Narendra Modi

It was not a very reassuring spectacle. On Sunday tens of thousands of men, all dressed in a sort of paramilitary uniform, gathered in the Indian city of Pune in Maharashtra for a rally of the controversial Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose support for Premier Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been pivotal.

Yet this is the same RSS one of whose members murdered Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 and the same RSS that in 1992 demolished the Ayodhya Mosque, which led to deadly nationwide riots.

The men at this latest demonstration were dressed in neatly-pressed khaki shorts, white shirts and black hats. The organizers claimed that there were 200,000 people present but in fact the authorities had only given permission for 150,000 to gather. Journalists did not believe that many of the RSS turned up. But in fact, the numbers are immaterial. The RSS was displaying the dark face of Hindu nationalism.

The Swayamsevaks, as the uniformed men are known, formed neat and disciplined ranks through which the movement’s leader Mohan Bhagwat drove in an open-top car. There was none of the mobbing that characterizes most Indian political rallies.

Beneath a huge yellow flag, the color most closely associated with Hinduism, Bhagwat delivered a speech that was sinister rather than incendiary. There was much vague talk about protecting India’s culture, which his audience took to mean Hindu culture at the expense of the country’s no-less legitimate Muslim culture. Liberals may have scraped some brief satisfaction when he repeated his calls for a final end to the iniquitous caste system. But the really disturbing words came when Bhagwat said that his followers could not rely upon the Indian constitution for what he called “equality”. Nor did laws bring equality.

He continued; “Protecting values and culture is equally important because they have the power to change the minds of people”.

This is the same sort of classic, semi-mystic clap-trap that Hitler used on is way to power. The German Weimar constitution could not be trusted. The spirit of the German Volk alone could protect the country from malign, foreign influences. For Hitler those threats were Jews. For Bhagwat, they are Muslims. The RSS leader does not need to spell out in public his bigoted hate. It is already shared by his supporters.

This is a neo-fascist organization, which threatens India’s stability as a rich, diverse multicultural society. Its members want Muslims, Parsees, Sikhs and anyone else that do not embrace Hinduism to be subjected to it or forced to leave. In any other country, the existence of such hate-filled storm troopers with their extreme record of violence and intimidation, would have been brought to an end long ago. The political establishment would have joined together to condemn them for the narrow-minded, thuggish bully-boys that they are. But this has not happened. The RSS continues to slither on as a highly venomous snake circling the Indian body politic. Narendra Modi would surely carry the mass of BJP supporters with him if he cracked down on the RSS, outlawing it for the fourth time since it was formed. But then maybe he would rather have them operating in the open rather than conspiring in the shadows. Or maybe the problem is that, admittedly in his youth, Modi himself used to be an RSS member.

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