmers, journalists, entrepreneurs, health workers, elementary and high school teachers and so on. The 1990s witnessed rapid economic and social changes and it was also the phase of rapid growth in RSS affiliates, as it hastened to customize its appeal to various sections and sectors of the changing society and economy. Oddly, the British government of India was perhaps the last government in India to keep a very keen eye, recorded and filed the activities of the far right in some detail. The RSS was identified as a political movement by the British Government well before the Congress banned its workers from participating in RSS. On 15 December 1933, there was a famous gazette notification that advised government employees not to participate in activities of the RSS followed by one more notification that teachers in government schools should not belong to the Sangh. The Home Department prepared a report in 1943 detailing the growth of the RSS. It had grown rapidly during the war years. Its membership stood at 76,000, one-half in Central Provinces, followed by Bombay and Punjab. Moreover, it had established a presence in every province. Officer

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training camps of a military nature were held in different places, the largest in Pune.19 Strangely, in post-Partition India, despite its role in the partition of the subcontinent, its association with the assassination of the father of the nation M.K. Gandhi, the RSS seems to have grown in a fairly safe environment and with little scrutiny. It had been banned only thrice, once after Gandhi’s assassination, once during the emergency and once after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Except for the Indira Gandhi years the bans were short term and the ban followed serious crimes with which it was associated. There were numerous episodes of riots in between where commissions of inquiry in fact noted that the Jana Sangh was teaming with RSS members to ferment trouble.20 Was it the result of a ‘soft’ state? Or was the state softened by the RSS? The answer to this question is perhaps incomplete without acknowledging popular support for its ideology among the elite who had captured state power almost across the entire country soon after Independence. The RSS also softened the state by a wily use of state machinery and its own usefulness to political allies in electoral shenanigans. Much of India’s internationally celebrated spirituality, rituals, religiosity, and guru ethos are in fact wrapped around this culture that RSS supposedly upholds. The RSS, while consolidating this cultural appeal slowly transfigured it into support for its political arm. It is indeed difficult to outwit one’s own shadow. The RSS has without doubt played a masterly role as an apex organization. Examples of popular support and sympathy among the bureaucracy are penned in almost every account of the goings-on of the RSS. Not just by Anderson and Damle who had privileged access to senior RSS leadership, but insider recounts too. In a more recent and home-grown account of happenings in his village Ayithara, a village ten km from Kuthuparamba town in Kannur district of Kerala, the author a member of the RSS, described the Theyyam (local religious festival) and growing animosity between the RSS and the CPM. In these accounts the RSS was protecting the local landlord, Thampuran (feudal landlords), against the redistribution of land to the farmers. In exchange they

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obtained his patronage and donations. In another episode a takeover of the local deity Madappura, temple and lands allocated to the deity was the subject of planning and aggression by the RSS. It succeeded in that with the help of landlord-cum-businessmen who made donations, they joined the temple committee, become the main organizers of the local religious festivals and acquired some land for the RSS. There are accounts of planned aggression, teaching of martial arts and bomb making outfits in Bombay and Bangalore.21 The position of the RSS in the north was even more firm. It was ensconced and unchallenged in the feudal system, caste hierarchy and support for it came mainly from the rich and upper-castes. All through, running parallel to the story of acquisition of land, money and weapons by the RSS, there are stories of poor accounting, misappropriation of funds from the local shakha up to the district level (pp. 62-3).22 In a similar manner, donations of money and materials from its international arms were used and erratically recorded. It would be difficult to believe the account of a deserter without a rider. Other insiders like Kelkar who spent 45 years within wrote about its leaders, lamenting the lost years of the RSS under some leaders, the unquestioned supremacy of Sarsanghchalak, the lack of rich intellectual, internal dialogue, respect for expertise and engagement with modern social issues.23 However no one highlighted the work of the foot soldiers or the financial aspect. Accounts of their infiltration of local shrines, maneuvres around popular local landmarks and violent strategies of intervention from Ayodhya to present times that appeared sometimes in the neutral mainstream press, seemed to follow a time tested scheme, that also Minni, who has written an insider’s account, described in detail. The same method is noted for the violence in the Bhima Koregaon region near Pune around a landmark.24 The Mumbai bomb making factories busted in recent raids was run by a group linked to RSS by ideology but not directly,25 this distancing of cultural work from ‘other’ more dangerous activities was also a time-tested design. All these are familiar tactics now. Moreover, this sympathy for the RSS among the elite is old and entrenched. Memoirs of ICS officers record it (in the context of incriminating evidence based on police investigations during communal tensions) in United Provinces before the assassination of Mahatma

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Gandhi, ‘It was no doubt a matter of political delicacy as the roots of the RSS had gone deep into the body politics. There were also other compulsions as RSS sympathizers, both covert and overt, were to be found in the Congress party itself and in the Cabinet. It was no secret that the presiding officer of the upper house, Atma Govind Kher, was himself an adherent and his sons were openly members of the RSS’.26 No timely arrests of RSS leaders were permitted then. These sympathies are reflected in the reopened trial of the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi as well (discussed in Chapter one). With hindsight it appears that RSS grew for almost a hundred years in India (2025, will mark the hundredth year) in a rather favourable environment with plenty of sympathy, funding as well as manpower. Observers writing about it used to refer to it as a shadowy organization earlier, because of its association with Gandhi’s assassination, its obvious lack of transparency, verifiable data or official scrutiny. Its clout is more on display now. Recently when the BJP Government in Maharashtra openly created a new civil service called honorary animal welfare officers, in each district, the news was printed. All applicants for these posts were cow protectors called gau rakshaks from various RSS spawned militias that intercepted alleged transporters of beef and cows.27 In several cases, these vigilantes killed Muslim truck drivers ferrying cattle. However, interestingly a similar attempt to hire RSS linked academic faculty in the university system was not as successful for the paucity of suitable applicants.28 Influencing the process of recruitment and qualifying examination for public sector institutions has long been both an ideological and mercenary enterprise in India. In the BJP ruled state of Madhya Pradesh (2005-18) it reached an enormous and sinister proportion.29 Eventually a BJP MP, the state’s Technical Minister In-charge and some 2000 others were arrested in 2015 but not before delayed, long drawn out investigation and a series of mysterious deaths.30 The investigations into irregularities in process of recruitment and qualifying examination began only after a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed requesting investigation of the scam in 2009. Be that as it may, achieving its first political victory over the principal political force (Congress) in the mid-1970s seemed to boost RSS’s activities and funding very substantially but not its transparency. Most scholars of RSS still quote Anderson and Damle as authority on

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details of organization and membership, but these authors simply reproduce RSS sources. For example, all the appendices in their 2018 book ‘RSS, A View to the Inside’, quoted the RSS mouthpiece, the readily available Organiser magazine, for data on number of training camps, growth in the number of shakhas. In appendix (vii) the authors provided data on the expansion of the labour affiliate of the RSS and the source said ‘BMS is one of the few RSS affiliated organizations to maintain comprehensive membership records’ (p. 270).31 This was perhaps because labour unions functioned in a more competitive, transparent manner and labour laws required it of them to maintain membership and finance data. Even its own publication Organiser seems to provide approximate figures. This absence of details and records of over 90 years of its existence is baffling to say the least but it might be a deliberate smoke screen. It is also a commentary on our fuzzy administrative system. Number of RSS Shakhas by Source Source / Year

1975

Spitz

8,000

1978

per cent rise

1985

1997

2014

2019

20,000 30,000

per cent rise Anderson Damle 8,000

1982

60.0 14,000 42.9

Vaidya per cent rise

33.3 43,000 70,000 67.4

38.6

43,000 70,000 38.6

As per Spitz (1997) • As per Anderson and Damle (2019) • As per Vaidya, Mukh Pracharak RSS • Data as per RSS official data, which does not have verifiable sub details. It seems patchy. Source: Compiled by the author.

According to Spitz (1997),‘RSS membership has increased rapidly since 1975, when the number of shakhas was between 7,500 and 8,500. By 1985, there were approximately 20,000 shakhas, and in 1993 India Today estimated the number at 30,000. The most rapid growth since 1977 has been in the four southern states, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka,

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Kerala and Tamil Nadu. By 1982 there were approximately 5,600 shakhas in these states’.32 According to Anderson and Damle’s latest book, 43,000 shakhas across India in 2014 is approximately correct, they were using the very same insider RSS data source. By 2016, they had close to 57,000 shakhas (p. 260).33 In this book they have a chart which shows the meteoric rise after 1978 when they had already increased in number from Spitz’s estimate of 7,500-8,500 in 1975 to 14,000 shakhas, almost double the number in three year period after the emergency. But they claimed that the 1990s was the decade of the most rapid numerical growth. In a recent article Anderson says that the RSS now has 70,000 shakhas with 2 million members.34 So, it appears that the phase of rapid growth is going on and on! It is also likely that these numbers are inflated, other scholars of Sangh Parivar organizations cross verifying numbers of participants in functions, from the literature of the Sangh suggest that compared to earlier, later Sangh publications have inflated numbers, between double and three times.35 According to Manmohan Vaidya, Prachar Pramukh, the RSS had 43,000 shakhas all over the country in 2014 with 14 lakh Swayamsevak, 3,000 Pracharaks and 35 front organizations working in different fields.36 By 2018 its leaders claimed that 57,000 shakhas were functioning across India, and in 2019 its loyal chronicler said there were 70,000! These numbers are not as important as the fact that now the Prime Minister, the President of India, and almost all the major ministers in the government are products of this organization. Its current head Mohan Bhagwat’s annual address to this organization was relayed to the nation on government television, telecast for the first time in Indian history. Can one be certain of the data handed out by the RSS itself? There is no alternative record based on official scrutiny of their data, membership, registrations, funding and organization. If it is still referred to as a ‘cultural’ organization; it appears to have remained so only because they have come to occupy such a special position that no government wanted to upset them by a financial and physical audit. But India’s largest ‘non-government organization’ has no audited accounts available to the public. It was rumoured to be unregistered; its donations were allegedly all informal donations of volunteers and admirers hence no audit statements of accounts can be found in the public domain. In November

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2016, Prakash Ambedkar, grandson of B.R. Ambedkar, spoke to the press asking how the RSS was going to account for its informal donations in the post-demonetization period since it was not registered with the election commission as a political party, or as a company under the Companies Act or as a charitable trust under the state Trust Act. He cited a 1980s case during V.P. Singh’s government when one of the RSSs fronts called VHP had received Rs. 700 crores of foreign funds mainly from America and it went unexplained (This is interesting since it was described the manner in which BJP was aligned with V.P. Singh government and given it outside support). In August 2017, a Nagpur based social activist Janardhan Moon, started an organization and filed online application with the Nagpur Charity Commissioner to register the name RSS for his new organization. He claimed that the application was accepted because on government records RSS was not a registered body. Later a lawyer for the RSS objected to it and Janardhan’s claim was rejected.37 In October he submitted a writ petition in the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court over the Local Charity Commissioner’s decision to reject registration of his organization as RSS as no other organization by that registered name existed. His petition stated that the persons who had raised an objection to his claim had not substantiated with any evidence that an organization by the same name existed. His petition was admitted.38 Nagpur has been the headquarters of the RSS since 1925 as an ‘off the records’ organization. The lawyer filing an objection on behalf of the RSS claimed that the organization was registered long time ago in Delhi, he claimed to have submitted a registration number and code and an old certificate. A newspaper report stated that the registration had a Chandrapur address for correspondence and was registered under the Indian Public Trust Registration Act 1860 and the Societies Registration Act 1950. However, the lawyer on behalf of RSS said that the registration did not imply legal necessity of any financial report and audit. The case was unresolved even in July 2018. Regardless of what the lawyer claimed in his submission, registered societies must file their memorandum of association, fees and membership, governing body as per rules and submit accounts. The annual list of managing body has to be filed.

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Given that the rules require so much from a society; how could there be any ambiguity about the name, registration and status of a huge organization like the RSS persist as late as 2018? That too in the city and the state where the RSS headquarter has been located for a long time? It is as though no one needed to know the birthday or name of something that has always been comfortably around. The organization obviously had no antagonists; no one was wary or suspicious about it. No details were revealed to the public for discussion even after the case over the name surfaced. Till this skirmish in Nagpur court in 2017 and that brief encounter with the income tax department during Indira Gandhi’s government, the RSS seemed to live a charmed life! According to RSS sources the most common explanation for opacity, is the Kendriya Karyakari Mandal. It is the highest executive authority of the Sangh. It decides what is to be done both on policy and finances. Funds are collected during some (six) festivals and Vyas Poornima also known as Dakshina Day (donation day) where member volunteers offer donations in envelopes marked with their names. The RSS does not accept donations or sponsorships from non-members. These donations are collected from every unit/shakha, half of the donations are retained by the unit and half are sent to Nagpur. The shakhas can receive additional funds if the highest executive body thinks it is necessary. However, according to Article 9 of its Constitution,‘Any voluntary offerings made with devotion before the Bhagwa-Dhwaj shall exclusively constitute the finances of the shakha and shall belong to and be solely managed and distributed by the shakha for the promotion of the Aims and Objectives of the Sangh . . . ’ reproduced in Anderson and Damle (2018).39 But then again, if descriptions of the situation provided by insiders who have left the RSS are to be believed, it would appear that there is much financial mismanagement, confusion and perhaps inevitable if 70,000 shakhas exist and keep unaudited accounts. The opacity is perhaps deliberate.‘The Sangh gets crores every year as Guru Dakshina and this is tax free. . . . The Sangh will get a minimum of seventeen crore rupees from one district in Kerala. The state contribution will be more than 250 crores. Top business tycoons, contractors and highly placed officials of the state contribute enormous amount to the Sangh

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as Guru Dakshina. In Kerala only a tiny portion of that amount is retained, here, and the rest is sent to Nagpur Centre.The largest amount is collected from Gujarat. There the Guru Dakshina amounts to Rs 1,000 crores’ (p. 107).40 This is extracted from the narrative of a Pracharak from the Kannur district of Kerala, who eventually exited the RSS. His proficiency in mathematics, particularly Vedic mathematics, resulted in him being useful to the RSS in various capacities but particularly in the shakha and district level accounting. His misgivings about the methods of income generation and accumulation began early in his career. Meghwanshi’s recollections on the money and accounting procedure is similar, expenses of functionaries are met out of offerings made to the flag on Guru Poornima. Amounts collected from various shakhas are deposited at district headquarters. The total collection is apparently kept secure by some wealthy individual swayamsevak but not in a bank directly by the RSS. This individual, usually a prosperous local bania (trader) then releases money to the pracharaks against a letter (p. 37).41 The section is largely based on such book and media reports. Efforts to cross check these RSS finances on their website or with tax official sources drew a blank. However, an annual report of their organization is available for the year 2019 with extensive coverage of their activities, meetings and photographs but not their accounts.42 Only one beam of official light can be thrown on the situation based on a court case against the RSS by the revenue department of the income tax department dated sometime in the early 1970s (during the period when Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister) the case was filed in Bombay and another one later in Patna. The Commissioner of Income-Tax, Patna in Bihar was the applicant in all cases. The same assessee (RSS) was the respondent. The matter relates to the assessment years 1967-8 to 1975-6. The Incometax Appellate Tribunal in R.A. nos. 1 to 9 (Patna) of 1981 referred the following common questions of law for the decision of this court in the above cases. The questions referred to this court are, whether, on the facts and in the circumstances of the case, the principle of mutuality exists in the RSS? Whether, on the facts and in the circumstances of the case, the amount received from members and devotees can be taken to be gurudakshina and held to be tax exempt?

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The court observed that the assessments were made on the respondent-assessee in the status of an association of persons for the years 1967-8 to 1975-6. The assessments were of a protective nature. The assessee’s income was by way of receipt from members as gurudakshina. It was also seen that gurudakshina was also received from devotees. The income-tax officer held that gurudakshina received by the assesse is taxable under the provisions of the Income-Tax Act. He computed the income of the assessee for the respective assessment years from 1967-8 to 1975-6 respectively as Rs 48,000, 71,000, 50,000, 20,000, 25,000, 20,000, 15,000, 20,000 and 15,000. The RSS appealed the verdict. In the appeal, it was noticed that the RSS had its head office at Nagpur and hence the assessments on the respondent-assessee should be done only there as a protective measure. The Appellate Assistant Commissioner held further that the gurudakshina receipts from members of the organization were exempt from taxation on the ground of mutuality. In coming to the conclusion, he placed reliance on instructions of the Central Board of Direct Taxes contained in letter no. 290/26/ M.O. /I.M. (Inv.), dated 19 December 1978. On the above basis the assessments were cancelled. So, the case dragged on and the decision to exempt the RSS from paying taxes on donations received from volunteers was judged to be not applicable, by Central Board of Direct Income Tax department in 1978. This exemption decision was delivered when Janata Party was ruling at the centre with outside support of BJP in the post emergency period. During this saga the following aspects of the organization emerged. • •

It claimed before the High Court that it was a charitable institution under the Section 10 (22) of the Income Tax Act 1961. And before the Charity Commissioner that the RSS was not a charitable trust but a political institution under Section 12 (13) of the Bombay Public Trust Act, 1950.

To the public at large it was a cultural/educational body.43 In the course of the litigation it took legal advice to amend its constitution of 1949. The amendments give legal status to the term ‘Guru Dakshina’ and its division into individual shakhas and branch funds.

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Tipping Point ‘Guru Dakshina received for Sangh purposes by a Sangh Shakha shall constitute the funds of that Shakha’. Hence tax liability cannot be fixed on Nagpur. It also claimed that branches were independent units and their funds were independent of Nagpur.

The organization was, therefore, trying to avoid registration and tax payments and the ITO, Central Circle III, Nagpur made an assessment order 1971-2 against the RSS overriding their claims. It was estimated that their income from gurudakshina to be Rs 20 lakhs in 1974. There is no figure for the present that one can provide except claims of their publication, Organiser that volunteers can contribute up to lakhs of rupees and no one except the shakha office bearers know about these amounts.44

Not without Enduring Support from the other Shadow of the Past, the Ancient Regime To this day, newly weds across social classes in India aspire to dress as up as royalty and sit on gilded thrones, often on an elevated platform like princes and princesses did. Guests line up, climb the platform one by one, with wishes and gifts. But this is not all that remains of our feudal past. The situation in the princely states under the British and soon after Independence has been discussed at length earlier. No generalization would do justice to the variety of policy and administrative style among the 565 monocratic kingdoms. The larger ones like Hyderabad had a Muslim ruler but a large Hindu population and Kashmir had a largely Muslim population with a Hindu king. Historically, the princely states and the RSS came much closer in the decade before Independence. The affinity between the princely states and the Sangh Parivar was by no means deep rooted in time nor was it a very pervasive phenomenon even though it might appear to be a natural class alliance partnership of the ruling class. The association of the RSS with the Maratha kingdoms is well known, the RSS shakha in Nagpur was founded on land donated by the royal family, the shakha in Kolhapur was named after the local ruler, similar help came from

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some other princely states but it was by no means a pervasive phenomenon in other kingdoms like some of the larger ones like Kashmir and Hyderabad in the 1930s. It is also well argued that in princely India rulers sought religious legitimacy and also practiced religion-based selection in their administration, consequently increasing long-term religious differences.45 The two just came close to each other in the decades before Independence and in the post-Independence period when old certainties gave way. The most well developed alliance was in central western India. Princes had been protected by the British, ruled as they wished if they remained loyal to the empire. They were a strategic buffer and impending Independence, caused natural anxieties. The 565 odd princely states (comprising a third of Indian territory) were areas largely not prone to communal mobilizations, or mob violence. Although it is difficult to give a generalized account of causes or estimate incidents accurately, leading up to communal clashes in India in 1920-40, Copland found that the princely states reported only 79 incidents and 172 deaths against 322 incidents and 2,273 deaths in the British provinces.46 He said that after 1929 the difference between the two shrank and by 1947 the scale of communal violence in the northern princely states would parallel and exceed that which was experienced in adjoining British provinces. Even if religious differences particularly regarding rights over religious objects, space and rituals were no less acute in these princely states. It appears that they did not lead to acts of excessive aggression, resulting in injury or death in the early days. Within these localities and communities, resolution mechanism worked to sort out the problems since there were no great benefits in disruption of peace to any party. In these princely states, larger towns were less industrialized, had fewer migrants. They were not well connected with railways and did not have too many newspapers. Exceptions in the north were Indore and Jaipur. This made for static homogeneity among their subjects, relatively ‘backward’, isolation – adherence to traditional forms of community and non-competitive monarchical polities. They did not have what Copland called a riot prone environment. Given the environment, most historians suggested that riots were to a large degree planned events by agencies, more often political than religious.

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There were other reasons too that explained why the princely states remained islands in the storm. The northern princely states were considered largely Hindu strongholds ruled by Hindu kings, with relatively smaller Muslim populations compared to the provinces, except for Kashmir, ‘. . . which is principally why, in the 1930s, the Indian Muslim League set its face against the British government’s scheme for an all-India federation even as the Hindu Mahasabha warmly embraced it’ (p. 27).47 However, majorities were threatened only by significant or strategically important minorities and that too in times of significant socio-economic shifts. The arrival of modernity both in the form of technology (railways, newspapers, telegraph, telephones) and ideas (democracy, equality, and secularism) was the larger background of these changes in more recent times. On both counts, the British ruled provinces were ahead of the princely states and it was in the latter that the arrival of representative government caused the most concern among old elite. The growth of communalism in provinces during the 1920 and 1930s is parallel to reforms initiated by the government and religion-based quotas (this is discussed in Chapter One). Electoral competition was a significant force in strengthening and sometimes formations of group identities. Modern administration also implied larger recruitments and expenditure on welfare and infrastructure. These were opportunities for power and resources that could be foregone only at the expense of losing social position. Princely states were less exposed to these modern developments (political representation and sharing executive power however minor) where people largely held on the vestiges of premodern culture, lived in self-sufficient villages and neighbourhoods dependent on groups or parochial communities within them for essential goods and services with reciprocal obligations, with the exception of a few states like Baroda and Travancore where reforms in minor forms of political representation and education took place. Baroda introduced compulsory primary education in 1906 and both states spent relatively a large part of their revenue on education,48 the majority remained entrenched in old feudal customs. Personal, often autocratic rule of the princes was the norm. Division of labour was historical, caste and religion based. Religious minorities existed everywhere but were an integral part of the ecosystem and

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communal violence could make it difficult for all to subsist. This changed but slowly. For the rest, the princely states were ruled with a darbari (court) culture, edicts, and ‘fatherly’ despotism under the watchful eye of a British resident but without substantial legislative and judicial intrusion.‘The Church-state relationship remained direct and intimate in the princely states (p. 49).49 They upheld the traditions and practice of their own religion with enthusiasm but needed to promote an ethos of tolerance and harmony within which minorities could practice their religion and did so. They were enjoined by dharma to set a salutary example. This was the version of ‘secularism’ and not the modern one which was most familiar to the majority of Indianswhere the ruler as part of the divine cosmic order, participated publicly in acts of religion to establish his legitimacy. This is the version which is being reintroduced with the participation of the BJP Prime Minister and the Brahmin RSS chief in launching the construction of a new Ram temple in Ayodhya 28 years after the demolition of the Babri Masjid.50 Some of the rulers of these princely state were unaffectedly devout Hindus who worshipped idols every day, performed rituals and undertook years of pilgrimage. Some of them, also associated with the Hindu Mahasabha orthodox wing Sanatan Dharma. Coreligionists of the ruler would inevitably have access to larger number of administrative jobs, education, or scholarships. Dominant communities expected their princely patrons to do so. The minorities were accustomed to accepting this as normal and to compromise in exchange for religious tolerance. Scholars have argued that in the context of British rule of the subcontinent, Hindu nationalists held up the native princely states as ideals of ‘tradition,’ as territories unspoiled by foreign hands and thus representative of the ‘true India’.51 The idea of Akhand Hindustan came from a Gujarati writer, K.M. Munshi who was an admirer of the Maharaja of Baroda, Aurobindo Ghosh and Gandhi. Munshi left the Congress in 1959 to launch an Akhand Hindustan movement and became one of the founders the right wing Swatantra Party and later joined the Jana Sangh and presided over the founding of the VHP in 1964. It is a vision of lost state power, caste privilege and some version of ‘tolerance’ that is to this day the essential substance of India’s far right vision for the future. The RSS did eventually forge an alliance

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with the princely states. In the 1930s and 40s princely states attempted to secure their future with reforms and alliances with provincial political parties, a hedge, in the event of British exit from the subcontinent. ‘Ideally they would have liked to come to an agreement with the Congress. This might have been possible had Gandhi still controlled Congress policy. By the mid-1940s, however, it was Jawaharlal Nehru who increasingly spoke for the Congress on the states. . .’ (p. 101).52 His pronouncements at conferences regarding the majority of these states, referring to their autocratic powers, reactionary politics, stagnation and incompetence would have frightened the rulers and advisers in the states. Thus, they set about making networks with Congress rivals like AIML and the Hindu Mahasabha, Akali Dal and Punjab Unionist Party. These had not been their allies earlier, in more secure days. The Hindu Mahasabha was eager to forge this alliance and presented itself as a defender of Hindu kings while appealing to populist and nationalist ideals. Under Savarkar, who had acquired some fame and reputation as a revolutionary freedom fighter and was elected the president of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937, the Mahasabha and princes saw an opportunity. The Mahasabha needed powerful friends after their candidates were decimated at the 1937 elections. The party had won just 17 seats in all. It now needed strategic alliances with powerful people who had resources and influence with locals and officialdom. The princes could provide both. Besides, the Princes had police and some military forces and, in some cases, quite substantial revenue, territories and population under their control. For the leaders of the Mahasabha this was an ideological fit as well; the princes represented the protectors and survivors of the Hindu Raj which their ideologues were trying to revive. Savarkar was quick to spot the potential for his project of Hindutva; his writings and speeches and those of other members of the Mahasabha reflect this. Religion is not safe without political power. In 1941, the Mahasabha and Akali Dal who, ideologically, had much in common formed a loose understanding against the Muslims which included the militarization of Hindus. All this was to be done with the generous resources of the princely states. Not all the princely states jumped into alliances with the Mahasabha and Akali Dal, they preferred to keep their options open.

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The princes of the following states did, however, do so enthusiastically, Alwar, Bharatpur, Bikaner, Bilaspur, Charkhari, and Dholpur, Dewas, Gwalior, Kota, Rewa with Mahasabha and Patiala with the Akalis. Here the princes involved were often young, impressionable men, struggling under the pressures of royal life, expectations of a lineage and hoping to make a mark. However, the principal participant, the Raja of Bikaner was an exception, neither young nor impressionable. In 1941, he invited Savarkar, Moonje and S.P. Mukherjee to Bikaner for a private visit and in March, the following year had the three Sabha leaders back in Kota, Jaipur, Gwalior, Alwar and Dholpur. None of these alliances and understanding was within closed doors. A similar closing of ranks between the Muslim rulers and the Muslim League took place. The Chamber of Princes became divided on communal lines. Later this communal alliance was to infiltrate their realm and cause communal riots and thwart democratic movements within what had been relatively peaceful zones. In doing so they also thwarted the growth of the Congress within these states somewhat. The Mahasabha lobbied on behalf of the princely states, for their autonomy within a loose Indian federation. In return they expected the princes to further their agenda within and outside their realm on issues like reduction of employment of Muslims, adoption of Hindi, Hindi radio stations, set up a Hindi medium university, remove Urdu words, communalizing police and bureaucracy. The princely states were soon to become prey to communal riots (the 1930s and 40s). Their connection to the far right was sustained even during the post-Independence period. The Indian Independence Act, 1947, provided for the lapse of paramountcy of the British Crown over the Indian states. Each ruler had the option to accede to the dominion of India or to Pakistan or continue as an independent sovereign mini nation. Some Congress members were opposed to the privy purses because the princely states were viewed with suspicion of aligning with the British during the freedom movements, of remaining largely as centres of tyranny and despotism. However, as part of settlements to remain within India, a privy purse had been promised. Around 1959, when the proposed land ceiling law threatened them, erstwhile princes formed the Swatantra Party to protect their land,

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and privy purses. In 1962, Vijayaraje Scindia was in Congress and BJS had only three MPs from Madhya Pradesh. But in 1967, she contested the Parliament seat on Swatantra Party ticket and assembly on BJS ticket. Such was the distinction, between the two political fronts! In that election BJS won seven parliamentary seats and six independent MPs were supported by her. Areas dotted by anti-Congress rulers and jagirdars were extensive and covered Bastar, Kanker and Jashpur in Chattisgarh, Dhenkanal, Kalahandi, Keonjar, Mayurbhang in Orissa and Patna; Udaipur, Alwar, Bharatpur, Dholpur, Karauli, Dungarpur, Jhalawar, Kota, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. Gwalior, Rewa, Dhar, Narsingpur, Satna. Jagirdars in MP lent their princely status to seek votes for the Swatantra Party, BJS and later the BJP, as did the princelings of Gujarat. (This is almost a belt from western border through central India ending close to Orrisa and Bengal).53 In the same report, Vijayaraje’s political advisor Sardar Angre says,‘The RSS made progress entirely because of the so-called Samants. Though ideologically affiliated to the Sangh, most princes were nervous about supporting BJS because of the allegations over Gandhi’s assassination. There was a baseless allegation that the revolver used came from Gwalior. And Swatantra was better funded by Bombay’s industrialists. But Rajmata was braver than the rest and joined Jan Sangh while most others opted for Swatantra.’ In the Gandhi assassination case, princes of Alwar and Bharatpur were under the cloud of suspicion; the Alwar’s Prime Minister N.B. Khare later became the Hindu Mahasabha president. Although Congress was well ahead of the others in public acceptance, yet, many princes opted for the Swatantra Party. Angre called Swatantra a ‘good steppingstone for rulers and BJS’.54 His brother-in-law, Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, was in Swatantra Party – a bigger Opposition party than BJS in Rajasthan, Orissa and Gujarat. In 1967 Lok Sabha elections, the Swatantra Party had 44 seats and was the second largest party and it was leading in Gujarat, Orissa, and Mysore and second in Rajasthan. After Indira Gandhi nationalized banks and abolished privy purses, the Swatantra Party, BJS, Congress (O) and some socialists formed a grand alliance. In Madhya Pradesh alone there were 8 princes who contested elections under BJS banner or were supported by it as independents.

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The condition of the princes changed rapidly after 1971 when Indira Gandhi used her parliamentary majority to end the privy purse. Then it seemed that they did not have too many sympathizers in the Parliament. ‘On 2 December she introduced a bill to amend the Constitution and abolish all princely privileges. It was passed in the Lok Sabha by 381 votes to six and in the Rajya Sabha by 167 votes to seven. In her speech, the Prime Minister invited ‘the princes to join the elite of the modern age, the elite which earns respect by its talent, energy and contribution to human progress, all of which can only be done when we work together as equals without regarding anybody as of special status’ (p. 441).55 She had perhaps moved rapidly to circumscribe an opposition because here was one growing quite steadily since 1967. ‘Gandhi won her first election in 1971 crusading against poverty, and the noble families were a ripe target. She also withdrew the princely privileges because she feared the vestiges of their old authority. After Independence, many Indian noblemen had ventured into politics and were opposed to Indira Gandhi’s mix of populism and socialism’.56 In the 1967 election, several rulers had joined the Swatantra Party headed by C. Rajagopalachari and many of them had defeated Congress candidates. Indira Gandhi was, therefore, determined to soften their money-muscles – the privy purses. On 25 June 1967, the All India Congress passed a resolution to abolish them. The 24th Constitution Amendment Bill 1970, which was introduced and passed in the Lok Sabha by a majority of 332:154 votes, but it was defeated in the Rajya Sabha by 149:75. Having failed in the Parliament, Indira Gandhi asked President V.V. Giri to derecognize all the rulers via an ordinance. This de-recognition was successfully challenged by N.A. Palkhivala before the Supreme Court in the historic privy purses case. Indira Gandhi’s landslide victory in the 1971 election enabled her to amend the Constitution itself to abolish the privy purses and extinguished all rights and privileges of the rulers.57 In the Parliament, Indira Gandhi stated that the concept of privy purses and special privileges were incompatible with an ‘egalitarian social order.’ One can only imagine the kind of foes she collected. This financial downsizing and the electoral process eventually diminished the princely aura and influence significantly.

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Today the Sangh Parivar no longer depends on the princes in these areas. The RSS and its fronts like Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh and VHP have penetrated these areas. The anti-conversion campaign has spread and if anything, the jagirdars of the area need the Parivar and its ideology to remain politically relevant. Decades later, a lone legal battle to restore the privy purse was initiated and reported. It described the changed circumstances of the princes and their diminished social influence and control. Although much diminished one assumes, that the prince still enjoy some social influence and control that they may like to preserve.58

Who was Watching our Growing Shadow? In a previous chapter, Craig Baxter (1969) was cited as having provided one of the initial and most comprehensive accounts of Jana Sangh (earlier avatar of the BJP). Baxter, a US Foreign Service official wrote that the political party was on the ascent since it had consistently improved its vote share since the first general elections in 1952 and after the 1967 elections emerged as a potent force on the political scene. The most authoritative account of the RSS is also co-authored by a pair of authors both located in America at present. One of them by the name of Walter K. Anderson (also cited in previous chapters) is currently placed in Johns Hopkins University. His biography on the university website states that he had served as special assistant to the American Ambassador in New Delhi and also in the US State Department. It says, ‘Walter Andersen served as Senior Adjunct Professor of South Asia Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and was concurrently affiliated with Tongji University, Shanghai as a professor in the Graduate School of International Relations. He had been the Administrative Director of the South Asia Studies Program from 2012-17 and Johns Hopkins University Representative to the American Institute of Indian Studies. Prior to that Andersen served as chief of the US State Department’s South Asia Division in the Office of Analysis for the West Asia or Near East and South Asia. He had held other key positions within the State Department, including Special Assistant to the Ambassador at the US Embassy in New Delhi and as a member of the Policy Planning Staff in Washington, DC.’

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His association with the RSS seems to be extensive and long term, dating back to his years as a student in the late 1960s when he came to India with a group led by the late Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph of Chicago University, the same University that had drawn P.N. Haksar’s annoyance and attention to its activities in India referred to in Chapter 2. Anderson’s interest in Indian politics, particularly its far right has been dogged. His early articles include one, published in two parts on student politics in Allahabad University (in the Economic and Political Weekly) as early as June 1970. It is co-authored with Alok Pant. It contains questionnaire based primary scrutiny on caste and political views. It is a detailed survey of the history of Allahabad University and student background followed by various political groups, their connections and leadership in student politics are analyzed. The reasons for violence and alienation of students emerging from problems within and outside the University are analyzed.59 Student politics was soon to turn into a political cauldron in which forces opposing the Congress and Indira Gandhi would pour and coalesce. That development and what led to the imposition of a national emergency has also been described in Chapter 2. The other four articles that Anderson wrote followed each other in early 1972 and were a serial account of the RSS, which was to play the role of superglue in the same cauldron. In the first article on the RSS subtitled ‘Early Concerns’ he began,‘This is the study of the most potent organized Hindu cultural group of the twentieth century in India – The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’.60 Other articles followed in quick succession, in what was a singularly insightful, remarkable description of the history of the Indian far right by a young American who clearly had access to and confidence of the foremost leadership of the RSS. It was remarkable because Anderson arrived as a student in 1969 armed with some knowledge of Hindi/ Urdu. He then traced the history of the RSS, interviewed the RSS general secretary, Bala Rao Deoras, on 16 April and December 1969, met and interviewed its chief Golwalkar himself, Eknath Ranade Golwalkar’s secretary in December 1969, interviewed the general secretary of the Jan Sangh and some of the founding members of the student wing of the RSS (ABVP) like Ved Prakash Nanda and Balraj

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Madhok in July and September 1969. He also interviewed leaders of the Arya Samaj. He thumbed through Savarkar files in Dadar, State Department, files of the British period, and Moonje files in Nehru Memorial Library, not to mention archives of local newspapers like the Mahratta, Leader, and Amrit Bazar Patrika. He also met the brother of Nathuram Godse and interviewed him in May 1969. All this seems to have been accomplished by 1970 and these sources were referenced in the four articles that dwelt on contentions about who represented the Hindus, RSS participation in politics and Jan Sangh along with other organizations spawned by the RSS.61 The fourth and last article reviewed the advances made by the student wing of the RSS in a vacuum created by the exit of the Congress from student politics, changing socio-economic composition of the student body as more students from lower and middle income came into colleges and the entry of communists into student politics since 1930s.‘The RSS and communist had, since Independence, competed for loyalties of the college population of India – particularly in the Hindi speaking areas of north India’ (p. 726). Anderson concluded the Economic and Political Weekly series with,‘The RSS has succeeded in building a cadre which can be mobilized for whatever tasks the leadership sets before it. Moreover, it has provided the recruitment pool for a large number of organizations (i.e. Jan Sangh, Vidyarthi Parishad, etc.) providing these groups with a disciplined cadre’.62 It is a remarkable report all through with a dispassionate, utilitarian conclusion. Anderson said that he spent three extended periods in India in the later 1960s, early 1970s, mid- and late-1980s. His mentors, the Lloyds told him to pay close attention to Vajpayee, a Jan Sangh MP, who two-and-a-half decades later became the first BJP Prime Minister. In an article penned in the memory of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Anderson recounts how he came to India with his mentors, the famed couple, Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph from Chicago University.63 ‘Among the Indian politicians that fascinated them was Vajpayee and they told me to pay close attention to him. . . . My next phase in India was in the mid-1980s and I came to do research on a book analyzing the RSS – at that time a rather marginal group on the fringes of the India I interacted with. But I recalled Rudolph’s’ admonition that this group had a message that was likely to appeal to large sections

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of the Indian population … I next came to India in the late 1980s and was assigned to the US Embassy in part because of my knowledge of India and I worked as an advisor to Ambassador William Clarke who, like Vajpayee, combined a friendly personality with a work ethic.’ He went on to describe frank and amicable meetings between the ambassador and Vajpayee which he witnessed as part of his official duties. It is important to remember that the mid-1980s were yet another traumatic period. The RSS was whipping up communal fires, Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, Rajiv Gandhi, her son, who succeeded her had entered politics reluctantly and was relatively inexperienced. By 1989, BJP’s MPs had gone up from 2 to 86, and it was supported from outside by a non-Congress government, with Mr V.P. Singh as PM. V.P. Singh had served as Finance and then as Defence Minister under Rajiv Gandhi. He stirred up a political storm ostensibly against corruption when he hired Fairfax, an American detective agency, to investigate illegal overseas accumulation of foreign exchange by Indians. The agency was headed by one Mr Michael J. Hershman, another intriguing person, who, as his company website states,‘began his career in intelligence and investigations in Europe during late 1960s as a special agent with U.S. Military Intelligence, specializing in counter-terrorism. After leaving the military, he moved to investigations of government misconduct and financial fraud for the New York State Attorney General’s Office and the Office of the Mayor of New York city. Just prior to founding the Fairfax Group in 1983, Hershman served as Deputy Auditor General for the Foreign Assistance Programme of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), where he led investigations and audits of major U.S. funded projects overseas and was responsible for worldwide scrutiny at all foreign AID missions’.64 What his website forgets to add is that he was almost certainly the Deputy Staff Director of the CIA till as late as 1978.65 It does not say when he exited the CIA or that he was in fact stationed in Bombay for a while. Anyway, this hiring of an American detective agency by Finance Minister V.P. Singh, without the consent of his PM, raised many heckles as it implicated some people close to Rajiv Gandhi. V.P. Singh was too senior to be fired but was shifted to the Defence Ministry; this was

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followed by revelations of some dodgy defence deals. In both cases he was acting independently without consulting the PM. In the Parliament Rajiv Gandhi talked of a CIA conspiracy against his government.66 Eventually a cloud of corruption charges descended on Rajiv Gandhi, Mr V.P. Singh was expelled from the Congress in 1987 and emerged as a hero for the anti-Congress forces (like JP emerged in the 1970s). Like JP, his single-minded campaign against corruption first of hawala and then in defence deals particularly the Bofor gun deal resonated with the public, since corruption was, and remains the short cut to wealth and power, much sought after from the highest to lowest levels in society. Like JP, he became a messiah, for he was a local raja who had given up his land, was avowedly secular, and the left was ready to ally with him. Dexterously he went on to cultivate all kinds of social organizations and groups; familiar ones like Sarvodaya workers (from JPs time), the farmer’s movement led by leaders like Sharad Joshi in Maharashtra, ambitious trade unions led by leaders like Datta Samant; he then found allies among the Congress rebels and those alienated by Rajiv Gandhi, like Arif Mohammad Khan, Arun Nehru, V.C. Shukla and others to form a core group called Jan Morcha in October 1987. He formed a front of secular non-Congress parties at national and regional levels and then made seat adjustments with the BJP and the left, maintained close relations with the BJP leaders and spoke against communalism, he called the left his natural partners. After the 1989 elections, unlike JP, V.P. Singh went on to become the PM in a National Front government. The BJP had already increased its parliamentary seats from 2 to 86. For the second time a non-Congress government was formed at the centre and it brightened up the fortunes of the far right yet again. The National Front won 146 seats, supported from outside by the BJP with 86 seats and the left with 52 seats. He became the saviour with another added dimension as well. Based on the recommendations of the Mandal Commission he pushed through a bill reserving 27 per cent of the government and public sector jobs for backward castes. The manner and quantum of the reservation that brought the total reserved to 49.5 per cent (including SC and ST candidates) and its impact on the upper-caste aspirations for the jobs, created a storm especially among students. Agitations broke out for and against the reservations. Those against it were the upper-castes

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who consolidated behind the BJP rather rapidly as it aired its disapproval. Just then L.K. Advani announced his 6000 km long Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya to lay the foundation stone for the Ram Mandir. He was arrested in Bihar and the BJP withdrew support from the government. The episode ended in police firing on crowds trying to reach Ayodhya and rioting but not without igniting communal passions. The government collapsed under its contradictions and conflict among its top leaders. The second non-Congress government ended within 11 months. As late as 2018 nobody was much wiser about the alleged corruption or the Bofors scam. This despite the high-profile role that had been played by Mr Hershman. He had co-founded Transparency International, the largest independent, not-for-profit coalition promoting transparency and accountability in business and in government, he served Interpol as a member of the International Group of Experts on Corruption and sat on the Board of the International Anti-Corruption Conference Committee for more than a decade. This mystery of Bofors remained unsolved, he alleged, because nobody in India was interested in the truth. He told a journalist, ‘Why are you chasing the truth? No one is interested in the truth – your government, your CBI chief, or your investigating agency. No one came or even approached to record my statement’.67 Rajiv Gandhi had steered an independent foreign policy like his mother, worked for the non-aligned movement by giving it a new purpose – nuclear disarmament, promoted the idea of a G-15 approximating G-7 and anti-apartheid movement till he was assassinated in 1991. The direction of India’s foreign policy, not to mention its economic policies turned quite sharply thereafter with the implosion in USSR on the one hand and an unusual political void in India. After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination a minority Congress government was formed at the centre under P.V. Narasimha Rao and it ushered reforms that came to be characterised as Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization (LPG) they went about opening India to the global supply of capital, goods and services. The buoyant account, Anderson and Damle give of the far right in their first book Brotherhood in Saffron in the 1980s is distinct and detailed, the first such account jointly by a foreigner and an RSS

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activist.68 The association between the authors was old. Damle arranged for Anderson meeting with head of RSS, Golwalkar in the 1960s and went on to become the RSS face in Chicago as the Sanghchalak of the HSS as it is known in America.69 The same tone and the same theme persisted in the second book, published in 2018. The second book also seemed to have been made to order by the Prime Minster, Narendra Modi himself.70 Anderson, recalling a review in the magazine, India Today, said that the Brotherhood in Saffron was favourably reviewed by a prominent Indian political analyst and the general point argued by the reviewer was that the book was a welcome, unbiased – and needed – study of the RSS.71 Both books are indeed a particularly unbiased, sanitized account of the rise of the far right. They do not grapple with the claims nor provide counter points to views provided by the RSS about its cadre and activates, saying nothing about its well documented role in communal riots or its version of history. It leaves the social consequences of the far rights ideological position or the nature of the communal activities it organizes untouched. The effect of the RSS on not just its targets but on its own mass base is blindsided. The authors are indifferent to the army of foot soldiers who are used as mobs, crowds, organizers of events, foot soldiers in violent communal battles, rowdy agitations, as internet soldiers whose language is an exceptional window to their precarious, frenzied minds72 and whose intentions can turn a fairly passive society into a battle ground.73 The authors avoid mentioning that even after 94 years of the existence of the RSS, it is hard to name even half-a-dozen brilliant artists, authors, academics or statesmen of calibre fashioned within its training encampments. To stay unbiased, indeed buoyant about them is indeed an exceptional stance unmatched by any other comparable author. Anderson and Damle, simply and subtly project the RSS might and irresistible future recurrently. Christophe Jaffrelot is the only other widely quoted, non-Indian specialist on the issue; he viewed the RSS with disquiet. His first book was dated much later in the 1990s, by which time the RSS was on the top of a wave and drawing attention of international scholars. The book ‘The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian politics’ has two

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themes. One, that the Hindu nationalist movement defined an ideological identity founded on a process of‘stigmatization and emasculation’ of what it represents as ‘threatening others’ (Indian Muslims or Christian proselytizers, and the British or the West), which threaten their idea of the ‘One Nation’. The second, was the ‘instrumentalist’ strategy of ethno-religious mobilization, which he called the ‘Sanghatanist pattern’ of embedding, infiltrating every section of society and aspect of culture and political party-building. He continued writing on the theme74 and in the mainstream Indian media on the consequences of their rise, with a distinctly different concern.

World Wide Web of Priests and Temples Wherever Indians go, their favourite things follow, trailing them just like their shadows. It is well recognized that there are more temples and shrines in India than hospitals, schools and colleges put together. These temples are now linked to Indians abroad through internet services. Before this invention, numerous grand temples were built abroad to preserve Indian culture, particularly in America and UK. The wealth and social power of Hindu temples can be estimated from the huge amount of gold, silver, land, and annual donations (amounting to billions in dollar estimates) that the prominent ones alone receive annually.75 India Today ran an article in 2016 which listed the wealth (and donation after demonitization) with a title that said, ‘if ten temples give away their wealth India’s poverty would be solved’. But the influence of these temples is far greater, gauged from the fact that 65 year long court battles have been fought over their control and entry norms - from Somnath, Ayodhya to Tamil Nadu and Sabrimala in Kerala. The RSS has been unceasingly involved in struggles to ‘liberate’ the temples form ‘State control’ and reconstruct temples on disputed historical sites. They have also organized manpower recruitment of temple priests overseas through their front VHP. Tamil Nadu for example has a history based on the Dravidian, anti-brahmanical movement. This lower-caste movement fought for state control of vast number of temples to deploy their power and

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wealth for social causes. By 2016, Tamil Naidu state came to control 36,425 temples, 56 maths or religious orders (and 47 temples belonging to maths), 1,721 specific endowments and 189 trusts. Tamil Nadu holds the distinction of having ‘nationalized’ most of the temples, and by doing so some commentators say that ‘It has misused temple property, promoted politically expedient programmes using temple funds, and emasculated the mainstream religion in that state and even the country’.76 There are instances where temple funds have been used to finance mid-day meals with the Chief Minister’s picture painted on the walls of the venue where these meals are served. In 2009, the Madras High Court single judge and division bench upheld the constitutionality of the order of the Tamil Nadu government of 2006 mandating the government takeover of the Nataraja temple as well. On 6 January 2013, the Supreme Court delivered a favourable judgment based on Subramanian Swamy’s (president of the famous Janata Party of the 1970s) special leave petition that sought the quashing of the order. Swamy said,‘There are several large temples in Tamil Nadu under government control for several decades. If the Supreme Court judgment is applied, then the government is in illegal, unethical and unfair control of these temples, apart from being answerable for innumerable acts of dereliction of duty and defiling of temples that has resulted in loss of several thousands of crores of rupees to the temples and to their antiquity. That is my next move – to liberate all Hindu temples presently in government control on expired Government Orders. In the future we need to bring some mosques and churches to rectify the mismanagement going on in these places. Then the secularism of India’s intellectuals will be truly tested’.77 The flow of his argument here goes rapidly from corruption in government management of temples to how a secular socialist country nationalised only Hindu places of worship and not Muslim and Christian places of worship. He made no mention of the sheer scale of temple wealth in India. Swamy offers his services frequently to far right causes. He finally merged his Janata Party into the BJP in 2013 and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in April 2016 by the BJP led NDA government. It was noted then that he was recommended by the Sangh/RSS.78 Ever since he returned to India (from America) inspired by Jayaprakash Narayan he has occupied a strange position as ambassador at large.

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N.T. Rama Rao, former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, ‘nationalized’ the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (Tirupati Trusts), which administered the fabulously wealthy collection of temples educational and social organizations under the Tirupati banner. All over the state devotees’ offerings to temples are appropriated as government revenue; and are not used for the Hindu community, or, to promote Hindu religious activities. The Government of Maharashtra similarly ‘took over’ the management of important Hindu shrines like Shirdi and temples like Siddhi Vinayak. Many other states have followed similar practices and have ‘nationalized’ temple trusts. In all cases, the trusts have been Hindu temple trusts and gradually all well known Hindu temples including those at Puri, Tirupati, Guruvayoor, Sabrimala, Kashi, Mathura, Ayodhya, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Vaishno Devi, Mumbai, Shirdi, Amarnath, Srisailam, Madurai and Rameshwaram have been placed under Trusts (government control – earlier used to be under the family control of priests and patronage of elite or princes). Kerala too has brought them under state control and redistributed temple lands. Since religious trusts of other denominations and religions have not been nationalized, the RSS has been vocal saying that secularism is against the Hindus and they have lost the most important source of funding of community welfare programmes. The argument against pseudo-secularism of every political party except BJP has been thus enhanced. The real facts may be more complex, Hindu temples are far greater in number, wealthier and socially powerful (being the majority religion). They were not exactly well-known for humanitarian, egalitarian, progressive role. There are restrictions on the entry of dalits and women to this day. Even their welfare function, their schools and colleges or hospitals are not well established as the Christian educational institutions and hospitals so far. Further, only the large temples are nationalized, there are innumerable smaller ones in every neighborhood and locality, supported by local populations, run by priests with likely sympathies for the Hindu world view if not directly for the Hindutva ideology. This is the domestic end of the web and it is well connected within, throbbing with spiritual gurus and political enterprise. Two recent events, both in Kerala, India’s leading progressive state will flag this.

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The story begins with the fact that erstwhile ruling families of Malabar had in fact provided help to RSS to start branches/shakhas in Kozhikode and Kannur districts in the 1940s.79 Lord Padmanasvami the tutelary deity of the erstwhile princely family of Travancore, has a temple dedicated to it and in the temple compound are a number of vaults supposedly with immense amounts of gold and wealth. The Kerala High Court ordered the opening of all the vaults, A to F in January 2011. Marthanda Varma the titular head of the family referred to divine objections to the opening of Vault B. The Supreme Court later intervened to order the opening of all the vaults in March 2012. When interviewed, the Raja gently but firmly refused to answer the questions, as the matter was by then was sub-judice but ‘under western systems of jurisprudence . . . the tenets of the principles of someone else’s law’,80 thereby implying, perhaps that his allegiance remained somewhere else. Narendra Modi, then aspiring Prime Minister of the BJP, in his campaign run up to the 2014 election, visited the temple in 2013. He accepted a crown of gold and red silk, met the titular Eliya Raja, while the president of the Guruvayoorappan Bhaktha Samithi drew the Raja and temple into the narrative of Hinduism under attack.81 The recent Sabarimala temple controversy revealed the same enthusiasm over temples. In 1991, the Kerala High Court had formalized the traditional ban on entry of women between the ages of 10-50 inside the temple. In 2006 a group of women lawyers and Indian Young Lawyers Association filed a writ petition challenging the High Court order. The RSS filed suits in the Supreme Court supporting the writ petition. On 28 September 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a ban on the entry; the RSS affiliates became active in fighting the decision of the court and called for seven different shutdowns in the state leading to mob violence. The RSS mobilized its women to stop other women from entering. Kerala was then still dodging the BJP hegemony, by then established over much of India. A significant advance has been made in the web of temples in the era of the internet and global citizens.‘If you are a Hindu in America, it is now possible for you to make an offering on the banks of the Ganges without leaving Atlanta or wherever you are; you pay someone else in India to do it for you. . . . One website that offers this service is shrikashiwishwanath.org another is ww.webdunia.com/kumbhuinfo

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written in Hindi and run by state government of Utter Pradesh; yet another, bangalinet.com/epuja.htm, builds itself as ‘a home away from home’. Eprathana.com will send someone to any temple you choose, and most of them are small local temples, suggesting that people far from home miss the little shrine at the end of the street as much as they miss the big pilgrimage temples’ (p. 641).82 A broad range of such religious services, with multiple options displayed on websites are paid for and performed in India for overseas clients.

Migration, Hindus Abroad: Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) Temples are not our only source of inspiration. Afflatus can be provided by a corpus of saints, gurus and swamis, some of international fame, hundreds of thousands local ones are agents in the ‘spiritual free enterprise’ economy of India. Some belong to monastic orders and cults, but many are freewheeling and self-employed. Households across classes have their favourite family deity, guru, priest for rituals, astrologer, and palmist for consultancy. Levels of education or wealth have little bearing on this inclination. The largest spiritual get-together occurs perhaps during the Kumbh Mela attended by about 300 million people. They serve a composite function of psychological counselling, psychiatric treatment (of which there is a desperate shortage), business and wealth-management advice, career guidance and of course spiritual union with God. When Indians immigrate their godmen follow. Migrants carry memories. Adapting to alien culture and norms is stressful and holding on to comforting memories appears to be one way of coping. Though they modify themselves to fit into a new society, dealing with racism, forging a new identity is traumatic. They struggle to find broad social acceptance and alienation is a probable state of being. Migrants gravitate to symbols of the culture and ideology that they have been exposed to back home. For many NRIs the message of the VHP was familiar. So were temples and rituals. Vishva Hindu Parishad’s history, people who founded it, participated, and endorsed its activities is a story of how well the RSS read the migrants’ mentality and prospect . And how VHP became a

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seamless joint between conservative economics, religiosity, identity politics and globalization of a certain class interest. Vivekananda, Osho, Mahesh Yogi, Prabhupada are a few of the numerous who found followers abroad. In 1893, Swami Vivekananda a Hindu ascetic had attended and impressed some in the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. His group founded the Vedanta movement in 1897. This was a phase described in Chapter 1 when Hindu revivalism and nationalism was welded in India. A little later Swami Prabhupada founded the ISKCON, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi founded transcendental meditation. These Hindu movements attract many foreigners who often travel to India looking for more local flavours of Hinduism, more potent godmen and their instructions. But the bulk of Indian migrants abroad are more devoted to the orthodox temple, ritual and festival format, quite unlike some foreigners who explore Hinduism freely for what it has to offer them. Long before globalization became the norm for organizational growth in India, the RSS, under their second leader Golwalkar, spawned an international network under the umbrella of VHP in 1964. The parent organization RSS would concentrate on the broad socio-cultural front nationally, its political arm was to be BJS and the international arm VHP. Their oft repeated assertions at Hindu gatherings abroad were – Hinduism is under threat from proselytizing missionaries; Muslim have been wreckers of places of their worship and given their birth rates the Hindus will be reduced to a minority; Western civilization and norms were undermining the great, ancient culture of Indians and hence restoration of a Hindu Rashtra was imperative. This narrative was woven into all their religious-cultural activates. There was no need, and in fact RSS-VHP did not delineate in modern terms what the Hindu India should be like, instead they promised, some vague Elysian world, a utopia going back in an imagined history. As it turned out it was an astute move to tap into needs of Hindus abroad. Quite a few upper-caste migrants would be predisposed and sympathetic. Eventually they generated goodwill, funds and members for the political mission of the RSS in India. Describing American Hindus, Doniger said,‘They are an important presence in America, where, in 2004 there were 1,478,670 Hindus

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(0.5 per cent) of the total population; and in a land where over a quarter of the population has left the religion of its birth . . . Hindus convert from their religion less than any other religious group and are the best educated and among the richest religious groups (according to one survey). There are more than two hundred Hindu temples in America, three-quarters of them built in the last three decades’ (p. 637).83 One of the largest Hindu temples in the world is in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. This Swaminarayan Mandir is modelled on a temple in London and Hindus in America collected more than 19 million dollars to build it. But long before this international display of presence and wealth, the religious and cultural conferences of the VHP took place. They did not attract so much attention. But their content reveals a steady trajectory and almost monotonous vision. Gradually it became a conduit that fed into the political gambit of its political front (first BJS and then BJP). As the political wing made gains, the VHP expanded and even when it lost ground it grew more aggressive, as after the 1984 general election. They worked in well choreographed moves. In 1964, when the VHP was founded as the religious wing of the RSS, with an eye on the non-resident Hindu, the measures were initiated in the city of Bombay. The choice of Bombay is significant; it was the premier industrial city with both large capitalists and a large migrant urban industrial work force. The city is cosmopolitan; citizens have had extensive national and global social networks both at personal and organizational levels. Katju said it was formed by those who were themselves well established in an urban culture and were political or religious activists or both – drawing sustenance from a largely middle-class urban base.84 Discussions had taken place in Chinmayananda’s, Sandipini ashram in Bombay in August 1964 on the initiative of the RSS chief, M.S. Golwalkar and S.S. Apte. A group of 150 political and religious leaders were invited, of whom 60 attended. The agenda was to revitalize Hinduism, its ancient traditions and protect Hindus against alien ideologies like Christianity, Islam, and communism. By 1966, the VHP organized its first World Hindu Conference and later two more. The occasions became more elaborate and large scale. It is not clear who sponsored these mega events; VHP literature

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mentions dignitaries who sent messages or attended. These include names of King of Nepal, PM of Mauritius, industrialists like J.K. Birla, D. Khatau, V.H. Dalmia and Dalai Lama. The President of India Radhakrishnan sent a message to the first event.85 Maharana Bhagwat Singh Mewar of a princely family presided over the first event. The first phase was marked by a very broad appeal to Hindu dharma and rituals, to expand its social base nationally and internationally. It succeeded in drawing in princes, conservative ex-congressmen, Hindu elite, sadhus, Shankracharayas and saints. Among the notables was the former Maharaja of Mysore, Jaya Chamraj Wadeyar who was its president in 1965-9. K.M. Munshi the Congressman and Home Minister of Bombay (now Mumbai) resigned from the Congress in 1959 to form the liberal Swatantra Party against socialism, he too played an important role as a founding member of the VHP. Similarly, the Diwan of Travancore state, a former congressman, was another founder member of the VHP. According to the website of VHP the organizers of the First Hindu Conference were Golwalkar, Dharmacharayas, sadhu, saints, four Shankaracharyas, and representatives of the Bharat Sadhu Samaj. Those who attended included the governors of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, the Prime Minister and ex-Prime Minister of Nepal, delegates from England, Fiji, Nepal, Africa, Aden, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Trinidad, America, and Thailand. 75,000 people took part. President S. Radhakrishnan sent a message and so did the Dalai Lama, and the King of Nepal who was represented by the Vice Chancellor of Tribhuvan University. The conference was chaired by the retired Chief Justice West Bengal High Court Ramaprasad Mukherjee (brother of Shyamaprasad Mukherjee founder of BJS). Its expansion into America was almost direct, ‘VHP became the first RSS affiliate to enter USA in 1970. Just six years after its formation in India’ (p. 50).86 Katju quotes Shivram Shankar Apte, the first general secretary of the VHP who declared that the aim was,‘To take steps to consolidate and strengthen Hindu society, to protect, develop and spread Hindu values – ethical and spiritual – in the context of modern times, and to establish and strengthen, contact and help all Hindus living abroad.’ He went on to say that ‘the declared object of Christianity is to turn

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the whole world into Christendom – as that of Islam is to make it ‘Pak’, besides these two dogmatic and proselytizing religions, there has arisen a third religion, communism. For all of these the major target of conquest is the vast Hindu society living in this land and scattered over the globe in small and big numbers . . . it is, therefore, necessary in this age of competition and conflict to think of and organize the Hindu world to save itself from the evil eyes of all the three’ (p. 10).87 The first conference was just a collection of priests and pundits who found it difficult to agree on anything significant. But in the face of a perceived decline of faith among people, confrontation with science and technology, and with deft maneuvering of the RSS chief Golwalkar, the gathering resolved to form a four point common agenda for consolidating Hindus across regions within India and the globe. VHP kept up its efforts to round up the Shankaracharyas, sants and swamis and after 1986 they proved handy. They were kept at the forefront of the Ram Janambhoomi agitation strategically. A proposal was presented for preparing a comprehensive code of conduct for all Hindus to establish unity among diversity in modern times. The Jagatguru of Puri cited various examples and to the need of meeting the conspiracy of Christians resolutely. Eleven resolutions were passed, ranging from re-conversion (back to Hinduism), restoring glory of the temples (calling upon all administrators and trustees of temples, maths and ashrams to make efforts to reestablish the significance of these places by effecting modification in these places with cooperation of the common masses as protective centres of dharma and culture). This was to become a key local activity, cow protection (prevailing upon the government to stop cow slaughter in India), promotion of Sanskrit as a language, consolidation of Hindus in foreign countries who were getting alienated from their culture and religion (these were to prove to be a valuable source of funds in years to come, through the network of temples where the priests were recruited and supplied mainly by the VHP). These eleven resolution were to remain an unwavering alignment of social agenda till present times. The Second World Hindu Conference was held in January 1979 when the Jana Sangh was part of the government. It was held at the specially erected Maharshi Vedavyas Mahanagar venue at Prayag.

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President of the VHP, ex-prince Bhagwat Singh of Mewar, presided over the conference. Besides the usual Dharmacharayas, Jagatgurus, Swamis and Shankaracharyas; the website claimed that apart from one lakh participants from India and 18 countries, three lakhs attended or visited. Residential accommodation for more than 50,000 delegates was provided in 19 tent townships spread over 120 acres. Each township provided accommodation for about 3,000 delegates. Every township was allotted to different provinces and was named after noted saints and great personalities of those provinces. Each was decorated according to the taste and traditional style of the respective province. 250 media persons, national television and radio were present. The scale up was evident. In 1979, when its political arm the Jan Sangh had 90 seats in the Parliament. Some observers said that large funds were also sanctioned to the VHP by the friendly government for social welfare schemes during this period.88 Dalai Lama inaugurated the conference. This marked a concerted attempt to aggregate the religions and religious-spiritual cults of Bharat under the umbrella of VHP and its Hindutva agenda. This conference marked a growth in audience, influence and organizational capacity. According to the reports of the VHP, ‘This sammelan (conference) kindled a sense of self-confidence among the workers of the Parishad that they can manage such a mammoth programme. It was in this sammelan, that the VHP earned the approbation as the real representative body of the entire Hindu society’. This also coincided with the first ever participation in central government by BJS in the post-emergency period. Four goals were accepted during this event, protection of the Hindu wherever he was, promotion of Hindi, Sanskrit and the cow. There appeared to be a narrowing of differences and increasing focus of the movement. 13 other resolutions were passed like eradication of castes and untouchability, protection of temples, awakening of mother power, protection of the interests of Hindus, etc. Decades later, the issues remain unchanged but there were few takers for Sanskrit scholarship that were instituted by the first BJP government, use of Hindi has spread but the administrative and governmental work is carried out mostly in English with translations in

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Hindi or regional languages. English medium schools are preferred by the elite and aspired to by all. Religious conversions especially by Christian missionaries are negligible. Conversion back to Hinduism has not been popular. What remains very visible is, cow protection and ‘protection’ of Hindu women from marrying men of their choice, especially non-Hindu men and all the attendant vigilante enforcement. Prime Minister Morarji Desai (of the coalition government in which BJS was then a partner) sent a message which said that customs and traditions of the Hindu religion that were against inequality and injustice should be eradicated at the earliest possible time so that mutual goodwill and brotherhood could be established in the society. Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram (an ex-congressman and of the untouchable caste) also sent a message that, born as a Hindu; he knew that the Hindu dharma did not consider other religions as inferior to it. It believed in secularism, equal respect for all religions. In this second conference, a decade after the first one, there was a manifest hardening of stance aimed at political control. Having achieved greater unity among the Hindus in and outside India, members revealed a deeper antipathy for other religions and resolved to repossess Ram Janambhoomi. Through the 1970s, domestically and internationally, the VHP had raised the very same issues – conversions from Hinduism to other religions, preservation of temples and their lands, use of Hindi and Sanskrit, and cow protection. It had started the Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra in 1971, for proselytization of tribal people by spreading VHP supported schools, orphanages, hostels, clinics, etc. Funds came through various NGOs. By the mid-1980s it initiated a more intense domestic, mass based, politico-religious action plan. Recalling its development, Anderson and Damle also said that in 1984 the VHP held a rally in Maddison Square and ‘announced its intention to aggressively propagate Hindutva as a spiritually based universal ideology. Thereafter, it started and expanded several projects including India Relief and Development Fund (IRDF – more about it later), The Hindu Student Council, support a Child and Ekal Vidyalaya. Ekal Vidyalaya has developed into a major source

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of funds for its parent groups, projects in India and claims to have received donations of some 6 million dollars in 2016’ (p. 51).89 Meanwhile VHP had many conferences in America. It’s ninth American conference was greeted by messages from the Mayor of Los Angeles and President Ronald Regan. By the 1990s, it had heightened the agenda to a fervoured pitch. For decades one of its founders Swami Chinamayananda travelled the globe, building up VHP among migrants, often upper-caste and affluent Hindus. In 1993 he declared in America that it had indeed become a ‘mighty force. It is all over the world (p. 102).90 Realizing that the condition was suitable, L.K. Advani, then BJP president, commissioned one such enthusiastic recruit of the VHP, to create an organization to counter the negative press BJP was getting for its ‘Ram Janmabhoomi’ campaign in April 1992. This organization was called Overseas Friends of BJP, their job was later expanded to campaign for elections in India. This began with training camps in 2011, tours by BJP and RSS members in 2012 and video conferences. They recruited volunteers in America, were manning phone banks that made calls canvassing for support and also sent volunteers to India for campaigns in 2014 and 2019.91 They had 18 chapters in 13 states and 4000 members. By 2003, the VHP had branches in 80 countries but most importantly in UK and USA, where it had a large following among NRIs and close links with Hindu temples. It acted as an umbrella organization for other Hindu organizations like the Swaminarayan Mission, Pushti Margis, the Arya Samaj and the Council of Hindu Temples. The VHP is one of the most active and largest among such organizations. According to Katju there are four main issues that VHP tried to address from the beginning, the media image of the community, the perception of Hindus in academia, lack of confidence among Hindus as a religious community and the issue of conversion to Islam and Christianity.92 They tried to inculcate and bolster the Hindu identity through various religious festival activities, religious marches, sports, discussions on community issues and collective public interventions. Thus, it goes beyond the usual community links that originate around rituals associated with temples, birth, death and marriage to build an active identity by more frequent association. For example, the VHP presence in UK is as old as 1972 and by 1989 it coordinated and organized a

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massive gathering of all big Hindu organizations in that country. The programme had an attendance of 55,000 (70,000 as per VHP). Around that time the VHP had 14 branches and 2000 members there. The highest representation was of Guajaratis who migrated to UK from Africa. They also intervened in the formation of syllabus to teach Hinduism in UK schools, conducted Gujarati and Hindi language classes and imparted instructions on culture and religion. In America, the VHP (started in 1970) had branches in 40 states by 2003. In Swami Chinamayananda, it found an active missionary to solidify Hinduism and attract the youth. The high point of its functioning was celebrations to mark the occasion of the centenary of Vivekananda’s address to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago held in 1993 in Washington DC. Another gathering of 3,000 people celebrated the event ‘Global Vision 2000’. VHP leaders arrived and hailed the demolition of the Babri Masjid, as an event to be inscribed in the letters of gold. It was widely publicized. In the 1990s, VHP became a distinct vehicle to garner political and monetary support from the NRIs. It drew the attention of keen American scholars effectively using marketing and publicity, the Hindu spiritual leaders were playing influential roles in India as businessmen and government officials. This led them on to explore the complex interrelations in the political economy of India, global capitalism and Hindu religion.93 Meanwhile all decisions came from VHP leadership in India as per a decision taken in 1984. Elaborate training camps using various mediums of instruction and communication from photographs to videos, were organized in India for Indians abroad to attend and acquire a political orientation. Conservative NRIs remained connected to the RSS through its extended arm. In 2002, VHP held the first Hindu temple conference to promote coordination among 800 odd Hindu temples in USA and eight years later organized the first conference of Hindu priests. Pravasi Bharatiya Divas was an initiative started in 2003 to link Indians abroad to India, an annual event and now supported by the country’s apex business organizations; FICCI and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). NRI based activity acquired so much traction that in 2005 (soon after it came back to power replacing a BJP led government at the

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centre) the Congress government enacted the Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) category legislation, which provided NRIs multiple entry and life time visas, granting a range of privileges similar to those of Indian citizens by calling them OCI. The third World Hindu Conference was held in February 2007 again at Prayag. 1980s was an important period for the rise of BJP, a reincarnation of BJS, the decade was marked by communal riots, the most favoured tool for consolidating the Hindu vote bank. As a fall out of the strident campaign launched by the VHP, demolition of Babri Masjid had taken place in 1992. The event was followed by widespread communal riots, collapse of the Congress hegemony, and the formation of the first coalition government which proved to be unstable; but the BJP was its largest party. By 1999, a BJP lead government was firmly in place and ruled a full term till 2004 and in the next election lost to a Congress led coalition with and outside support of the left party. The BJP was the largest opposition party and the thus the third world Hindu conference was organized in the background of a significantly more consolidated political base compared to the first and second one. It had two lakh participants. These world conferences and numerous state and district level ones were platforms for the training of the RSS cadre in organization, conducting of large events besides being focused on political consolidation. The unwavering purpose according to the VHP was,‘to device ways and means to achieve a powerful Hindu organization to surmount the challenges faced by the Hindu Society’. In these tasks worldly and other worldly saints were joined. Resolutions were passed regarding Ram temple to be built by Ramjanam Bhoomi Trust and Shri Ramanand Sampradaya, no mosque would be built within the boundary of Ayodhya, no mosque in the name of Babur would be built in India. Bharat was a Hindu Rashtra and it was important to build a powerful Hindu vote bank and build an ‘Akhand Bharat’, removal of untouchability since all were children of one Bharat Mata, Hindutva was the basis of Hindu Rashtra, the follow up activity was to bathe Lord Shiva with the holy Ganges water in many villages and take an oath to establish Hindu Rashtra. They distributed 42,000 idols of Shiva, on Hindu new year’s day, 19 March 2007 and appealed that all Hindu

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homes should fly a saffron flag, celebrate Ramnavami and participate in Hindu Ekat Yatra in November-December. There were references to ‘Islamic Jihad’ and need for Hindu youth to protect Hindu society against that. In keeping with the line and guidance of the parent RSS, Ramnavami celebrations consisting of processions of young men carrying traditional weapons through Muslim habitations had acquired a new vigour at the local level and became the basis of creating confrontations. On 28 September 2014, when 20,000 people of Indian origin gathered in the same Madison Square Garden to cheer for Narendra Modi on his first official trip to USA after becoming Prime Minister, it was the result of years of work by the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS, the American counterpart of RSS) and VHP. It was in Madison Square that the VHP had announced its intention to propagate Hindutva aggressively as a spiritually based universal ideology in 1984. This event for Narendra Modi was arranged by HSS. The Prime Minister addressed dozens of similar rallies, visited several Hindu religious places in several countries, a fact that led to frequent absences from the Indian Parliament and numerous adverse comments. No earlier Indian PM had shown such a passion for overseas temples or Indians. Perhaps he was compensating for the earlier ban on his travel to USA, imposed by USA after communal violence in Gujarat in 2002. He urged Hindus everywhere to come together, help the community and help India’s development effort. The details of the intended development were not spelled out. Modi had learned the value of overseas Indians, their nostalgia and long distance nationalism. After three terms as Chief Minister in Gujarat, for 2014 elections, the BJP had named him their Prime Ministerial candidate; HSS with its presence in 36 countries and considerable strength in USA, UK and Australia, supported his campaign very energetically and became more politically active leading up to his Prime Ministerial bid. RSS inspired groups are today strongest in America, UK and Australia outside of Nepal. In 2015, the first meeting of OCI was attended by 4,000 delegates and a grand exhibition spread over one million square feet was organized. PM Modi was seeking a flood of

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NRI investments which did not materialize despite the pull of the motherland. To mark the 125th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s address to the World Parliament of Religions, a Hindu Congress was organized by the Sangh Parivar and its affiliates in Chicago in 2018. Its website claimed that it was attended by 2,500 delegates from 60 countries and addressed by 220 speakers, However, there were reports of protests outside the venue of the Congress. Mohan Bhagwat the RSS chief addressed it and spoke of the threat to the lonely Hindu. Reports in the Indian press about its speakers and their message were far from fresh or inspiring. Vivekananda was just a peg for hanging old RSS concerns, the only new concern, midst the longstanding ones about dwindling and threatened Hindu population, the need to be wary of ‘fake news’ and the need to look at news with a Hindu perspective.94 Hosting large events, on an international scale, managing them, public relations and media projection is a skill that the RSS has fostered in its cadre and the more ambitious among them had grasped it as a most useful tool. This is the cadre base on which RSS has achieved remarkable organizational innovations. The ideas projected from their organizations, however, remain monotonous.

Globalization, Foreign Funds, Technology and Non-Government Organizations Katju said VHP built two main centres within, the board of trustees and governing council. The Board of trustee has a maximum strength of 101 members, 71 from India, and 30 from abroad. It is an advisory body that attends to VHPs programmes and helps the organization; trustees are appointed for lifetime and most of them are not members of the RSS. VHP has a president and three general secretaries in India and three overseas. At the Indian level secretaries and joint secretaries are members of the governing council. Its organizational set up includes departments such as publications, accounts, external affairs, Sanskrit promotion, celebration of festivals, temple protection and the religious leaders division, each looked after by a joint secretary. It has also spawned other organizations/fronts like Bajrang Dal for the youth, Durga Vahini for women and for tribal welfare. There seem to be no

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shortage of support and funding. VHP penetration into western, particularly American Indian diaspora through its temples-priest, and cultural networks had been successful. India’s per capita government expenditure in the social sector has been inadequate, but, in 1990s it began shrinking at the margins. The effects were visible in areas related to health and education. Privatization or NGO-ization of development and welfare has been the norm in neo-liberal times. This created more space for NGOs of all kinds. Their presence and sway in the poor quarters of large cities, in remote rural, Adivasi regions increased quickly. The RSS was not slow to use the space. Given the sociology of poverty in India, this implied that its reach and influence among the lower-castes has risen briskly as a result. In 2002, media reported that IDRF, a US-based charity had misused American corporate philanthropy to fund RSS-affiliated organizations here for at least 13 years.95 For example, the IDRF obtained large sums from CISCO, a leading technology company in the US (with a substantial number of NRIs on its rolls) by saying its activities were ‘secular’ since company rules prescribed donations to organizations of a ‘religious’ nature. The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (TCTSFH) was a coalition of professionals, students, workers, artists and intellectuals who made this report. In the first phase of its campaign ‘Project Saffron Dollar’, Biju Mathew, a spokesman for the TCTSFH had said, the TCTSFH had plans to write to large American corporates to guard against funding the IDRF.96 The campaign report explained the dynamics of IDRF’s corporate funding as follows – over the last decades, as professional Indian migration to the US boomed, particularly in the software sector, Sangh operatives in large hi-tech firms worked to put IDRF on the list of grantees of corporate philanthropy. They then promoted IDRF as the best and very reliable agency for funding development and relief work in India, resulting in other unsuspecting employees, as well as the corporations donating to fund the Sangh in India. The TCTSFH report said that though the IDRF claimed to be a non-sectarian, non-political charity that funded development and relief work in India, it filed a tax document (at its inception in 1989) with the Internal Revenue Service of the US, identifying nine organizations as a representative sample of organizations it would support. According

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to the report, the IDRF applied for tax exemption certificates to the Internal Revenue Service of the US. The Form 1023 filed by the IDRF in 1989 identified organizations like Vikas Bharati (Bihar), Swami Vivekananda Rural Development Society (Tamil Nadu), Sewa Bharti (Delhi), Jana Seva Vidya Kendra (Karnataka), Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (Madhya Pradesh), Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (Gujarat), Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (Nagar Haveli), Girivasi Vanvasi Sewa Prakalp (Uttar Pradesh) and G. Deshpande Vanvasi Vastigrah (Maharashtra), that the IDRF sought to support in India. All nine were Sangh organizations. The report also says that 82 per cent of IDRF’s funds went to Sangh organizations. 70 per cent of the money are used for ‘hinduization/tribal/education’ work, largely with the view to spread the Hindutva ideology among tribal people. Less than 20 per cent was used in ‘development and relief ’ activities, but the report concluded that since there was a sectarian slant to how the relief money was disbursed, these were sectarian funds, too. Disbursement of about $4 million took place between 1994 and 2000 to dozens of Sangh organizations by the IDRF. These were used mostly for persecuting Muslims and Christians. In 2000 alone, using US government tax exemption status for charities, it collected $1.7 million (The Milli Gazette also reported this). Whenever collecting money, the IDRF professed that it was doing so to `fund relief and development work’. For example, the IDRF website claimed that it was a charity organization that has helped the victims of the Gujarat earthquake of 2001. However, the fact remains that it used the funds to help only Hindu victims. The pro-Hindu stand of the IDRF was not new. In the past, it collected funds for Bangladeshi Hindus, Kashmiri Hindus and for those whose family members had died in the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. In all three cases, the people allegedly responsible for perpetrating the disasters belonged to the Muslim community. In contrast, the IDRF had not announced any relief for victims of the communal violence in Gujarat. In fact, it contributed to the violence by channeling its funds to the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA) and the Vivekananda Kendra, which had been working to communalize tribal people and create an anti-Muslim ethos. (The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate’s report noted that a ‘surprise element’ in the anti-mi-

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nority violence in Gujarat was the ‘active participation’ of tribal people in it.) A similar role was played by the IDRF in supporting organizations like the Sewa Bharati and the VKA, which were accused of using violence against Christians in Madhya Pradesh in 1998. It also supported projects like Ekal Vidyalayas (One Teacher Schools), a VHP-run project aimed at the indoctrination of students in remote tribal villages. Links between the IDRF and the RSS go beyond financial support. Several office-bearers of the IDRF were associated with Sangh Parivar organizations in India. The founder members of the IDRF include Bhishma Agnihotri, an RSS ideologue and a leader of the HSS, the equivalent of the RSS in the US and the United Kingdom. He was last in the news when his candidature for the position of the point man for NRIs was opposed by the New York-based Indian National Overseas Congress, an organization which represents the Indian community in the US. Agnihotri had said that he was proud of his association with the Sangh Parivar. The report of the TCTSFH had placed the spotlight on the larger question of growth of Hindutva outside India. In the US, the Sangh Parivar and its affiliates had grown over the years, entrenching themselves in the west coast, the north east and the southern States of Florida and Texas – pockets of concentration of Indian professionals. Besides disseminating its ideology, the Sangh Parivar concentrated on collecting funds from the NRI community. They also planned systematic infiltration of US universities and to focus on second-generation Indian American communities, for bringing them under Hindutva influence. The meetings of the Sangh Parivar organizations, National Students Forum in the UK and the Hindu Students’ Council (HSC) in the US have grown from innocuous get-togethers to meeting places for right wingers. The HSC, which has branches in more than 50 universities in the US, was launched in 1988, when its first chapter was set up in the University of Maryland. In this context, it is not surprising that voices against the propagation of the Hindutva ideology have also come from the universities in US. Members of the ‘Saffron Dollar’ project emphasized that the presence of a vociferous group was imperative to stem the RSS growth outside India. Other organizations and groups too have criticized the activities of the Sangh Parivar outside India. For instance, the Indo-US

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Entrepreneurs, an organization of business people from south Asia, has asked the US corporate world to be careful when contributing to charity organizations. When the president of the organization, Kanwal Rekhi, wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal about the money being sent to anti-minority organizations, he had to face criticism from right wing groups. Biju Mathew said, ‘What we have investigated is the day-to-day working of the RSS in the US. This will help change the perspective that it exists as an empty shell.’ RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav, when contacted about the IRDF case had said, ‘There is no specific organization which collects funds for the RSS. However, certain projects run by RSS-affiliated organizations do get money from NRIs for specific projects such as the Ekal Vidyalaya scheme (one-teacher schools run in tribal areas). This organization (that you have mentioned) may have given some money, too. I have not heard much about it.’ Nor had the government of India it appears, since no national outcry, inquiry or public debate seems to have followed. Professionals in software sector, a particularly wealthy sub-set of immigrants, are the most active fund-raisers of the IDRF. This is a section which has often received a ‘technical job-oriented education’ popular in India and were riding on the IT job boom of 1990-2008. They often have no education in humanities and social sciences. The only culture they have directly experienced is associated with their caste, region, and religion in India. In the virtual world that they occupy, they are most susceptible to fantastic, manufactured histories particularly those that glorify a golden past and promote its renaissance albeit using modern technologies and political parties. To that disposition add the self-assurance of their new-found class power. In September 2014, as the Prime Minister addressed 20,000 NRIs many wearing T-shirts with his picture on it while he himself was dressed in saffron, a colour now associated with his far right ideology. A cheering, adoring Madison Park gathering was chanting his name. In his rather simple, hour-long speech he referred to the exceptional prowess of India in information technology and the special contribution of NRIs in this. Not surprising, given the close similarity and continuous connections with their counterparts in the west and vice-versa, IT sector

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employees in India have been active supporters of Hindutva. As IT sector jobs at the middle and lower skill end have also become precarious, these digital workers and their start ups are now available for relatively cheap hiring by all political parties. But since the BJP, with the RSS organization and planning backup, was a frontrunner in the virtual spcace, this enabled it to flood the internet with their versions of past and present concerns. They were able to circumvent the mainstream media early in their rise, they were also the first to ride the social media wave in India and have maintained a lead. In 2006, an American lobby that doubles as a public relations company, called ‘Apco Worldwide’ came to set up office in India. It is described as a very muscular business lobby group in Washington DC. In 2009 it was contracted to selling a business meet in Gujarat marketed as ‘Vibrant Gujarat’. Up to that point this had been a small meeting, thereafter it was projected as the Indian Davos and soon Apco was de-facto public relations manager and marketing Modi himself. Having worked for American Presidents earlier, they had the connections and experience.‘Enter Apco and in 2009 and 2011, the promises of investment grew to $253 billion and $450 billion. The 2013 edition – from 11-13 January – is billed as the biggest yet. The United States-India Business Council (USIBC), along with counterparts from the UK and Australia, are sponsoring the event’.97 Soon electioneering strategy also changed armed with professional PR firms, technology, and manpower. Immense increase in TV viewership, internet users, smartphones and the expansion of 4G to rural villages has amplified the number of connected viewers, and the potential reach of messages including fake news and propaganda to users in India. According to experts, the 2014 general elections marked a shift in electioneering strategy, with the use of data and digital platforms becoming significant. The role of powerful PR firms became dominant and even more effective. While initially the campaign was compared to the Barak Obama campaign, Prime Minister Modi is now the subject of case studies in ‘digital media and the rise of right wing populism’ along with the American President Donald Trump,98 not to mention the close, in fact, even ardent relationship that emerged between India and America thereafter.99 According to a Time report about the 2014 Indian general election

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‘The nation’s politicians are expected to spend around $5 billion on their campaigns, which, in terms of expense, makes these polls second only to the U.S. presidential elections (actually they hit the $7 billion mark)’. 100 The entire advertising expenditure went up threeand-a-half times compared to the previous general elections. A bulk of that expenditure was by BJP. The Congress party had not spent on digital advertising before 2014. The benefits of a powerful PR system won great benefits as BJP formed the first majority government in 30 years in 2014. The lesson was well learned, and Modi’s government spent an unprecedented Rs 5,726 crores between May 2014 and March 2019 on publicity. The 2019 election that followed, relied even more heavily on social media than that in 2014, with video content playing an even more prominent part.101 A veritable war of misinformation broke out among the cyber armies of political parties as they raced to catch up with the strategy of the BJP for the 2019 general election.102 The cogs in the wheel of course were the PR specialists and digital workers, manufacturing and supporting false information. Only some of them could have believed it themselves. The rest were likely mercenaries. However, since regular internet users are at best one-third of the population, infrastructure, availability, cost and time being deterrents, no serious bid for the imagination of the Indian voter can be made in the virtual world alone. Real, ground level action must be the mainstay. The action has to be calculated, controlled but it can also be quite drastic, vandalism, assassinations, mob lynching or riots that automatically get covered by the main media and word of mouth and, therefore, have a multiplier effect. Groundwork in the 1980s included grinding down Congress dominance, episodes of communal tensions in the south and then across India and floating Hindu identity with Ram.

Hectic Groundwork in the 1980s After the collapse of post-emergency Janata Party at the centre, elections were announced. The Congress underwent a revival in 1979. Given the cult of individual leadership, Indira Gandhi had been target of attacks from the ruling Janata party and from within the Congress.

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Several commissions and courts had been set up to inquire into the emergency specially the Shah Commission. Senior leaders like Y.B. Chavan and Devraj Urs thought of her as a spent force and a liability. Indira Gandhi split the Party once more in 1978 into Congress (I) and the other became Congress (U). After the split Congress (I) fortunes lifted on the basis of revived support from the urban and rural poor and a popular perception that the Janata party had spent too much time on persecuting Indira Gandhi, rather than governance. And so, while no one could deny the need for a strong opposition in a democracy, the quality of that opposition in India, their programme had been dubious and they had been quite disappointing while in power, to say the least. General elections were held in January 1980. Cutting across regions, caste and religion, people voted Congress (I) back to power; to get a two-third majority with 353 out of 529 parliamentary seats. After the election old Janata party split again and Jan Sangh leaders formed BJP. ‘After having been out of office for 34 months, Indira Gandhi was once again the Prime Minister and Congress was restored to its old position as the dominant party . . . Indira Gandhi was no longer the same person she had been from 1969 to 1977. She no longer had firm grasp over politics and administration. Despite enjoying unchallenged power, she dithered in taking significant new policy initiatives or dealing with number of disturbing problems. She did, however, still manage some success in the fields of economics and foreign policy but, generally, there was a lack of direction and a sense of drift, which led to a feeling among the people that not much was being achieved. The emergency and Janata years had left their mark on her. She was suspicious of people around her and trusted none but her son Sanjay’ (p. 337).103 The fact that she was a changed person was repeated by others, and Jayakar, her biographer said, ‘She was once again Prime Minister of India, but her years in wilderness had left deep scars that were to inhibit her actions. A suspicion of people, a sense of betrayal and a lack of trust were to journey with her for the rest of her life’ (p. 394).104 On 7 October 1979, JP died in Bombay where he had been ill for months, a man largely forgotten by the Janata party for the two-anda-half years when it had been in power. Indira Gandhi flew to Patna

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to attend his funeral despite the havoc he had wrecked on her and the nation. In a letter to Fori Nehru, after his passing, Indira Gandhi had this to say about the man who went about creating a storm against her, ‘Poor old JP! What a confused mind he had, leading to such a frustrated life; he was a sufferer of what I can only call Gandhian hypocrisy. Not that Bapu was hypocritical, but he did not prevent its breeding all around him, by forcing people to take vows which they could not possibly fulfil, and standards which they had no intention living up to. While claiming to be a devoted Hindu, his negation of the wholeness and totality of life as envisaged by our seers was more akin to Christian view of original sin’ (p. 391).105 Her colleagues of the past had deserted her during her days out of power, while unaddressed organizational weaknesses and factionalism of the Congress accumulated. This affected the performance of the government in multiple ways. The growth of regional parties was a significant feature of this period. For the first time since Independence Congress lost Karnataka and Andhra. Kashmir, Assam and Punjab were states in local turmoil. This period also witnessed a surge of communal, caste and linguistic conflicts. None of these could be dealt with firmly and were to weigh the country down for years. ‘Communalism grew stronger because of the momentum it gained during 1977-9. Its overt manifestation was communal riots, which spanned all the years 1980 to 84 and beyond and which began to engulf even south India’ (p. 338).106 Indira Gandhi however remained sure footed about international relations, the salience of the non-aligned movement and the relationship of India with other developing nations and Soviet Union. She was assassinated in October 1984 by her Sikh bodyguard and her son Rajiv Gandhi succeeded her. He was relatively inexperienced, took on the heavy mantle but the decay within the organizational structure, ambitions, and machinations of his senior colleagues in the Congress proved too heavy a burden. Nevertheless, he started on a positive note of preparing India for the twenty-first century with various technologies and modernizing missions. On the other hand, he kept up and increased the anti-poverty programmes of Indira Gandhi’s time with considerations about better delivery. However, despite the many

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economic and technological achievements, by the end of the decade, power brokers and estranged leaders within the Congress had sabotaged his leadership. V.P. Singh a powerful, ambitious and later estranged Congress minister (finance and later defence) launched a vicious anti-corruption campaign having hired foreign investigators (Fairfax, mentioned before) without even consulting the PM. Later he was expelled from the Congress. He engineered an anti-Rajiv political bloc called Jan Morcha in October 1987. With the RSS stirring the communal pot on one side and the anti-Congress bloc maneuvering on the other, Rajiv Gandhi stumbled and made a series of mistakes. Supreme Court granted maintenance to a Muslim woman (Shah Bano) divorced by her husband. It became very controversial when it was opposed by orthodox Muslims on the ground it interfered with Muslim personal law. A young secular Muslim leader of the Congress Arif Mohammad Khan and Rajiv Gandhi put up a brilliant defence of the judgement in the Parliament. A strong orthodox Muslim agitation was organized. On advice of close advisors, Rajiv Gandhi, agreed to introduce a Bill to negate the judgement. Now, by Hindus, he was seen to be appeasing Muslims. Hence, he was caught between the two orthodox, communal wings that continued to nourish each other. Arif Mohammad Khan resigned. Several parties joined to form a National Front for 1989 elections. The far right BJP won 86 seats from earlier two. This election performance was a result of their growing strength, extensive coordination and seat adjustments with other opposition forces. Both V.P. Singh and the left had indulged in make believe that the BJP, as in 1977, would not be able to gain much. BJP had estimated that displacing the Congress was a necessary step on its road to power. The left too had seriously miscalculated the strength and capabilities of the BJP. Perhaps the activities of RSS affiliates were not collectively examined to comprehend the larger picture. Exigencies of electoral politics made strange bed fellows repeatedly. After that rather momentous election of 1989, Congress was much diminished but still the largest party with 197 seats. Both the left and far right of erstwhile national front, supported the Janata Dal from outside. Chandra said, ‘The association with Left and secular forces gave it [BJP] the credibility it lacked by removing the stigma of

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communalism that ensured it remained on the fringes of Indian politics’ (p. 363). The government formed at the centre lacked a clear leader and stability. Differences caused by clashing egos of aspiring prime ministers as in the previous government of the Janata party persisted. As it played out, once again, the only group that had long term clarity of vision and perseverance was the far right! V.P. Singh was deeply rattled by infighting and egos within the senior leadership of the National Front. Amid infighting on 7 August 1990, V.P. Singh declared in the Parliament that the report of the Mandal Commission appointed by the earlier Janata government (ignored by Indira Gandhi) would be implemented. This implied reservation of 27 per cent of jobs in government services and public undertaking to be reserved for candidates belonging to backward classes, thus, bringing the total in reserved category of positions to 49.5 per cent; already 22.5 per cent had been reserved for schedule castes and tribes. The recommendations included as a second stage reservation in educational institutions and promotions as well; this caused widespread anger and resentment, eventually leading to violent student protests; and upper-caste students associations were formed for the first time since Independence. It marked caste against caste in the name of social justice. Anti-Mandal protests raged across the country especially north India. Witnessing the strong upper-caste emotions against Mandal Commission report, the BJP had started threatening to withdraw support to the government. On 25 September 1990, L.K. Advani of BJP set off on a 6,000 mile long Rath Yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya to lay the foundation stone for Ram Mandir. This ended on 23 October at Samastipur in Bihar with his arrest and withdrawal of BJP support to the government in the centre. On 10 October there was firing on crowds trying to reach the spot in Ayodhya chosen for the laying of the foundation stone for the Ram Temple. Thus the Rath Yatra, Advani’s arrest and firing in Ayodhya aroused communal passions and the ensuing riots led to many deaths in north India. On 5 November, Janata Dal split and 58 legislators elected Chandra Shekhar as the leader. Between the implementation of the Mandal Commission by V.P. Singh and Advani’s Rath Yatra, India’s political fortunes spun and took

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a sharp turn to the right. The political organizations of the Left could not create a mass movement to counter the far right, or even provide an effective political tactic to keep them out of power. On the contrary, they made electoral adjustments with them as late as 1989. It is disturbing that the left did not examine the far right seriously even at this juncture. Eventually the left found it was severely constrained by the social and cultural acceptability and political effectiveness of the far right. More than one force seemed to push the organized left to the wall, neo-liberalism itself, escalating role of money and criminals in politics, not to mention social divisions and cultural backwardness of the toiling masses they wanted to represent, a backwardness that did not recede with the decline in income and consumption based absolute poverty through the 1990s. Some sobering cultural indicators of the neo-liberal times were; the rush around temples, gurus and religious festivals; no significant decline in marriages based on caste and religion; an extravagant rise in expenditure on marriage, on birthdays, conspicuous consumption and entertainment; rising crime against women and the female child, educational deprivation; rising communal episodes and all manners of social polarization. The high mark was reached in the 2002 Gujarat riots in a state singled out for high growth and business friendliness as social regression was deepening midst display of wealth and severe income inequality. Twenty-five years into neo-liberal reforms, social implosion and political shift looked like a distinct possibility. The far right did not just wait around for the right opportunity they were working hard on the ground.

Stirring the Communal Pot through the 1980s till it Overflowed in the 1990s and a Tedious Trick is Reused ‘ The images of the mass hysteria that accompanied the wanton destruction of that obscure little mosque in Ayodhya were flashed, over and again, in the mass media . . . a fascist spectacle in the classic sense’ (p. 1).107 That was 6 December 1992. Congress leaders had agreed to the Partition of the country in the hope that endemic communal violence would come to an end. In

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Vallabhbhai Patel’s word it was akin to ‘cutting off the diseased limb’. But the disease was deep within. In the first decade-and-a-half after the Partition, communal disturbances were not frequent, but they resumed in 1962. Amid the agitations organized against Indira Gandhi’s government particularly in the year 1975, there were 238 episodes of communal riots. By the 1980s, the annual deaths from riots had reached four figures and in the 1993 riots the toll was more than 3,000. Scholars mark the latter part of the 1980s out, for a very sudden increase. A new more aggressive, glitzy, overtly Hindu campaigning style emerged under L.K. Advani. Gujarat till then was not as notorious for communal riots as was Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Till the late 1980s, in fact, there were few such episodes in the state. Communal aggressions increased first in south India and then across the country, these are listed by various observers and scholars.108 What got the attention of the national media was the conversion of hundreds of Harijans of Meenakshipuram (Tamil Nadu) in February 1981. This was followed by other conversions of Hindus in Tamil Nadu. This seemed to be occurring among the economically and politically upward mobile Harijans. The RSS projected it as the result of foreign financed and Marxist supported conversion activity aimed at disruption of Hindu society. Conversions were projected as divisive and separatist. The Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Parishad (RSS central assembly) urged the central government to intervene. They set up an association of Hindu groups to build up the morale, unity and steer the state-wide movement of protest by Hindus. Conferences, demonstrations, processions in Nagercoil and similarly in Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh were organized. One of the main themes in these was the need to establish a Hindu Raj in India. In Kanyakumari there were clashes between the RSS and Roman Catholics. In Kerala, in 1983, Nilackal was the centre of similar tensions between Catholics and Hindus. As in Tamil Nadu, the RSS took a leading role in organizing the Hindu fronts. They also began putting out data on demographic shifts that were reducing the Hindu population in favour of minorities in Kerala. The Hyderabad city also became a centre of repeated and increasingly severe communal riots from 1978 to 1984, following the introduction of Hindu Ganesh immersion festival. These culminated in two massive communal riots in September

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1983 and July 1984. Both Hindu and Muslim communal organizations fed off each other and had a hand in causing riots or tension during religious festivals and leading up to elections. Offensive episodes involving desecration of local deities were another commonly used method to instigating clashes. Hindu-Muslim riots also flared up in Karnataka in May 1983, over a case of a Muslim boy allegedly molesting a Hindu girl. According to reports, the RSS organized a meeting to avenge the episode and hundreds of youths went on a rioting rampage looting Muslim property. The RSS resumed a strident narrative that the Hindu majority was treated shabbily and minorities could flourish at their expense in states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu. These charges were repeated in the media and penetrated the tribal and rural areas through RSS organs. According to Spitz, the far right movements spread to the north almost simultaneously, the first was month long Ekatmata Yatra Yajana chariot procession, a religious sacrifice for national unity during November-December 1983. It was organized by the VHP with RSS cadre. It consisted of three main Yatras, two crossed India from north to south, the third from east to west along pilgrimage routes. One began from the Pashupatinath temple in Nepal to the Rameshwaram temple in Tamil Nadu. Another journeyed from Ganga Sagar in West Bengal to the Somnath temple in Gujarat. A third, started from Haridwar in the north via Delhi and went on to Kanyakumari in the south. They met at Nagpur and were felicitated by the RSS chief Deoras. On their route they were joined by subsidiary processions, estimated at 2,000 in all. The central objects of attraction were two motorised chariots, one carried a portrait of Bharat Mata (Mother India), the other bore two huge bronze urns, one filled with water from the holy Ganges, the other collecting water from all sacred rivers, lakes, tanks and wells of India in its path. Each Yatra travelled about 60 miles a day with stops every 15 miles for programmes in which people from surrounding towns and villages brought sacred water from their localities and in return took the Ganges water for the local temple gods. Religious symbolism underscored the nature of the motherland as a holy land. According to the VHP literature, it involved an estimated 60 to 100 million participants from all over the country. The altar for this ‘pilgrimage of sacrifice’ was set in a temple in the same year by a

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guru (associated with the VHP). Consecrated in 1983, this temple touched all the nodal images of Hindu nationalism; it was eight storeys tall, towering over the city of Haridwar, dedicated to floor wise,109 1. The map of India on a raised platform and an idol of Bharat Mata (Mother India) portrayed as a four armed Hindu Goddess wearing saffron colored robes, holding a book, sheaves of rice, a mala, and a white cloth. Abanindranath Tagore (nephew of Rabindranath Tagore and a proponent of swadeshi had sculpted it. The image of Bharat Mata had been an icon to create nationalist feeling among Indians during the freedom struggle). 2. Dedicated to heroes, mostly activists in the Indian Independence movement (such as Bhagat Singh), but including some earlier Hindu heroes (for example, Shivaji). 3. Matri (Mother) – women from Hindu mythology and recent history. 4. Saints – Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist religious figures though not Muslim and Christian. 5. Assembly Hall. 6. Shakti Shrine – female goddesses. 7. Vishnu Shrine – incarnations of Lord Vishnu. 8. Shiva Shrine – incarnate forms of Shiva and of gods and goddesses associated with him.110 The Bharat Mata Mandir was founded by Swami Satyamitranand Giri who had been active in the VHP, having served on its Central Margdarshak Mandal (a council of religious leaders). The scale of this mobilization can be gauged from the fact that Indira Gandhi the PM inaugurated it on 15 May 1983, the same PM who distrusted and was deeply apprehensive of the RSS; such was the tightening grip of their ‘cultural agenda’. Six months later the VHP commenced the Ekatmata Yatra Yajana chariot procession across the country. The sheer scale of cultural swing in the country can be estimated from the fact that the original Bharat Mata temple was built in Varanasi in 1936. Built by nationalists, it was dedicated to the motherland and displayed no other images associated with any religion. Instead it was dedicated to secular nationalism. It was inaugurated by the father of

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the nation, Mahatma Gandhi. There were two Bharat Mata temples then, one in a university, the Mahatma Gandhi Kashi University, inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi in 1936 and another the antithesis, in Haridwar, 47 years later, awash in the Hindu pantheon, covered with Hindutva totems, and built by the VHP. Ekatmata Yatra had two key events, one in Nagpur where the yatras crossed one another in Delhi at India Gate. 150 press conferences were held and during the first day, the radio and TV made 14 announcements. The affair was covered extensively in the media and reportedly collected Rs 30 million rupees for VHP missionary work. Participation and events were reported in VHP literature along with statements that attributed the success of the event to full cooperation of the government and bureaucracy.111 This display had two objectives, firstly, a massive demonstration of all India Hindu solidarity, with the message that this and Bharatiya culture are the key to India’s national integration, secondly, to raise funds throughout India for VHP sponsored missionary work among Harijans and tribal people to keep these weaker sections within the Hindu fold. Another episode that provided grist for the RSS mills, was the Shah Bano case, mentioned earlier, in which the Supreme Court in 1985 granted alimony to an elderly Muslim lady in contradiction to the Sharia law. This, the orthodox Muslims felt was an infringement of their constitutional right to freedom of religion which, in their view, was the right to observe their personal law. The directive principle of the constitution commits country to a common Civil Law Code. The Hindu Code Bill had been passed in the 1950s. In 1986, when the Congress government yielded to orthodox Muslim pressure and passed a Bill nullifying the Supreme Court decision, it was projected by the RSS as an act of appeasement of the minority in the face of Muslim bullying, and somehow they attached to it the fear that Muslims were bound to outbreed Hindus and reduce them to a minority status. The biggest episode however was the revival of the long standing Ram Janam Bhoomi – Babri Masjid over the control of mosque in the Hindu pilgrim centre of Ayodhya. The VHP had reiterated it at their World Congress. The mosque was constructed in 1528 by Mir Baqi, a noble in Babur court. It was the RSS position that it was built over a razed Hindu temple which many Hindus believe to be the site of

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Lord Ram’s birth. This supposedly was the basis of a long standing dispute. At some point some portion of the outer compound of the mosque was occupied by Hindu structures of worship. The presence of these was marked by court documents relating to a suit filed by one Mahant Raghuvir Das of Ayodhya in 1885 praying for permission to re-erect a temple in the outer compound, the permission was rejected.112 The dispute was also the cause of communal riots in 1934. A monk of the Gorakhpur math, by the name of Mahant Digvijay Nath (18941969) who was a militant Hindu nationalist and a Hindu Mahasabha politician, organized a week long recitation of Ramayana to strengthen his support base in Ayodhya, in December 1949. An idol of Ram was secretly placed in the mosque, that created a hubbub and enhanced popular support at the site. It is said that almost a decade earlier, two of the most capable RSS Pracharaks Nanaji Deshmukh (then in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh) and Murlidhar Deoras (Uttar Pradesh state Pracharaks) had forged close relations between the RSS and Mahant Digvijay Nath.113 Soon after this incident locks were installed at the disputed site and Deshmukh organized nonstop bhajans, which impressed religious leaders of Uttar Pradesh. (Digvijay Nath eventually established himself as a political force in eastern Uttar Pradesh and won seats to the Parliament first on the Hindu Mahasabha ticket and later the BJP ticket. The current BJP Chief Minister, Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh, is a successor of that legacy and belongs to the same order). Anyway, the frenzy of 1949 led to Hindu-Muslim riots and in response the government closed the site/mosque to both communities who took their claims to court. Next year, in 1950, a Hindu Ram Janambhoomi Seva committee was formed, and it obtained permission to have limited access to the mosque once a year to worship the idol. The committee organized regular devotional singing in front of the mosque, this was to be continued until the ‘liberation’ of Lord Ram’s birthplace. In 1984 the VHP, played up its favourite theme of thousand years of slavery of Hindus to Muslim rulers and alleged that it was the pseudo secularism of the post-Independence regime that denied permission to the Hindus to worship at their most sacred site in their own country. It overtly organized a campaign to recover control of the site and replace the mosque with a Ram temple. To broaden the onslaught, it also

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resolved to remove a mosque allegedly built on the site of Lord Krishna’s birthplace in Mathura and on the site of the Vishwanath temple in Varanasi. Bajrang Dal a youth front, was formed to awaken the masses. According to anti-RSS writers it was a front to recruit lumpen elements to intimidate the Muslim community. Beginning in October 1984, in support of the VHP programme, increasingly intense Hindu nationalist campaigns of Rath Yatras, mass meetings and protests demanding justice from the government, were organized. The basic theme was reiterated continuously and embedded in public imagination- it was essential for Hindu self-respect to recover the space. On 25 September 1984, the first motorized Rath Yatra from Sitamarhi to Ayodhya was stopped by the state authorities in Bihar. In October 1984, PM Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguard. In the midst of the crisis that followed, Hindu-Sikh riots erupted. A section of Sikhs had been demanding a separate homeland which they called Khalistan, the demand had led to great deal of gun violence in the state and antagonism between Sikhs and non-Sikhs in Punjab and the rest of the country. The large quantities of ammunition that the separatists had, they seemed to have collected from across the border in Pakistan.114 The association with CIA funding and activities in Pakistan was a matter of suspicion while tension within India continued almost right through the 1980s.115 The government in Delhi was struggling to end the separatist movement for many years although there was another view that the Congress had used a religious leader by the name of Bhindranwale and his organization to weaken the Akali-Janata Party rule over Punjab in 1979. The Akalis were the natural allies of the oppositions parties and in the quagmire of electoral compulsions this might have been a short-term strategy that went awry. The magnification of that faction into a full-blown, violent separatist movement was also attributed to a strategy by a coterie within the Congress led by Indira Gandhi’s powerful son, Sanjay Gandhi.116 This was a cabal that was only to grow stronger in the post-1980s, with the entry of players like the Washington DC based American national Ganga Singh Dhillon known to be close to some influential American senators and congressmen and to Pakistani President Gen Zia-ulHaq.117 Quite quickly the ISI got involved and the situation in Punjab grew out of control. The final stage of confrontation led to an army

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assault on the seat of Sikh religious order at the Golden Temple. It is alleged that RSS-BJP members were also involved in the anti-Sikh riots that followed. A total of 14 FIRs were registered ‘against 49 BJPRSS leaders for their role in anti-Sikh riots of 1984’.118 Although many Congress leaders have been charged and the party itself as the government in power, has been the object of all criticism so far, it is not implausible that RSS-BJP leaders employed their proficiency. Meanwhile, the Ram temple fever was also kept alive. Under some pressure, a District Judge in February 1986 granted Hindus free access to the mosque for public worship of Lord Ram. The VHP set up a trust to collect 250 million rupees to build the temple on the site of the mosque. Communal tensions increased steadily in the background. A Muslim Babri Masjid Action Committee was formed to mobilize the community, in March 1987 a massive Muslim demonstration was organized to pressurise the government to give Muslims complete control over the site. As expected, north India was rocked by HinduMuslim riots. In at least some of these, Muslims seem to have been the victims of Hindu aggression aided and abetted by the provincial armed constabulary. In 1989, the VHP campaign entered a new mass contact phase to focus national attention on the Ram Janambhoomi issue. Brushing aside government assertion that resolution should be left to the courts, VHP leaders announced that the foundations of the Ram Mandir would be laid on 9 or 10 November. To escalate public participation all districts were asked to make bricks for the construction of the temple with ‘Sri Ram’ inscribed on them. Local and district RSS shakhas played a critical role. The bricks, six lakhs in all, were to be distributed to half-a-million Indian villages and urban districts. On 30 September, they were consecrated in each locality in a nationwide Ram Shila Pujan. Inhabitants of each household were asked to make a minimum offering of Rs 1.25 (considered an auspicious sum) towards the construction of Ram Mandir. The bricks were taken to 6600 block centres, and in several hundreds of them Ram Shila Yajanas were held. From these centres’ bricks were hauled in the midst of celebrations and crowds of enthusiastic devotees to the temple site despite government efforts to prevent it. The foundation ceremony took place on the disputed site on 10 November 1989, in the presence of thousands of Bajrang Dal volunteers, sadhus and devotees in what was called a Hindu

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Renaissance. 14 February 1990 was announced as the date for beginning construction. By now, V.P. Singh was the PM, and he wanted the date to be postponed allowing negotiation between all concerned parties. L.K. Advani, while supporting the government from outside defied the PM, led a massive Rath Yatra from Somnath temple in Gujarat to Ayodhya and called upon lakhs of voluntary workers – kar sevaks – to come to Ayodhya by 30 October. The idea was to occupy the site and commence the temple construction. On 23 October 1990, Advani was arrested in Bihar and his rath (vehical) was impounded. The RSS, VHP kar sevaks were arrested and turned back. The general secretary of RSS delivered a sharply worded message to anti-Hindu forces warning them of dire consequences. Confrontation reached a crescendo between 30 October and 2 November, some kar sevaks were able to break through police barricade and break parts of the mosque. Breaking of the police barricade resulted in the death of 50 kar sevaks in police firing, plus the part breaking of the mosque offered enough material for new propaganda, media excitement and repeated propagation of the refrain of Hindu victimhood. Mulayam Singh of Samajwadi Party lost the assembly elections between the first and final assault on the mosque. The eventual culmination in the destruction of the mosque on 6 December 1992 was a result of this relentless drive, a well planned strategy. And what followed in repeated rounds of communal violence and counter violence, was inescapable. India was deeply divided again (this time deeper down south as well). A transformation that Bal Thackrey, the Shiv Sena chief, and partner of BJP had predicted so accurately. Presciently, Arun Shourie, a BJP leader said that after the vandalism in Ayodhya brought Babri Masjid down, BJP leaders tried to distance, even disown what had happened. Hindus of India however appropriated the destruction and owned it up. They saw it as a bending of the state to their combined will.119 As the RSS succeeded through the 1980s, seized the narrative with every act of bellicosity, they consolidated the Hindu vote and the Congress was cornered. The Congress reacted slowly, often incorrectly to the changing political scene and public mood. The popular support for Ram Janambhoomi was becoming so hysterical that neither the Uttar Pradesh state government nor the Central Government, both

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controlled by the Congress Party, moved to somehow reverse the decision of the Sessions Judge on 1 February 1986 to open the gates of Babri Masjid (locked since 1949), enabling Hindus to conduct prayers within the structure of the Masjid. Rajiv Gandhi seemed to be caught, tangled and twisted between Ram Temple sympathizers within the Congress (who has been specially cultivated by the RSS for this purpose), and the heightened Hindu sentiments and possibility of a Muslim backlash. In a seemingly confused move he allegedly colluded with the RSS in 1989 to permit the foundation stone laying ceremony for the Temple inside the Babri Masjid, a tacit permission to build the temple in return for electoral support for Congress candidates in the forthcoming election. However, that agreement fell through for fear of a Muslim backlash.The imbroglio ended but the BJP improved its position in the next general election from 2 to 86 in the Parliament. It has since then, effectively combined this strategy of communal incitement, cultural infiltration through affiliates. Occasionally, charges of corruption are also thrown about, as a supplementary tool against the Congress to weaken it. And so, once again the BJP improved its electoral performance in 1996 elections to win 161 (up from 86), more seats than the Congress at 140, but, could not form the government. An interim non-BJP government with Congress support from outside was formed for a few months. The Congress withdrew support and fresh elections were held in February 1998 and the BJP won 182 seats and formed the government with the help of secular parties like Telegu Desam Party (TDP), AIADMK, and Trinamool Congress (TMC) which proved to be unstable as AIADMK withdrew support. Fresh elections in 1999 resulted in a more sizable and stable margin for NDA (BJP led alliance) although BJP’s own seats did not increase. The vital victory of the BJP lay in the fact that ‘it also created a situation where almost every party – notably the Congress – was forced to include a reference to the Ram temple in its 1991 Lok Sabha election manifesto. It is also significant that between 1984 and 1989 some decisive steps were taken by the Congress government in Uttar Pradesh, which demonstrated that the concern with the temple issue had become very real with the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi’ (p. 180).120 During the build up to the Babri Masjid demolition there were two other

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temples that were being disputed while another three thousand disputed temples could be lined up. The majoritarian communal orientation was now available as an evergreen source of votes. The RSS had enough support within the institutions of the state to defy all the affidavits and guarantees to the contrary (given by the BJP state government of Uttar Pradesh at that point), disregard assessments by the Governor of the state and go right ahead with a secret design. After the BJP led government was formed, cultural and other activities were kept up by the VHP, Bajrang Dal and RSS. The ideological agenda of rewriting history and influencing education was pursued with vigour by the Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD), another bit of evidence demonstrating the RSS capacity to keep a long term vision in place. The agitation for building Ram Mandir at Ayodhya became more intense in early 2002, despite the refusal of the Supreme Court’s to allow construction on the disputed site and the surrounding land. This agitation had a direct effect on the communal situation in Gujarat, which witnessed a genocide lasting two months from February 2002 onwards. For some reason since then, the Ram Temple issue had lost its edge, steadily declined in significance from the RSS agenda, perhaps to be picked up at an opportune moment. The BJP lost the 2004 general elections and even a decade later when it won the general elections again in 2014, this time with a strong majority, the Ram Temple was just a whisper in the wind. Instead, old themes like ghar wapasi, love jihad, and ban on cow slaughter have been promoted leading to episodes of localized mob lynching and acts of vandalism against anyone who might resist or seek to dissent from the Hindu nationalist narratives. Poor people, particularly Dalits and Muslims have been specially marked out for oppression with state acquiescence on various pretexts.121 Even the much awaited (and controversial judgement) of the Supreme Court in November 2019, in favour of constructing a Ram temple in the place of the razed mosque did not lead to as much exhilaration in the far right camp followers as one would expect. Instead the government had moved on to an altogether new excitement by amending the Citizenship Act in violation of the spirit of the Indian Constitution. It amended the Act of 1955 by providing recourse to Indian citizenship for illegal migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh

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and Pakistan who arrived in India before the end of December 2014. The law does not grant such eligibility to Muslims from these three countries all of which are Muslim-majority countries. This act was the first time that religion has been overtly used as a criterion for citizenship under law. It raised a storm of public protest over the constitutional violation. Participation grew wider and lasted longer than any other in recent history. But the RSS could not have passed by an opportunity to spite Muslims and the BJP has remained adamant on implementation. In February 2020, in the Lok Sabha, ‘Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally announced the trust’s [mandated by the Supreme Court and named Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Tirth Kshetra by the government] formation and plan to build the temple in a speech he made in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, days before Delhi holds a February 8 election that mainly pits the BJP against the ruling Aam Aadmi Party. Chants of, ‘Jai Shri Ram,’ were heard from the treasury benches’.122 By now the temple frenzy had faded. Amid the Covid 19 pandemic, on 5 August 2020 the PM, Chief of the RSS Mohan Bhagwat, Governor and Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh arrived in Ayodhya for the inauguration of the temple. Bhagwat spent much of his address on recalling the thirty year long dogged struggle for the temple, how this temple would not just be one among lakhs of temples but a symbol of the great Bharatiya traditions and personality. He urged all to immerse themselves in the heritage and build an Ayodhya in their own hearts.

Scaling it up-Gujarat Version 2002 In 2012, The New York Times, Manu Joseph wrote, ‘On 27 February 2002, almost 60 people, most of them Hindu pilgrims, were burned alive in a train compartment near the town of Godhra. Various investigations into the event came up with conflicting conclusions as if to suit every ideology and associated theories. Secular Indians, whom Mr Modi sometimes refers to as “pseudo-secularists”, wanted to believe a report that determined that the fire was a tragic accident. Others wanted to believe the reports that said a Muslim mob had planned the attack and set the train on fire, a line that Mr Modi took in the aftermath of

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the incident. Last year, a special court convicted several people of murder and sentenced them to death or to life in prison’. In the days that followed the burning of the coach, riots broke out in Gujarat that left hundreds dead, most of them Muslims. As the massacre continued, journalists, activists and several senior police officers in Gujarat who spoke to the news media on the condition of anonymity said that Narendra Modi’s government was complicit in the violence. Narendra Modi, for his part, asserted that the violence was a spontaneous reaction of the Hindus. ‘While reporting from Gujarat on the aftermath of the riots, I stumbled upon the fact that a senior minister in Mr Modi’s cabinet, Haren Pandya, had testified in a shroud of secrecy before a tribunal that was investigating the cause of the riots. When I approached Mr Pandya about this, he told me that he had told the tribunal that on the night of 27 February, Mr Modi held a meeting with senior police officers and bureaucrats during which he is alleged to have instructed the police to allow the mobs to vent their anger on Muslims. It is a charge that Mr Modi has consistently denied’.123 Haren Pandya was murdered a few months later. In the same article Manu Joseph says,‘When the violence had just subsided in Gujarat, I met Praveen Togadia, a leader of Vishva Hindu Parishad, a rightist Hindu organization, at his home in Ahmedabad. But he told me he would not let me enter his house because, he presumed, I was Christian. (Weeks later, in a telephone conversation, he seemed friendlier). He gave the interview sitting on a swing outside. He said that the English language news media had demonized Mr Modi, but that he was happy about that portrayal. Every minute of criticism on the television channels, he said, would win Mr Modi thousands of votes in the approaching state elections’.124 He was right. In 2002, Mr Modi emerged from the state polls stronger than before. Local and foreign press reported that Hindu rioters in Gujarat were accusing Muslims for the deaths of the pilgrims without evidence; mobs of Hindus rampaged and killed brutally. This went on for two months. The state administration remained inactive. Between 1,0002000 people, mostly Muslims, died. Some 20,000 Muslim homes and businesses and 360 places of worship were destroyed and roughly 150,000 people were displaced. There was no dearth of fearless and

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real news reporting on the issue in the months that followed. None of it dented the electoral fortunes of BJP; on the contrary, BJP in Gujarat managed to create an image of a Chief Minister haunted by the pseudo secular press and institutions even as he tried to save the Hindus from the predatory Muslims. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (BJP) did not dismiss Narendra Modi for his handling of the riots. Mr Modi called for early elections and began a fight based on Hindutva that aimed to unite Hindus, and consolidate their votes, around a fear of Muslims. During the campaign, he regularly mentioned the pilgrims who died in the train fire at Godhra, was never apologetic about the riots and never spoke of the Muslim victims in the riots. According to Ahmad,‘Before the Pogrom began BJP had suffered a series of setbacks in state level, local elections and by elections. Then, in December 2002 some nine months after that pogrom and spearheading a culture of cruelty and politics of hate, Modi stomped to electoral victory with 126 seats out of 181, improving the previous tally 117. Congress trailed 10 percentage points in popular vote winning barely 37 seats, down from 48. In the process Modi demonstrated that violence, especially communal violence pays huge electoral dividends. Indeed, the violence itself had been unleashed with an eye on electoral gains, so that only the Congress (I) strongholds in north and central Gujarat had been targeted. After the pogrom, BJP won 52 out of 65 constituencies in which the pogrom had been concentrated, leading the Congress by 19 percentage points in these specific constituencies. BJP won every single seat in the vicinity of Godhra, in central Gujarat’s Panchmahal, Dahod and rural Vadodara, which had witnessed the worst violence, and it won 10 out of 12 seats in Ahmedabad itself, which had been home to some of the most heinous Hindutva crimes’ (Introduction, p. 12).125 He went on to describe how all the secular allies of the BJP, Mayawati of BSP campaigned for Modi in Gujarat, AIADMK offered encouragement to him in his election. Eventually as the drama and narrative evolved, during Modi’s tenure as Chief Minister, Muslim threat took on the veil of terrorists who wanted to assassinate him. Muslims took on an even larger role of anti-national extremists who were a challenge to the patriotism of every Indian. In the meanwhile, an alternate image well-crafted by public

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relations firms was also forged, that of a leader devoted to capitalist development, a leader of a business-friendly state. Indeed, many concessions and subsidies were granted to leading capitalists who in turn saw in him a patron par excellence and backed him to the hilt in his bid for the centre stage in 2014. It was a classic marriage of convenience made in neo-liberal times, the far right and the largest capitalists, with a public driven into another frenzy for ‘development’ and ‘good times’ by the media blitz. Journalists and scholars who have studied this phase in contemporary history affirm that communal violence continues to pay large electoral dividend in India. The record suggests that the far right certainly rides not just the existing social backwardness but also administrative frailty of the Indian state to punish the guilty after every riot. What Gujarat 2002 meant for Indian political history is best summarized here, ‘The debacle was there for all to see. However, the liberal media and even sections of the Left contrived to believe that Gujarat was a special case; it could possibly not be repeated elsewhere, hoping that the nightmare would just go away and the ghost would exorcise itself. Unfortunately, Praveen Togadia, the international secretary of VHP and one of the more crude fascist even by the standards of his own organization, proved more prescient: ‘the Hindutva laboratory has started functioning’, he exulted, ‘the BJP has won all the three seats in Rajasthan bye elections too, a Hindu Rashtra can be expected in the next two years . . . we will change India’s history’ (Introduction, p. 13).126 BJP repeated the winning streak in three more states, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh creating a block of power in west and central India. For a while, they expanded without a pogrom, normalizing their version of aggressive Hinduism in politics and society. Occasionally, ‘development’ as an agenda was introduced in their narrative. Most often they used willing allies in the so called regional secular parties ranging from BSP, Samajwadi to Janata Dal to the far right Shiv Sena (in Maharashtra) to consolidate the non-Congress vote and strengthen their own political base. Caste analysis of the BJP vote

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showed its expanding reach from princely feudal base to the Other Backward Castes (OBCs)and Adivasis. For this the credit would go to the Sangh Parivar’s missionary work, its multiple cultural and religious organs working away quietly according to a plan that came out of Nagpur. ‘A new generation of Hindutva politicians, born on the ruins of Ayodhya, was being trained for political attainment. Some would have the mettle to make the big gambit for power at the centre like Mr Modi’.127 The old peers, trained by the same RSS who brought them to the threshold of power, would soon have to step aside and make way for them, an even more belligerent, more ambitious generation. Nobody watching L.K. Advani on TV in the 1990s, riding across India, high on the Rath proceeding to extinguish the mosque at Ayodhya would have imagined that his successor could be even more accomplished, a successor able to manufacture adoration with the raw material of the very same mass hysteria, sell a dream of good times, and sponsor the most outstanding alchemists of digital media. The next major communal riot was engineered in Muzaffarnagar in September 2013, closer to the time Narendra Modi made a bid for power at the centre. The Chief Minister of Gujarat along with another prodigy of the far right became a winning pair; the duo would go on to become the most powerful leaders of neo-liberal India. They say every country gets the fascism it deserves; it reflects the national popular will.

Conclusion An account of the journey of the far right, to the centre of power cannot ignore the compounding factors historically available in the socio-economic ambience. The considerable organizational skill of the far right would have been less fruitful without these preconditions. At the turn of the twenty-first century most Indians had come to live in a forbidding milieu created by immense pressure of population on resources and institutions. It was home to the world’s largest population of ‘absolutely’ poor people, and they lived besides great accumulation and disparity of wealth. One out of three Indians were poor. There was no urgency to make a new society. Traditional empathy

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deficit just endured. After all, not very long ago popular, nationalist leadership had rejected revolutionary changes for gradualism on grounds of social instability and brutality it might provoke. Poverty eradication was not a national priority number one, except briefly in the early 1970s. Some socialism was injected from above in the form of legislation and policies again mostly in the 1970s; some redistribution was indeed attempted even earlier, but only at the margins. The far right helped organize a national political force against the left turn in Indira Gandhi’s polices, during the anti-emergency movement they tasted early success, that was the tipping point in India’s political history. Post liberalization too there was no resolve to accelerate employment and speed up trickle down benefits of growth. The degree of discomfort some citizens might have ever felt about enduring deprivation and widening inequality had numbed, largely forgotten. Instead, the situation had cemented a perverse social psychology – a mentality of exclusion by omission or by commission. The people had assumed the idea of gradual change of everything that was appropriate. Across classes people held on to social conservatism and culture mixed up with traditions and religious rituals. Even as they focused on wealth accumulation. Absence of a home grown equivalent of anything resembling the scale and scope of European enlightenment and its impact on culture meant a widespread understanding of modernization as merely a technological and infrastructural project. Arrival of dams, electricity, computers, electronic gadgets, internet, and smart phones perhaps only strengthened the belief in miracles of the modern kind. Celebration of the world’s largest parliamentary democracy became common even though it was primarily a vote for all adults and a ‘first past the post’ game. Elections became a national carnival. Robust institutions to safeguard democracy, well-informed debate, dissent, and local participation remained largely unknown. Outside the narrow educated, liberal or left circles there was hardly any engagement with policy issues or democratic reforms. At the local level, capture of democratic institutions like Panchayats, and Zilla Parishads (Panchayati Raj Institutions) by the locally dominant castes was the norm and

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involvement of people an exception. Reservations brought the lowercastes into the government but only after they learned to play the system so to say. As the role of money tightened its grip, elections increasingly became a manipulative game. The processes of democracy did encourage some freedoms of expression and association, but a society, largely bereft of philosophies of rationality, fraternity even individual liberty let alone equality came to exist. Social backwardness manifested itself in multiple ways, in the inferior status of women, caste discriminations, compulsions of intra-caste marriage, poor education and health care. Strange irrationality, superstitions even obscurantism under different tags like vastu, astrology, elaborate temple rituals and taboos abounded not to mention godmen and their innumerable cults. They are defended vigorously, to this day by people who make peculiar, vehement assertions that modernity and Indian tradition can coexist perfectly. Temples continue to outnumber hospitals, schools and attract a large number of pilgrims, festivals, and funds. No government has felt alarmed enough to address this imbalance. Even butchery of the Partition had not forced reassessment of the deep social miasma within; such was the enchantment with heritage among ruling classes. It persisted from those early days described in the first chapter, when Indian nationalism was born. Even then social reformers were stalled by those who simply wanted to aggregate political power. Traditional heritage was a vehicle to power. Consequently, social and cultural reform movements have been scarce and undervalued. They were historically limited to some relatively small regions. But where they did take root, social and even economic indicators are far better today.128 Human development indices, gender-based indices, health indices are abysmally low as they are only the symptoms of a long cultural trajectory of elitism and exclusion. Tracking these lagging indices, it would appear simple enough to finish off in the twenty-first century what could not be done in 1950s, given the resources and technology available. But what has been conspicuous by its absence throughout our modern history is the political and, therefore, popular will to do so. General hope of even the few liberal, progressive elite in India was and remains that growth and modernization of technology will solve problems in the social sector and renovate society which it obviously did not do, at least, not in the desired direction.

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Born in this socio-economic environment, the apparatus of the state had grown but was incapable of effective execution of even its own minimal welfare programme, primary education and health care, let alone of upholding the lofty ideals of the Constitution. The state machinery, from the very beginning, just did not move fast enough given its own basically elite caste and class composition. After four years on the job in 2019 even the Chief Economic Adviser to the BJP led Government (imported from America) was to say, ‘But how can state capacity be improved? This is a mystery. After all the Indian state has for decades been unable to deliver basic health and education’ (p. 52).129 While the Indian state can obviously do other things more efficiently like create Unique Identification Systems, capital market controls, launch satellites and implement complex tax laws, what stops it from carrying out welfare programmes? A soft state and citizenship with negligible entitlements had become a living reality and opportunities to exploit a huge mass of the poor by a few expanded quickly.This created and concreted a substantial vested interest in the status quo. And once neo-liberal ideology took hold, governments were quick to privatize or weaken whatever little welfare or public education and health care that was available. Before long, the social space was occupied by private enterprises, religious and other identity based organizations. When neo-liberal policies to stimulate growth were endorsed as an alternate road to reduce poverty by job creation, growth occurred but did not create as many jobs as needed nor did it spread evenly. With one million youth entering the job market every month, anything short of a national obsession with job creation would fail. Growth itself, before long became labour displacing. The phenomenon was debated and called ‘jobless growth’, but no real alternative was suggested. After the 2008 global recession even growth rates gradually started tapering off in India. Instead of a serious rethink, the task ahead was simply reiterated, it was to be ‘economic growth’ and more growth. In the shrill discourse of neo-liberalism, even the agenda for welfare and human development was sidelined for ‘growth’. It was even more difficult to convince administrations and educate the public. There were few takers for the argument that marginalization of vast sections is perilous for the social order. A good society is built bottom upwards. Welfare for

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a brief spell between 2004 and 2014 was a talking point again and some good legislations were enacted but the backlash was swift, as it had been in the early 1970s. A parallel development also tipped us over. As soon as the Cold War subsided, in this God intoxicated sub-continent, religious wars raged. Fundamentalist Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism all surged in waves through the 1980s, ever so often feeding off each other. The surge was rooted in the ten-year battle for Afghanistan, between America and USSR which ended only in 1989. America fought that war using proxy warriors trained in Pakistan. By using religious vocabulary these proxies were made to believe they were fighting to save Islam from Godless communists. Pakistan as the host country eventually descended into military dictatorship and chaos.130 It heaved the neighbourhood with it. The area became a conduit of weapons, mercenaries, and fundamentalists; it was engulfed in religious hostilities. While the subcontinent struggled, USSR collapsed and country after country was drawn deeper into the neo-liberal paradigm. Hindu nationalism was in good health, well-funded, well poised, to take advantage of the historic conjuncture. Far right agglomerate had already grown under the tutelage of the RSS, in the post 1990s it become the largest and most long standing far right movement of its kind anywhere in the world. The ambitions of the far right have soared ever since. If the 1980s was the decade of innovative, belligerent experimentation and action it ended well for them, culminating in a prodigious spectacle of destruction and communal rioting, the most widespread in post-Partition era. The demolition of Babri Masjid was a sign of their ascent and the eclipse of the ‘secular project’. The demolition of the masjid was not the cause of the eclipse. It was simply the loutish gesticulation of an end. None of the top leadership of the BJP involved in the planned and well recorded vandalism of 6 December 1992 has been punished to date. What does that say? Within a decade of neo-liberal reforms, in an archetype state of neoliberalism – Gujarat – a new leadership arrived in the far right which seized the bull by its horn. It built on both, neo-liberal style incentives, subsidies for big business and conflicts of religious identity. Both were effective for vote gathering. A violently polarizing electoral strategy was implemented in 2002 and it succeeded enormously. Gujarat

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2002 was the triumph of the even more virulent Hindutva strain; its strategy for political power, using new technology, old ruses, and capital131 owning class has not stopped succeeding in gathering votes yet. Subsequently the strategy was only scaled up for the nation leading up to 2014. In the scaling up, Indian diaspora particularly in America has played a striking role.132 The party in power at the centre is now more intimately connected with the RSS. Policy directives often come directly from the RSS.133 The BJP is likely to remain a major political player for the foreseeable future. Since it came into power in 2014 with a landslide victory, the BJP has done much to accumulate wealth in party coffers and push the RSS social agenda of intimidating minorities. Electoral bonds introduced in the budget was one of the innovations and the most controversial and contested, both by the Election Commission and Association for Democratic Reform.134 They enable unseen flow of funds. As, declared by the parties, BJP has received Rs 1,027 crores, the Congress followed far behind with Rs 199 crores in 2017-18.135 93 per cent of the electoral bond-based funding went to BJP. These bonds are classified as ‘source unknown’ because the donors’ name need not be disclosed. The net effect is that the BJP leads the pack of political parties in wealth many times over, skewing the political contest and promises to remain a major political player beholden to deep purses. And there is little so far, to break its grip inside the framework of our liberal democracy. When such a formidable far right force rises and there has been no immediate catastrophe preceding it, the truth must lie deeper in our history and all around us in our cultural milieu; in our shared, interconnected pattern of beliefs and behaviour, in the spirits and shadows that follow and permeate all institutions, formal and informal. ‘When the water of a river flows through different channels and unites again on a particular point, becomes an irresistible mighty flow’.136 Like the River Ganges, RSS cadres had been moving through our culture channels forming different fronts and penetrating establishments, touching several cords in the historical tradition, forging a social animus so to say into a formidable force.

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NOTES 1. P. Friedrich (2020), ‘Saffron Fascists’, Self-published, pp. 23-9. 2. R. Ayyub (2016), Gujarat Files, Anatomy of a Cover Up, published by Rana Ayyub. 3. S. Gatade (2011), The Saffron Condition, Gurgaon: Three Essays Collective, pp. 87-9. 4. C. Jaffrelot (2019), ‘The Fate of Secularism in India’, in M. Vaishnav (ed.), The BJP in Power: Indian Democracy and Religious Nationalism, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 5. S. Gatade (2011), The Saffron Condition, Gurgaon: Three Essays Collective. 6. A. Ahmad (2016), ‘Liberal Democracy and the Extreme Right’, in L. Panitch and G. Albo (eds.), The Politics of the Right, Socialist Register 2016, London: The Merlin Press. 7. S. Majumdar (2003), Gujarat and the Judges Anger, BBC News, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3104280.stm 8. C. Jaffrelot (2012), ‘Gujarat 2002: What Justice for the Victims? The Supreme Court, the SIT, the Police and the State Judiciary’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 47, no. 8 (25 February 2012), pp. 77-8. 9. R. Ayyub (2016), Gujarat Files, Self-Published. 10. B. Meghwanshi (2020), I Could Not be Hindu, New Delhi: Navayana. 11. J. Breman (1997), Footloose Labour: Working in India’s Informal Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 12. Soutik Biswas (19 October 2011), ‘Ramayana: An “epic” Controversy’, BBC. 13. W. Dalrymple (2008),‘All Indian Life is Here’, The Telegraph, 23 August 2008. 14. P.V.N. Rao (2006), Ayodhya, New Delhi: Penguin Random House. 15. https://thewire.in/law/mathura-krishna-birthplace-idgah-mosquejanmabhoomi 16. P.V.N. Rao (2006), Ayodhya, op. cit. 17. Lasse Berg and Lisa (1971), Face to Face, Berkeley, CA: Rampart Press. 18. W.K. Anderson and S.D. Damle (2018), The RSS: A View to the Inside, Gurgaon: Penguin Viking. 19. File no. 28/3/43 Pol (1) of the Home Department. 20. A.G. Noorani (2019), The RSS, New Delhi: Left Word. 21. Sudheesh Minni (2016), Cellars of the Inferno, Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers.

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22. Ibid. 23. S. Kelkar (2011), Lost Years of the RSS, New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. 24. https://thewire.in/caste/a-reporter-saw-the-bhima-koregaon-violencecoming-now-he-fears-for-his-life 25. Hindustan Times (2018), https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/ hindu-right-wing-group-sanatan-sanstha-planned-blast-at-pune-sunburn-festival-cops/story-67nsqrsoA6ESLB299fNMVK.html, 29 August 2018; https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/ ats-names-sanatan-sanstha-members-in-arms-haul-case/articleshow/66962157.cms 26. R. Dayal (1998), A Life of Our Times, Orient Longman, pp. 93-4. 27. S. Nair (2016),‘Refrain in Sangh Turf: Cards Will Give us Power,’ Indian Express, 23 August 2016, https://indianexpress.com/article/india/ india-news-india/maharashtra-government-beef-ban-gau-rakshak-idcards-animal-husbandry-modi-sangh-turf-2991489/ 28. H.S. Bal (2019), The Takeover in The Caravan, April 2019, pp. 22-32. 29. A. Sethi (2015), ‘The Mystery of India’s Deadly Exam Scam’, The Guardian, 17 October 2015. 30. Pradipti Jayaram and Apuurva Sridharan (2015),‘All You Need to Know about the Vyapam Scam’, The Hindu, 9 July 2015. 31. W.K. Anderson and S.D. Damle (2018), The RSS: A View to the Inside, Gurgaon: Penguin Viking. 32. D. Spitz Sr (1997), ‘The RSS and Hindu Militancy in 1980s’, in T.J. Sienkewicz and J.E. Betts (eds.), Festschrift in Honor of Charles Speel Illinois: Monmouth College. 33. W.K. Anderson and S.D. Damle (2018), The RSS: A View to the Inside, op. cit. 34. Anderson (2019),‘Is RSS Still a “Cultural” Organization?’, BusinessLine, 21 May 2019, https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/is-rssstill-a-cultural-organization/article27198964.ece 35. L. McKean (1995), Divine Enterprise, Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 36. Indian Express (2014), ‘RSS Claims its Registered Rapid Growth in Recent Years’, 22 December 2014. 37. Ramu Bhagwat (2017),‘RSS Objects to Claim Over its Name’, TOI, 8 September 2017. 38. Sarfaraz Ahmed (2017),‘HC Admits Moons Plea to Register his Society as RSS’, TOI, 11 October 2017.

382

Tipping Point

39. W.K. Anderson and S.D. Damle (2018), The RSS: A View to the Inside, op. cit. 40. Sudheesh Minni (2016), Cellars of the Inferno, Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers. 41. B. Meghwanshi (2020), I Could Not be a Hindu, New Delhi: Navayana. 42. Annual Report of RSS presented by the Sarkaryavah at the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha at Gwalior on 8 March 2019 at 9 a.m., http://rss.org/Encyc/2019/3/8/rss-annual-report-2019.html 43. A.G. Noorani (2019), The RSS, New Delhi: Left Word. 44. Ibid., Organiser, 11 December 2016. 45. A. Verghese (2016), The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence, Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. 46. Ian Copland (2005), State Community and Neighbourhood in Princely North India, c.1900-1950, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 47. Ibid. 48. D. Kooiman (1995),‘Communalism and Indian Princely States’, Economic and Political Weekly, 26 August, pp. 2123-33. 49. Ian Copland (2005), State Community and Neighbourhood in Princely North India, op. cit. 50. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ayodhya-ram-temple-ground-breaking-ceremony-live-updates/article32273442.ece 51. M. Bhagavan (2008), ‘Princely States and the Hindu Imaginary: Exploring the Cartography of Hindu Nationalism in Colonial India’, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 67, no. 3 pp. 881-915. 52. Ian Copland (2005), State Community and Neighbourhood in Princely North India, op. cit. 53. Rajesh Ramachandran (2004),‘Princes and the Parivar’, Times of India, 17 April 2004. 54. Ibid. 55. R. Guha (2007), Indian After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, New York: HarperCollins. 56. Tim Mc Grick (1992), ‘Maharajas do Battle to Restore their Honour’, The Independent, 19 December, Independent Online. 57. Arvind Datar (2013), ‘Who Betrayed Sardar Patel’, The Hindu, 19 November. 58. Tim Mc Grick (1992), ‘Maharajas do Battle to Restore their Honour’, op. cit. 59. D. Anderson, Alok Pant (1970), ‘Student Politics at Allahabad University-II’, Economic and Political Weekly, 13 June 1970, pp. 941-7.

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383

60. W. Anderson (1972), ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-I’, Economic and Political Weekly, 11 March 1972, pp. 589-97. 61. Walter Anderson (1972), ‘The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-II, III, IV’, Economic and Political Weekly, 18 March, 25 March, 1 April 1972 respectively. 62. Ibid., 1 April 1972, p. 727. 63. W.K. Anderson (2018), Remembering Atal Bihari Vajpayee: His Poetry and His Pauses, 19 August. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ news/politics-and-nation/remembering-atal-biharivajpayee-his-poetry-and-his-pauses/articleshow/65455584.cms 64. http://www.fairfaxgroup.us/bio_hershman.php 65. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP81M00980R000800100017- 5/ page/n0 66. Sumit Kumar Singh (2017), ‘Found Millions from Bofors in Overseas Accounts’, DNA, 19 October 2017. 67. Sumit Kumar Singh (2018), ‘Nobody Wants to Know Truth, Says Michael J. Hershman, First Investigator in Bofors Case’, DNA, 2 July 2018. 68. Walter K. Andersen, Shridhar D. Damle, (1987), The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, Delhi: Vistaar Publications. 69. D. Jha (2018),‘Instead of Offering Objective Analysis, Andersen-Damle Book Helps RSS Perpetuate Convenient Myths’, Scroll-In, 20 August 2018. 70. D.K. Jha (2018), ‘Shridhar Damle: Modi Gave Idea for RSS Book; Promotions Deliberately Focused on White-skinned Andersen’, The Caravan, New Delhi, 6 September 2018. 71. https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/society-the-arts/books/ story/19880831-book-review-the-brotherhood-in-saffron-by-walterk.-anderson-and-shridhar-damle-797638-1988-08-31 72. S. Chaturvedi (2017), I am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP’s Digital Army, New Delhi: Juggernaut Books. 73. N.J. Villatt (2019), ‘The Saffron Siege’, The Caravan, pp. 44-63. 74. C. Jaffrelot (2019), The Fate of Secularism in India, in BJP in Power, Indian Democracy and Religious Nationalism, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/04/04/ fate-of-secularism-in-india-pub-78689 75. https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/siddhivinayak-hundi-rich-temple-india-demonetization-352322-2016-11-16

384

Tipping Point

76. R.N. Bhaskar (2016), ‘Courting Gods: The Supreme Court Attempts to Rescue India’s Temples’, The Hindu. 77. Subramanian Swamy (2014),‘Freeing Temples from State Control’, The Hindu, 20 January. 78. S. Singh (2016),‘At Last: Subramanian Swamy gets nominated to Rajya Sabha’, Firstpost, 22 April 2016, https://www.firstpost.com/politics/ subramanian-swamy-rajya-sabha-nda-narendra-modi-mp-bjp-congress-2744102.html 79. N. Villatt (2019), ‘The Saffron Siege’, The Caravan, pp. 43-63. 80. J.S. Hirst (2016),‘Negotiating Secularity: Indira Gandhi, Anandamayi Ma, and Eliya Raja of Travancore’, International Journal of Hindu Studies, 20, 2, pp. 159-98. 81. Ibid. 82. W. Doniger (2015), The Hindus, New Delhi: Speaking Tiger. 83. Ibid. 84. M. Katju (2003), Vishva Hindu Parishad and Indian Politics, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. 85. L. McKean (1995), Divine Enterprise, Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 86. Damle Anderson (2018), The RSS: A View to the Inside, Penguin Viking. 87. M. Katju (2003), Vishva Hindu Parishad and Indian Politics, op. cit. 88. H.K. Vyas (1983), Vishva Hindu Parishad, New Delhi: Communist Party of India Publication. 89. Damle Anderson (2018), The RSS: A View to the Inside, op. cit. 90. L. McKean (1995), Divine Enterprise, Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 91. P. Friedrich (2020), Saffron Fascists, self-published, pp. 15-16. 92. M. Katju (2003), Vishva Hindu Parishad and Indian Politics, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. 93. L. McKean (1995), Divine Enterprise, Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 94. Varghese K. George (2018), ‘World Hindu Congress Ends with Calls for Hindu Unity, Resolves to Fight “Fake News”’, The Hindu, 10 September 2018. 95. Times of India (2002), ‘ Where do RSS Funds Come From?’, 20 November 2002. 96. ‘The Foreign Exchange of Hate,’ http://www.stopfundinghate.org. 97. B. Prabhakar (2012), ‘How an American Lobbying Company Apco Worldwide Markets Narendra Modi to the World’, Economic Times,

Far Right at the Centre

98. 99 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117.

385

9 December 2012. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ news/company/corporate-trends/how-an-american-lobbyingcompany-apco-worldwide-markets-narendra-modi-to-the-world/ articleshow/17537402.cms R. Schroeder (2018), Social Theory After the Internet: Media, Technology, and Globalization, London: UCL Press. J. Ashley Tellis (2018), Narendra Modi and US: India Relationship, https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/11/01/narendra-modiand-u.s.-india-relations-pub-77861 Time (2014), ‘The 2014 Elections are the Most Expensive Ever Held in India’, 11 April, 2014 https://time.com/33062/indiaelections-expenditure/ https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/overview-india/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/04/ india-misinformation-election-fake-news/586123/ B. Chandra, M. Mukherjee and A. Mukherjee (2008), India Since Independence, New Delhi: Penguin Books. P. Jayakar (1992), Indira Gandhi, New Delhi: Penguin. Ibid. B. Chandra, M. Mukherjee and A. Mukherjee (2008), India Since Independence, op. cit. A. Ahmad (2004), On Communalism and Globalization, New Delhi: Three Essays Collective. Ibid. L. Mc Kean (1996), Divine Enterprise, Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ibid. Ibid. P.V.N. Rao (2006), Ayodhya, New Delhi: Penguin Random House. W.K. Anderson and S.D. Damle (2018), The RSS: A View to the Inside, op. cit. https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/ 19860515-pakistan-involvement-in-sikh-terrorism-in-punjab-basedon-solid-evidence-india-800879-1986-05-15 h t t p s : / / w w w. c i a . g o v / l i b r a r y / r e a d i n g r o o m / d o c s / C I ARDP06T00412R000606740001-7.pdf G.B.S. Sidhu (2020), The Khalistan Conspiracy, Noida: HarperCollins, p. 6. Ibid.

386

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118. https://www.dailypioneer.com/2014/state-editions/amarinder-namesbjp-rss-leaders-involved-in-1984-riots.html 119. R. Guha (2017), India After Gandhi, New Delhi: Picador India, p. 623. 120. P.V.N. Rao (2006), Ayodhya, New Delhi: Penguin Random House. 121. I.K. Cheema (2017), ‘Constitutional and Legal Challenges Faced by Religious Minorities in India’, US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) K. Schultz (2019), ‘Murders of Religious Minorities in India Go Unpunished, Report Finds’, New York Times, 18 February 2019. https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/world/asia/india-cow-religious-attacks.html BBC (2019), ‘India’s Muslims Fear for their Future Under Narendra Modi’, 16 May 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india48278441 R. Ayyub (2018),‘Mobs are Killing Muslims in India. Why is No One Stopping Them?’, The Guardian, 20 July 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/20/mobs-killing-muslimsindia-narendra-modi-bjp E. Griswold (2019),‘The Violent Toll of Hindu Nationalism in India’, The New Yorker, 5 March 2019. 122. Poulomi Saha (2020),‘Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra: PM Modi Announces Formation of Ayodhya Temple Trust’, 5 February 2020, https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/ayodhya-ram-temple-trustpm-narendra-modi-announces-in-lok-sabha-1643403-2020-02-05 123. Manu Joseph (2012), ‘Shaking Off the Horror of the Past in India,’ New York Times, 15 February 2012. 124. Ibid. 125. A. Ahmad (2004), On Communalism and Globalization, New Delhi: Three Essays Collective. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid. 128. A. Kalhan (2018), A Brief History of Poverty Alleviation in Neo Liberal Times, New Delhi: Manohar. 129. A. Subramanian (2019),‘What about Developing Countries,’ in J. Cohen (ed.), Economics After Neoliberalism, Cambridge, MA: Boston Review. 130. A. Rashid (2008), Descent into Chaos, London: Allen Lane. 131. A. Mohan (2019), ‘Data Shows BJP Bagged 92 per cent of Corporate Donations to Political Parties. https://www.business-standard.com/ article/economy-policy/data-shows-bjp-bagged-92-of-corporatedonations-to-political-parties-119011701405_1.html

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132. P. Friedrich (2020), Saffron Fascists, self-published, pp. 23-9, 113-26. 133. W.K. Anderson and S.D. Damle (2018), The RSS: A View to the Inside, op. cit. 134. https://www.livemint.com/news/india/supreme-court-agrees-to-hearissues-related-to-electoral-bonds-1554463480995.html 135. Association for Democratic Reform, 2019. 136. Sudheesh Minni (2016), Cellars of the Inferno: Confessions of an RSS Precharak, Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha Publishers.

Glossary

Aam Aadmi Party Aaya ram, gaya ram Ahimsa Akalis Aryavarta Ashram Bania Bhagwa-Dhwaj Bhajans Bhakti Bharat Mata ki Jai! Bhoodan Biradri Brahmo Samaj Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti Chokri Dalit Darbari Dharma Dharmacharayas Garibi Hatao Gadar Gau Rakshaks Ghar Wapasi Gram Adalat

Common man’s political party Mister come, mister go Non-violence A political party of Sikhs India as the land of Aryas A hermitage, monastic community Trader Saffron flag, assumed to be a symbol of Hindu kings Devotional songs Devotion Salutions to mother India Gift of Land Kinship related groups Hindu reformist movement in Bengal Students struggle committee Unimportant young girl Backwards class lower caste Pertaining to the court Duty Followers of righteousness Remove Poverty Betrayer – name of a party Cow protectors Reconverting muslims to hinduism Village level court

390 Gram Jana-Sangharsha Samitis Guru Guru-Shishya Gurudakshina Hatao Hindu Hriday Samrat Hartals Hijrat Inquilab Jagatgurus Janmabhoomi Janta-Sarkar Jat Jatis Karma Kar Sevaks Khaksars Khalifa Lathi Loknayak, Loknayakji Love Jihad Manoos Mantra Messiah Mitra Mandals Mlecchas Moksha Muhajir Mujahideen Mukh Pracharak Nav Nirman Navayug

Glossary Village level people’s struggle committees Teacher Teacher-Student Donation to the teacher Remove Emperor of hindu hearts Strike Migration Revolution – a common slogan Teachers to the world Birth place People’s government Land owners or tillers Lineage related groups Work occupation Volunteer-workers A political party in Punjab Supreme political head of muslims Baton People’s leader or director A muslim marrying a hindu female and thereby converting her Men/people Chant Saviour Friends circles or groups Foreigners or impure ones Transcednent state, enlightenment, emancipation Migrants Those who fight on behalf of the faith in Allah Principal leader – literally preacher New rebuilding of something, here politics New Age newspaper

Glossary Panchsheel Parishad Parivar Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Pracharak Pujan Purna Swaraj Qurbani Raiyatwari Raja Ram Shila Pujan Ramjanambhoomi Ramraj Rashtraya Rath Razakars Ryots Sadhus Samitis Samrat Sammelan Sanatana Sanatanis Sanghatanist Sant Sanskritization Sanyasi Sarsanghchalak Sarvodaya Satya Satyagraha Shakha

391

India-China agreement based on 5 principles Council Family Non-resident Indian Day Preacher/Teacher Worship Complete independence Sacrifice usually of a animal or person’s life Tenants King Worship of foundation stone for Ram temple Place of birth of Ram (hindu deity) Hindu utopia National Chariot A political party in Hyderabad Tenant Ascetics Committees Emperor Convention Eternal Of the eternal faith/Orthodox Hindus Member of RSS Saint – an ancient Hindu word Process by which lower castes emulate the practices and beliefs of the upper castes in Hindu society Hermit The chief administrator Welfare Association Truth Policy of passive political resistance Branch

392 Shankaracharyas Shila Shivashahi Shuddhi Sabhas Suchna ke elawa sochna nahin hai Swamis Swaraj Swayamsevaks Thokashai Tirth Kshetra Tilak Trishuls Vastu Vastu shastra Vasudeva Kutumbh Vishva Vishva Hindu Parishad Yajana Yashasvi houn ya Yuva Jan Sabha Zamindar

Glossary Head of a particular, influential Hindu sect founded by Shankar in 10 th Century Stone, here foundation stone Rule of Shivaji/reign of Shivaji Religious reconverting societies Information and nothing else Hindu male religious teacher Self government Volunteers Rough physical power Pilgrimage place Mark worn by Hindus on the forehead Trident – a hindu symbol of lord Shiva Object Science of architecture in Hindu tradition God’s family World Hindu World council Formal ceremony Be successful and come back Youth committee Landlords big and small, big one socially very influential in 80% rural society

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Index

1952 general elections 242, 244, 266, 326 1962 general elections 122, 274 1966 general elections 253 1967 general elections 131, 136 1980 general elections 355 1989 elections 330: National Front formed 357 2004 general elections 369 2014 general elections 50, 307, 353, 354, 369 24th Constitution Amendment Bill 1970 325 ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) 79, 149, 157, 181, 308, 327: role in the Gujarat mobilization 151 Act of 1919 49 agenda of unity (essential for Independence) 118 ahimsa (non-violence) 40 Aiyar, C.P. Ramaswamy 200 Akhand Hindu Rashtra 287 Akhand Hindustan 321 All India Muslim League (AIML) 59 Ambedkar, B.R. 44-5: 1936 lecture ‘Annihilation of Caste’ 45; Annihilation of Caste to Riddles of Hinduism 44-5; myriad changing jatis 45; social reform

45; social status and property 46; society, egalitarian structure of 45; static meaning of dharma as custom or tradition 45 American Hindus 338-9 Ananda Math 61 Anderson, Walter K. 149, 152, 307, 326-8, 331-2, 343: association with the RSS 327; Bala Rao Deoras 327; fascination with Atal Bihari Vajpayee 328-9; interest in Indian politics 327 Angre, Sardar 324 anti-colonial movement 41, 94, 135 anti-Imperial struggle 41, 227-8 anti-Indira agitations 294 anti-Islamic rhetoric 117-18 Anti-Mandal protests 358 anti-Stalin literature 154 Apco Worldwide 353 Arya Samaj reform movement 62 Auto-Pin (India) in Faridabad 169 Baroda 75, 87, 111, 320, 321: compulsory primary education 320 Bauer, Otto 37 Baxter, Craig 326 Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) 75, 78, 79, 151, 155, 157, 324, 338-40, 342, 343, 346

408

Index

Bharatiya Kisan Sangh 326 Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) 78, 79, 169, 308, 312 Bhave, Vinoba 165, 177, 182, 184, 195 Bhima Koregaon region 278: violence in 310 Bhoodan movement 177, 204, 205 Bihar Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti (BCSS) 180-1 Bihar movement 155, 178, 181, 183, 189, 190, 191, 193, 210 Bofors scam 330, 331 Bolshevik agents 229 Bolshevik menace 230 Bolshevik Revolution 91, 224, 230 Bombay Model 276-87: Bombay Municipal Corporation 285; Dalit Panthers 286; era of retaliatory war 287; far right political advance 278; fascist groups based on religion 276; high-caste intelligentsia in Pune 277; Hindu Hriday Samrat 286; industrialist-Congress nexus, helped SS in breaking up the left unions 284; inter-caste violence at Bhima Koregaon 278; Jamaat-i-Islami 286; K.S. Thackeray 277; Lumpen proletariat 282; Marathi speaking immigrant labour, distress of 280; Mitra Mandals (friendship groups) 281; RSS, Dadar Shakha of 282; Samyukta Maharashtra Movement (SMM) 278-9; Samyukta Maharashtra Sabha 277; Shiv Sena (SS), formation of 281; upper-caste, Marathi speaking family of

Thackeray 280; wars against ‘Muslim’ domination 277 British rail companies 52 Brotherhood in Saffron 331-2 Carras, Mary 219 Chatterji, Bhola 178, 179 Church-state relationship 321 civilization 39-40 class-based projects 38 colonial status 36, 227 Comintern 230, 231, 233-5, 237 Commissions of Inquiry against political leaders 221, 300, 309 common culture 38, 80 commonality 37 Communal pot through 1980s to 1990s 359-70: 1991 Lok Sabha election manifesto 368-9; Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Parishad 360; anti-Sikh riots of 1984 366; Bajrang Dal 365; Bharat Mata Mandir, served on its Central Margdarshak Mandal 362; Citizenship Act 369-70; Communal aggressions 360; Ekatmata Yatra Yajana chariot procession 361-3; endemic communal violence 359-60; far right movements spread to the north 361; Hindu Code Bill 363; Hyderabad city, communal riots from 1978 to 1984 360-1; Ram Janam Bhoomi – Babri Masjid 363-4, 366; Kanyakumari, clashes between the RSS and Roman Catholics 360; Karnataka, May 1983, Hindu-Muslim riots 361; Kerala, 1983, Nilackalas centre

Index of tensions between Catholics and Hindus 360; Muslim Babri Masjid Action Committee 366; October 1984, PM Indira Gandhi assassinated 365; Ram Shila Pujan 366; Shah Bano case 363; Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Tirth Kshetra 370 Communist Left, travails and dilemmas of 223-36: Bengali literary resurgence 224; Bolshevik agents 229-30; Calcutta jute mill riots of the mid-1890s 226; Central Executive Committee (CEC) 231-2; class based rebellion 223-4; class based trade union consciousness 226; communist existence in India 230; communist ideology, class abhorrence of 230; Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU) 235; dominant ideology within the Congress 233; Draft Platform of Action of the CPI 235; far right position 224; fledgling communist groups functioned independently across India 230-1; Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1929 233; General Council of the International Working Man’s Association 224; Indian working class, tendency for 226; International Socialist Congress, 1904 224; intra-party dissentions 236; League against Gandhism 233; limited and delayed civil disobedience 236; local leadership, pool of 227; Marxism Leninism 227;

409

middle-class philanthropy 226; muhajirs 228; multi-class fronts 232; Namboodiripad 225; national liberation, forces of 227; pre-industrial societies 226; restrictions on the communists 231; Revolutionary left wing parties 227; Soumyendranath Tagore 225; The Home Political Files of 1920s 230; The United Front 236; theoretical education and debate 225; urban identity 226; Workers and Peasants Parties (WPP) 232; working class strikes 226 Communist Manifesto 40 Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) 234 Communist Party, rupture in 250-4: anti-Congressism’ in 1965-6 252; breakdown in the Congress hegemony through the 1960s 253; charge of international alliances beyond nationalism 251; Hypernationalism 251-2; Indian monopoly capital 254; Intraparty situation 250; radicals within the movement rejected the possibility of peaceful transition to socialism 250 Communists in Free India 237-50: anti-imperialist sentiments 241; Bombay Plan 245; Chou-Nehru (Panchsheel) declaration for peaceful co-existence and sovereignty 241; Comintern (International Communist Movement) 237-8; Comrade Ranadive 237; CPI accepted

410

Index

parliamentary democracy 242; CPM did not believe that parliamentary means were enough 243; Education Bill to put some curbs on the private management of education institutions 246; Food deficiency in Kerala 247; India sided with the Anglo-American block in the Security Council of the UN 240; political leadership against the communist state government in Kerala 247-8; South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) 241; struggle against imperialism 237; Telangana struggle 237 Communists, self-analysis by 259-64: 1978 Draft Resolution (for tenth Congress of CPM) 260-1; anti-democratic measures taken by the Central Government against working people 260; anti-emergency struggle and the electoral victory 261-2; Communist movements all over the region 263; CPM collaboration with other parties both in pre- and postemergency period 260; deterioration in the CPI-CPM relations 259; Operation Cyclone 262; opposition parties chose extra parliamentary activity 260; RSS, programmes of religious agitations to communalize society 262-3; tendencies of one-party dictatorship 260 competitive liberal democracy 220

comprehensive anti-poverty agenda 218 Congress (I) 259, 355, 372 Congress (R) 137-8 Congress Forum for Socialist Action (CFSA) 129 Congress split in 1969 133-41: AICC and Congress working committee adopted a radical Ten Point Programme 137; All India Congress Committee (AICC) 135; All India Railway strike 141; anti-Indira movement 141; Arab-Israel war of June 1967 134; Congress Working Committee 135; Haksar, P.N. 136; managing agency system 139-40 controversial-public policy issues 308 COVID-19 scenario, contraction in 302 Communist Party of India (CPI) 92, 94-5, 101, 102, 136, 149, 151, 154, 164, 166, 169, 181, 195, 197-8, 211, 228-31, 233, 238-40, 242-8, 250-4, 259, 261-3, 265, 274, 278, 279, 285: AITUC of the Congress Party 234; expected to launch convergent movements 152 CPI (M)/CPM 132, 151, 152, 161, 167, 197, 243, 248-9, 251-4, 256-62, 309 CPI (ML) 230, 257 Dange, S.S. 92, 225, 238 Das Kapital 40 Depressed classes 50 Desai, Morarji, Prime Minister 125,

Index 127, 134, 137, 143, 150, 155, 167-1: Antyodaya 170; centre modified the 47th amendment 167; food for work programme 170; internal bickering 170-1; JPs total revolution 168; propertied intermediate castes in the Gangetic plain 170; Public Law (PL) 480 170; Rural Employment Guarantee scheme 170; support for Janata party began to evaporate 167; TPP 167-8; urban areas, Janata party’s support 168 Descent of Man 40 direct and indirect taxes, evasion of 222 Division of labour 46, 71, 320-1 early left-wing 90 egalitarian social order 325 Ekal Vidyalaya scheme (one-teacher schools run in tribal areas) 352 Ekal Vidyalayas (One Teacher Schools) 351 electioneering strategy 353: professional PR firms 353 electoral competition 21, 100, 242, 249, 294, 320 elite propertied society 39 emergency of 1975 21, 159-67, 177, 213, 258: anti-emergency movement 164-5; antiemergency sentiments thrived in the jails 162; bureaucracy and police became increasingly authoritarian 162; central family planning board created 163; exposed fundamental fault lines in India’s liberal democracy 160;

411

four-point programme 162-3; fragility of its new democratic institutions 160-1; Indira Gandhi, precipitous dependency on her younger son 163-4; Jana Sangh 165; Janata Party 165; prolonged infatuation with strong, charismatic leaders 161-2; speed with which mass protests and resistance died down 161; Swamy, Subramanian 165-6 Essentials of Hindutva 70 Executive Intelligence Review 212-13 Far Right, doctrines of 79-85: Golwalkar 82-5; Golwalkar’s lifetime communism 84; impact of Muslim invasions 80; resentment against the Muslims 83; Savarkar 79-82; western type of parliamentary democracy 83 Far right wing 18, 21-5, 28-9, 119: during 1967-77, ambitions of 120; Hindu formations of 119 Far right will 111, 118 Far right, recent developments 302: Babri Masjid and Gujarat communal riots, unforgettable images 303; Babri Masjid in 1992 302; BJP, single largest party in the Parliament in 1996 306-7; economic liberalization 306; global free market completion, state role in safeguarding the capitalist 306; Gujarat 2002 302; Gujarat disturbances 302-3; Gujarat, tribal populations urged on by various RSS based organizations

412

Index

304; Pseudo secularists 304; religious mythology on TV 305; secular TV programmes 305 First Indian War of Independence, The 81 Food for Freedom shipments 222 Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973 138 Gandhi assassination case 108, 324 Gandhi Peace Foundation 212 Gandhi, M.K. 38, 40, 41, 77, 87, 309: assassination and trial 102-11; assassination, widespread condemnation for the RSS 107-8; economic basis of exploitation 105; Gandhi’s appeal lay in his vague economic ideas 104-5; Indians, ‘inner environment’ of 40-1; rebuffing modern ideas of the nation 40; Kapur Commission 109-10; Non-violence and Satyagraha 104; passive resistance (Satyagraha) campaigns 104; shrewd tactician 106; study law in England and return to assume premiership 103-4; unquestioned leadership of the Congress 41; working class localities in England 105-6 Gandhi, Indira 119, 121, 124, 125, 126, 140, 154, 161, 163, 254, 257-9, 292-3, 325, 354-6, 365, 375: and JP 187-94; broadcast to the nation 142; developed a precipitous dependency on Sanjay Gandhi 163-4, 166-7; did not use her emergency powers to set about

implementing liberalizing polices 212; discredited for the Emergency rule 121; emerged as a world leader in magnificent style 136; government of, confrontation by JP 151; limitations of socialism by legislation 219-20; Nagpur resolution 121-2; Nagpur session Congress in 1959 121; period after the Indo-Chinese war 122; persuasion and legislation, restructuring social and economic relations 220; recalled substantial financial support for the opposition campaign 143; removing from office, democratic process to ‘total revolution’ by JP 182; socialism, limitations of 219-20; used her parliamentary majority to end the privy purse 325; voted PM 127-33 Gandhi, Indira, voted PM 127-33: Jan Sangh organized a fierce country wide agitation 129; paid immediate attention to Punjab 128 Gandhi, Rajiv 293, 329-31, 356-7, 368: as Prime Minister 356-7; non-aligned movement by giving it a new purpose 331; talked of a CIA conspiracy against his government 330 Gandhi, Sanjay 156, 161-4, 166, 212, 365 Gandhian hypocrisy 356 Garibi hatao 218 Gau rakshaks 311 Girni Kamgar Unions 97, 234

Index Glimpses of World History 94 Golaknath judgment 219 Government of Maharashtra: took over the management of important Hindu shrines and temples 335 Green Revolution 126, 170, 211, 218 Gujarat model 22, 180, 301 Gujarat movement 177 Gujarat Version 2002 370-4: caste analysis of the BJP vote 373-4; Hindu rioters in Gujarat 371; Modi’s tenure as Chief Minister 372-3; Muslim threat to Modi 372-3 Guru Dakshina 75, 86, 315-18 Hershman, Michael J. 329, 331 Hind Swaraj 38, 104 Hindu civilization 19, 84 Hindu Mahasabha 43, 59, 63, 64, 73, 74, 75, 77, 81, 87, 100, 107, 108-11, 117, 119, 244, 271, 274, 275, 285, 307, 320-2, 324, 364 Hindu Mahasabha, representation of 66-71: aggressive Hindu nationalism 69; Bengal, reform and Hindu revival 66; Central Khilafat Committee 67; Haj pilgrimage to Mecca 67; Hindu Sangathan 70; idea of Hindu Rashtra 70-1; Khilafat movement, support of Gandhi 67; Moplas in Malabar, uprising of 67; Morley-Minto constitutional reforms 66; non-brahmin movements 69; non-cooperation movement 68;

413

Punjab Alienation of Land Act 66; Sanatanis 66; Swaraj Party 68; V.D. Savarkar 70 Hindu majoritarian consciousness 119-20 Hindu movements 69: attract foreigners who often travel to India 338 Hindu nationalism 43, 55, 69, 70, 72, 79, 82, 100, 378 Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, The 332-3 Hindu Rashtra 70, 72, 300, 338, 346, 373 Hindu right wing organizations 98 Hindu Sabha movement 66-7 Hindu Students’ Council (HSC) in the US 351 Hindu temples 333-5, 339, 344, 345: wealth and social power of 333 Hindutva politics 292 Human development indices 376 IDRF 349-52: and the RSS, links between 351; applied for tax exemption certificates 350; Bhishma Agnihotri 351; corporate funding 349-50; pro-Hindu stand 350; technical job-oriented education 352; Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA) 350 imagined nation 38-9 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 223, 260 INC (Indian National Congress) 24, 36, 39, 48, 51, 52, 54, 55, 63, 65, 66, 89, 99, 122, 224, 234: leadership of 36

414

Index

India’s far right 79-85: Aryan habitation 80; economic inequality 84; Gandhian socialist movement ‘Bhoodan’ as ‘reactionary’ 84; Golwalkar as RSS chief 82; Golwalkar’s lifetime communism 84; Hindu Mahasabha, presidential address to 81; idea of dignity of labour 84; Indian Christians and Muslims 80; mlecchas 82; parliamentary democracy, western type of 83; pro-Hindu tradition postures 79; resentment against the Muslims 83; Rig Veda and its myths 80; Savarkar and Golwalkar’s views 85; ‘self ’ against a ‘non-self ’ 80-81; upper-caste racism 82; V.D. Savarkar 79; Viceroy’s report to the Secretary of State for India 81; vision for the future 321-2 Indian Constitutional Reform 49 Indian domestic economy 256-9: alliance with USSR 258; complicated international situation 256; Naxalbari movement for land redistribution 257; urgency to create an alternative to the Congress at the centre 259; West Bengal elections soon after the 1971 war 257; West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee 258; West Bengal, situation in 256-7 Indian Independence Act, 1947 323 Indian Iron and Steel Company (IISCO) 218

Indian National Congress (INC), Hindu revival movements 55-66: 1917 episodes of rioting 60; Age of Consent Act of 1891 (against child marriage) 60; alliance of conservatives 59; ancient Aryan mystique 61; Bengal religious revivalism 61; Bhakti movement in Europe 58; Bhakti movement, egalitarian and emancipatory elements in 57; Brahmanical versions of Hinduism 58; Brahmo Samaj 60; British Orientalists 55; communal groupings 63; defence of tradition 61; electoral seats based on religion 56; eventual inclusion within the Hindu hierarchy 57; first Battle of Independence by nationalists 56; Hindu and Muslim nationalism, competitive nature of 62-3; Hindu Mahasabha 64; Hindu nationalism 55; Hindu religious systems 55-6; Hindu revivalist groups 64; Hindu revivalist movements 56; Hindu symbolism of cow protection 58-9; Hindu symbolism, hectic use of 58; Hindu-Muslim harmony 65; in the late nineteenth century 60; inclusiveness with its antinomian attitudes towards pariahs and women 57-8; Indian revivalist religious movement 58; indigenous scholarship 55; Khilafat movement 59; mid1920s Hindu-Muslim riots 60; Morley-Minto Reforms 63;

Index Montague-Chelmsford reforms 63-4; Muslim religious leaders, spread awareness and developed Muslim participation 64; Muslim revivalism led by religious conservatives 62; mutiny by the Imperialists 56; Neo-Vaishnavism 61-2; Non-cooperation Movement 64; pan Islamic Khilafat 64; rallying masses using religious symbolism 59; reform movements 56-7; religious community 63; representation of the masses from election to election 58; Sanatan Dharma Sabha 64; Sanskrit of the Vedic Age 55; Semitic religions 56-7; Tilak, aggressive and busy stonewalling social reformers 62; upper-caste property 55; Varna system 57; Vedic traditions 58 Indian National Congress (INC), who represented 50-4: A.O. Hume 50-1; caste movements 54; class based movements 54; colonial rule, economic foundations of 52; Congress leadership, core of 50; Dadabhai Naroji, influence of 50; economic issues 51; electoral politics 54; feudal trimmings 54; Hindu revivalism 53; Indian aspirations, legitimacy as representatives of 51; Indian Civil Services (ICS) or law in England 50; local associations 50; managing agency system 52; microscopic minority 51; native business men, exclusion of 52;

415

Partition of Bengal in 1905 53; professional intelligentsia 52; social divisions, basis of 54; social precedence 53-4; white supremacy type of racism 52 Indian political consciousness 118 Indian Public Trust Registration Act 1860 314 Indian Young Lawyers Association 336 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation 255 Indo-US Entrepreneurs 352 industrial capitalism 37 Industrial Revolution in England 52 ISKCON 338 Islamophobia 118 Jaffrelot, Christophe 332-3 Jan Sangh 123, 124, 127, 129, 133, 137, 140, 151, 155, 171, 185, 186-7, 267, 271, 275, 282-5, 324, 327-8, 342, 355 Janata Party 167-71, 202, 261-2, 271, 306, 317, 334, 354-5, 358, 365 JP, and Mrs. Indira Gandhi 187-94: communications with 187; convergence of opposition parties occurring around her left ward turn 189; enforcement of three day Bihar bandh 192; possibility of involving Sarvodaya workers in model self-governed ashram-like prisons 187-8; Prison Diary 187; single-minded attack on the person of Indira Gandhi 191 JP, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) in India 200-10: CIA had funded CCF

416

Index

to counter the Soviet propaganda 203; Information Research Department (IRD) 207-8; JP’s anti-communism vs Nehru’s staunch neutrality 206; Mr S.H. Vatsyayan, Secretary 201-2; Plimpton downplayed the concerns of Humes 203-4; public disclosures about the fact that CIA money had funded the CCF 209-10; Radio Free Europe 205; Soviet propaganda establishment of the late 1940s 208; strategy of promoting the non-communist Left 208; western funders tried to control Quest through editorial orders 206 JP, purpose and the appropriate manner of opposition in a liberal democracy 180-7: Bihar movement 183-4; events leading up to the emergency 185-6; Gandhian communitarian democracy 183; Gram JanaSangharsha Samitis 181; left students’ unions 181; liberal parliamentary democracy 183; parliamentary democratic system from within the 1970s 182; post-Independence break from politics 182; validity of a call to civil disobedience 184; village level Janata Sarkars 181 JP movement 152, 154, 157, 160, 163, 165, 171, 176, 178, 211, 213, 221, 292 Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case 92

Kar Sevaks 303, 367 Karaka, D.F. 200 Kendriya Karyakari Mandal 315 Kerala’s Land Reform Act 219 Khilafat movement 59, 64, 67, 117, 229 Khilafatists 79, 231 Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) 198 land ceiling law 268, 323-4 Left position 93: minority position within the Congress 293-4 Left wing, perils by legislation 144-58: 1956, Life Insurance was nationalized 146; ABVP 149-50; All India Railwaymen’s Federation (AIRF) Union 148; Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) (RSS political front) 149-50; big banks were nationalized 144; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 149; Coal Mines (nationalization) Act, 1973 145; coal mining, nationalization of 145; Defence of India Rules (DIR) 149; financial system 144; General Insurance Business (nationalization) Act 146; General Insurance Corporation (GIC) 146; Government actions against the strike 149; Indira Gandhi, strategy of legislation 146-7; Indira Gandhi’s reforms 146; Industrial Development and Regulation Act (1951) 145; Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) 149; managing agency system 144-5; Monopoly Inquiry Commission

Index 145; MRTP Act 1969 145; National Coal Development Corporation 145; National Coordination Committee for Railwaymen’s struggle 148; Nav Nirman Movement led by Gujarat students 149; Nav Nirman Samitis 149-50; Non Performing Assets (NPA) 144 Left Wing Movements 90-5: All India Students Federation, Progressive Writers Association 94; All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) of the Congress Party 94; Communist Party of India (CPI) 92, 94-5; Depression years after 1929 94; Hindu socio-political-economic caste hierarchy 91; Indian Communist Conference 92; Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA) 94, 95; Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case 92; pro-zamindar and capitalist stances of the Congress 93-4; Public Safety Bill 93; Red Trade Union Congress (RTUC) 94; social reform agenda 91 Liberal’ Right in India 267-76: 1962, general elections, the Swatantra Party, controversial political force 274-5; All India Agriculturist Federation 268; Chitpavan Brahmins’ of Poona area 271; Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) 269; Forum for Free Enterprise 268; Hindu Code Bill 272-3; Indian conservative ideology, multiple

417

intertwining strands 270; Land Ceiling Laws 268; Munshi, K.M. 273-4; Nehru had given enough cause for the conservatives to be apprehensive 268; neo-liberal reforms 267; Rajagopalachari or Rajaji 268; revivalist RSS agglutination 271; right-wing political activity has been extremely ineffectual 267; socialist elements, rise of 269; strong right-wing opposition outside the Congress 271-2; Swatantra liberals 275; Swatantra Party 268-9, 273; temple campaign 273-4 London vegetarian society 40 long war in Indochina 255-6 Lord Chelmsford 49 Lord Padmanasvami 336: vaults supposedly with immense amounts of gold and wealth 336 Madras Hindu Sabha 68-9 Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Bill 69 Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) 291 Mahatma 40 Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) 158 Mandal Commission, recommendations of 330-1, 358 Mandal Commission report 358 Masani, Minoo R. 200 mass appeal 37, 103 mass communication, machinery of 37

418

Index

material conditions 37, 51, 231 Meerut conspiracy trials 233, 235 Mehta, Asoka 130, 134, 156, 187, 200, 264, 266 Menon, M. 290 Menon, V.K. Krishna 122, 123, 139 Menon, V.P. 274 middle-classes 42, 51, 52, 54, 61, 162, 164, 246: intellectual strata of 42 mixed economy 101, 124, 220, 222 Moksha 176, 202 Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act (MRTP), 1969 138, 140 Montagu, Edwin S. 49, 63, 65 Moon, Janardhan 314 Muslim League 43, 64, 77, 94, 100, 102, 119, 120, 236, 320, 323 Namboodiripad, E.M.S. 40, 41, 117, 123, 151, 225, 235, 244, 259 Narayan, Loknayak Jayaprakash. See also JP 101, 109, 111, 122, 140, 143, 148, 176-214, 257, 334: 1962 general elections 122; addressed the second conference of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP) 195; and his favourite variety of socialism 194-7; Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan 176; came to abhor communists 153-4; decentralization in 1970s 196; democratic socialism 178; Gandhi-Subhas Bose dispute 179; gave a call to students to revive a no-Tax campaign 153; Gujarat and Bihar movements 178; ideas of Trusteeship of Property 196; Janata government

established after the 1977 elections 178; knew senior leaders of the Awami League 198; leadership of the Bihar student agitation 150-1; opposed bank nationalization 195; role in the CCF 154; Social ownership and trusteeship of workers 196; violent antigovernment agitation 178 Natarajan, S. 200 nation 37 nation building 37, 266 national boundaries 37 National Congress 43, 45 national destiny 42 National Emergency 141-4: India, state of emergency 141-2; Indo-Pakistan war for the creation of Bangladesh 142; Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices Act (MRTP Act) 143; Monopoly Capitalism 141; princely privileges, abolition of 143; resounding success of Indira Congress in the 1971 general election 143; soft state syndrome 142; split in the Congress 143; substantial financial support for the opposition campaign 143; two successive droughts and oil-price shock 143; United Progressive Alliance (UPA) 143 National Programme Committee 156 National Students Forum, UK 351 Nationalism 38 nationalist mission 36 nationalist movement 42, 43, 98, 231, 269

Index nationalist terminology 43 nationalized temple trusts 335 Nationhood 43 natural resources, nationalization of 218 Nehru, Jawahar Lal 35-6, 41-3, 47, 51, 65, 67, 72, 78, 88-90, 92, 94, 98-100, 106-8, 118-26, 129-30, 135, 166, 183, 194, 200, 206, 217-18, 220, 233, 236-7, 240-2, 244-5, 251, 253, 264-8, 270, 272, 292, 304, 322: empathy of 36; foray into the history of India 42; pan Indian public appeal 41-2; political activity and electoral campaigns 43; relations with JP 205 Nehru-Mahalanobis model 125 neo-liberal policies 377 neo-liberal reforms 378 neo-liberalism 27, 29, 359, 377: cultural indicators 359; shrill discourse of 377 Niyogi, Shankar Guha 168 northern princely states 320 no-Tax campaign 153 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries 171 organizational rules 119 Ottoman sultan 59 Overseas Friends of BJP (OFBJP) 301, 344 panchayats 36, 170, 375 parliamentary democracy 36, 79, 83, 146, 155, 183, 237-50, 257, 267, 294, 375 path dependencies 38

419

Patil, S.K. 125, 126, 127, 285 per capita earnings 221-2 political conservatives 223 post liberalization 263, 375 post-emergency Janata Party 354 Poverty eradication 375 Privatization or NGO-ization of development and welfare 349 pseudo-secularists 370 Public Relations (PR) agencies 301 Public Safety Bill 235 Purna Swaraj 89 Rao, P.V. Narasimha 305: Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization (LPG) 331 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) 59; across India 119; alliance with Akali Dal 322-3; alliance with Hindu Mahasabha 322; communal alliance 323; devoid of sophisticated social theory or reasoning 289; finances 316-18; hate thy neighbour ethos 300; Hindu Rashtra or religious nationalism 300; linked academic faculty in the university system 311; making networks with Congress rivals 322; membership 312-13; organization and project of, 85-90; popular support and sympathy among the bureaucracy 309; position in the north 310; post-Partition India, growth of 309; representation of 71; role as an apex organization 309; shakha in Kolhapur 318-19; shakha in Nagpur 318; VHP 338

420

Index

RSS, BJP and SS 287-92: 1992-3, riots of 289; administrative bias and social perceptions 289-90; anti-national crimes 289-90; caste-oriented positions and cultural purism of the RSS 288; Maharashtra, engulfed in cycles of violence 290; Maharashtrian community 288; Marathi Manoos 288; social consciousness, shift in 289; SS stint in power 291; Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) 290 RSS, representation of 71: Civil Disobedience Movement of 1940 176; Golwalkar, direct conflict with the government during the WW2 76; growth, expansion and activities of 75-6; Gurudakshina 74; Hedgewar, strategies to expand the RSS 74-5; Hindu cultural nationalism 76; Hindu nationalism 72; Hindu nationalism, re-inventor of 72; justification for its members 77; Maharashtrian Brahmins 71; national ‘Hindutva’ culture 73; observers of 71; principle of ‘follow one leader’ 74; Quit India Movement of 1942 76; Shakha programme 73 RSS, organization and project of 85-90: Calcutta session of INC, 1886, composition of delegates 89; hierarchical line of control and command 86; Hindu communal agitation 89-90;

Malaviya-Lala gang 88; membership 85-6; organizational structure 85; pracharaks 85-6; RSS funds 86-7; shakhas 85; state people’s movement 89; swayamsevaks 85 RSS finances 316-18: Gurudakshina receipts from members of the organization 317; Gurudakshina, held to be tax exempt 316; Income-tax Appellate Tribunal 316 Rath Yatra 331, 358, 365, 367 reactionary pan-Islamic movement 117 representation and electoral politics 47-50: 1892 Act 49; Dadabhai Naroji thesis 48; ideal Hindu nation 47; INC, formation of 48; Morley-Minto Reforms/ Indian Councils Act of 1909 49; nationalism, early articulation of 48; Right wing 47; Right wing or left wing forces 47 reserved subjects 50 resource mobilization 222 Right wing or left wing forces 47 Right Wing within Congress 96-102: Bombay Plan 101; Congress Socialist Party (CSP) 101; Congress Working Committee barring dual membership 100-1; constitutional reforms of 1919 97-8; end of the WW1 96; global depression 97; Indian capitalist class 97; Indian capitalists and Congress right wing, resilient relationship

Index between 101; Karachi session of the Congress 98-9; participation in actions like Gandhian Satyagrahas 99; Tripura session of the Congress in 1939 101-2; Walchand Hirachand Papers 99; war of 1914-18 96; working class organizations 97 Sabarimala temple controversy 336 Saffron Dollar project 351 Samants 324 Sampooran Kranti 211 Samyukta Maharashtra Movement (SMM) 278-80 Samyukta Maharashtra Sabha 277 Sandipini ashram 339 Sarsanghchalak 310 Satya (truth) 40 Scindia, Vijayaraje 324 Shah Commission of Inquiry 213-14 Shared class interests 119 Shastri, Lal Bahadur, Prime Minister 122, 125-7, 218: balance of payment situation 125; time in power 125 Shiv Sena (SS): did not participate in the JP movement 292; economic agenda of 291; Shiv Sena (SS), formation of 258, 277, 279, 281, 282, 284, 373: Bharatiya Kamgar Sena (BKS) 283, 284; Chitrapat Shakha 283; major organizational components 283 Singh, Harnam 168-9 Singh, V.P. 314, 329-30, 357-9, 367: hiring American detective

421

agency without consent of the PM 329-30 Social backwardness 22, 58, 106, 263, 304, 373, 376 social elite 36, 48, 66 social reformers 46, 60, 62, 376 Socialism 35, 40, 79, 84, 92, 94, 106, 119, 120, 124-5, 127, 146, 167, 181, 182, 185, 188, 195, 197, 199, 201, 219, 225, 242, 244, 249-50, 264, 266-7, 26970, 325, 340, 375: in India 124 socialists 18, 45, 46, 90, 101, 123, 129, 130, 138, 148, 149, 150, 171, 195, 197, 199, 201, 205, 207, 208, 223, 244, 252, 254, 262, 275, 286, 293, 324 Socialists, disintegration of 264-7: Congress under Nehru, Avadi session of the party 265; CSP activities and discussions forced the Congress to think of issues 265; distinct socialist ginger group working within the Congress 264; personal agendas and ambitions 266 Societies Registration Act 1950 314 socio-cultural field 120 Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) 223 State Food Trading Corporation 126 Swaminarayan Mandir 339 Swaraj 40-1, 53, 233 Swaraj Party 65, 68, 69 Swatantra Party 127, 131, 137, 207, 219, 254, 260, 267, 268, 269, 273-6, 321, 323-4, 340 Tagore, Rabindranath 35, 44: Cult of the Charkha 44; Indian

422 history, generalized representation of 44; lecture on nationalism 44; E.P. Thompson views of 44 Tamil Nadu: large temples 334; Dravidian, anti-brahmanical movement 333-4 The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (TCTSFH) 349, 350-1: growth of Hindutva outside India 351; Internal Revenue Service of the US 349-50 The Discovery of India 42 The Syndicate 122, 126, 128, 133-4, 137 Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (Tirupati Trusts) 335 Trade Disputes Act 235 transcendental meditation 338 transferred subjects 49 Transparency International 331 Twenty Point Programme (TPP) 137, 158-9, 162, 167, 211-12: rural segment of 158; Wage Freeze Act 159 U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) 329 United States-India Business Council (USIBC) 353 unity of India 44 Vande Mataram 61 Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram 326, 350 Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra 343 Vedanta movement 338 Vibrant Gujarat 353 violently polarizing electoral strategy 378-9

Index Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) 301, 303, 314, 321, 326, 333, 337-48, 349, 351, 361-7, 371, 373: aim of 340-1; Bajrang Dal for the youth 348; Board of trustee 348; Durga Vahini for women and for tribal welfare 349; elaborate training camps 345; expansion into America 340; first World Hindu Conference 339-40; Hindu Ekat Yatra 347; Hindu Rashtra 346-7; history 339-40; India’s per capita government expenditure in the social sector 349; Indian level secretaries and joint secretaries 348; Maharshi Vedavyas Mahanagar venue at Prayag 342; mid-1980s, intense domestic, mass based, politicoreligious action plan 343; Migrants, gravitate to symbols of the culture and ideology 337-8; NRI based activity 345-6; Ram Janmabhoomi’ campaign, April 1992 344; Second World Hindu Conference 341-2; Shivram Shankar Apte 340-1; Swami Chinamayananda, found an active missionary to solidify Hinduism 345; third World Hindu Conference 346; training of the RSS cadre in organization 346 Vyas Poornima/Dakshina Day (donation day) 315 wage freeze 147, 223 Waze Freeze Act 159

Index We or Nationhood Defined 76 western countries 128: serious economic crisis for 256 White Paper 123, 252

423

White Papers in the Parliament 123-4 Who is a Hindu? 79 World wide web of temples 336-7