Two Disenchanted Swayamsevaks

The latest issue of Outlook is entirely dedicated to the centenary of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, RSS, an organisation that claims to be the custodian of India’s culture and morality. I would like to present here only two of the umpteen writers who are presented in the magazine.

1. Anand Kshirsagar

Kshirsagar was introduced to RSS as a boy by his family with good intentions. They wanted him to be educated by a Brahmin teacher who would instil in him better Sanskar (manners). The young boy was charmed by the pride of the Hindu identity lent by the organisation, particularly because he came from a Dalit colony in Pune. The upper caste Hindus thought of people like him as “the muck of the city – unseen, unnamed, and best left forgotten.” The RSS seemed to offer him an opportunity to be not only seen but respected too. 

The boy took his education seriously. “By 15, I had devoured the writings of Savarkar, Golwalkar, Hegdewar, and even Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Marathi,” Kshirsagar writes. He called himself a Kattar (staunch) Hindu. He attended cultural programmes such as Shastra Puja (weapon worship) as he was to be a Hindu warrior. In short, he was a totally indoctrinated RSS foot soldier.

Disillusionment is certain to catch up when your expectations and the reality are entirely different. The police intelligence warned young Kshirsagar’s father to watch his juvenile son lest he goes astray under the tutelage of RSS. Kshirsagar was intelligent enough to understand that he was being hoodwinked by the so-called cultural and nationalist organisation, which in reality was little more than a Brahminical organisation that sought cultural, social, and political dominance over the country. His “unlearning” started immediately. He didn’t need the “borrowed pride” lent by such an organisation.

“Behind the rhetoric of ‘Hindu unity’ lies a project that mobilises Bahujan society as foot soldiers, while denying them independent social assertion,” Kshirsagar laments. He quit RSS.

2. Bhanwar Meghwanshi

Like Kshirsagar, Meghwanshi too belonged to a Dalit caste and joined RSS as a young boy. He was so much of a zealot that he was one of the karsevaks (volunteer) who demolished the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992. Disillusionment caught up with him too soon enough. Reason? The awareness that people like him, low caste, were only meant to be the “foot soldiers” of RSS. The Dalits could never rise to any high position in the organisation. 

Meghwanshi narrates a painful incident. In 1991, some senior RSS officers (high caste, obviously) visited his village. They refused to eat the food prepared in his home. Instead they offered to carry it as parcels. Later on, those parcels were found discarded by the wayside in another village. The RSS leaders refused to eat the food prepared in a Dalit home! So much for the much-vaunted Hindu pride.

Meghwanshi too quit RSS. In his interview to Outlook, he says, “Organisations like the RSS pretend to promote ‘harmony’, but in truth, they maintain the caste hierarchy. There is no path to liberation for Dalits within Hindutva.”

[My review of Meghwanshi’s book: I Could Not Be Hindu]