NAGPUR: Thousands of uniformed men are parading in central India carrying bamboo sticks and singing patriotic hymns, a striking show of force by the country’s million-strong Hindu ultra-nationalist group.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – the National Volunteer Organisation, or RSS – this month marked its 100th anniversary with a grand ceremony at its headquarters in Nagpur.
AFP was one of a handful of foreign media outlets granted rare access to the group, which forms the ideological and organizational backbone of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been in power since 2014.
Like the 75-year-old prime minister, critics accuse it of eroding the rights of India’s Muslim minority and undermining the secular constitution.
At the parade, RSS volunteers in white shirts, brown trousers and black hats marched, boxing and stretching in time to shrill whistles and barked orders.
“Forever I bow to thee, loving motherland! motherland of us Hindus!” they sang in a scene that evoked the paramilitary exercises of the past.
“May my life […] plead your case!”
‘Proud’
Hindus make up about 80% of India’s 1.4 billion people.
The RSS was founded in 1925 and calls itself “the world’s largest organization”, although it does not disclose membership numbers.
At the core of its vision is “Hindutva” – the belief that Hindus do not represent just a religious group but are India’s true national identity.
“They are willing to fight those who want to get in their way […] it means minorities, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and other Hindus who do not subscribe to the idea,” said historian Mridula Mukherjee.
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat uses softer language, saying that minorities were accepted but that they “should not cause division”.
Anant Pophali, 53, said three generations of his family had been involved in the group. “RSS made me proud to be an Indian,” said the insurance company’s employees.
Bloody origin
The RSS was formed during the imperial rule of the British. But it differed sharply from the independence efforts of Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party, whose leader Jawaharlal Nehru considered them “fascist in nature”.
Mukherjee said archives showed “a link between the RSS and fascist movements in Europe”.
“They have said very clearly that the way the Nazis treated the Jews should be the way our own minorities should be treated,” she said. AFP.
The RSS does not directly comment on such parallels, but Bhagwat insisted that “today we are more acceptable”.
The RSS was an armed Hindu militia during the bloody partition of India in 1947 and the creation of Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Hindu extremists blamed Gandhi for breaking India apart. A former RSS member assassinated him in 1948 and the group was banned for almost two years.
But the RSS quietly rebuilt, focusing on local units known as “shakhas” to recruit. Today it claims 83,000 of them nationwide, as well as over 50,000 schools and 120,000 social welfare projects.
At a shakha in Nagpur, Alhad Sadachar, 49, said the unit was “meant to develop unity”.
“You can get a lot of good energy, a lot of good values, like helping those in need,” he said.
On a shaka it AFP were allowed to participate, dozens of members – many middle-aged or older and not in uniform – gathered for an hour of gymnastics and singing.
But in a display of symbolism, they gathered under a saffron flag – the color of Hinduism – instead of India’s tricolour.
‘A country that is one’
RSS remains deeply political. The group re-emerged in the late 1980s and spearheaded a movement that ended with a violent mob demolishing a centuries-old mosque in Ayodhya – now replaced by a gleaming temple to the Hindu god Rama.
“That was the turning point,” said Mukherjee, the historian, adding that the RSS was “able to create a mass mobilization on religious issues which at heart became clearly anti-Muslim”.
The group helped give Modi’s BJP party an electoral landslide in 2014.
Since then, Modi – a former RSS “pracharak,” or organizer – has pursued policies that critics say marginalize India’s estimated 220 million Muslims, 15% of the population.
“There has been a clear increase in violence, lynching and hate speech since Modi took over,” said Raqib Hameed Naik, director of the US-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate.
RSS leaders deny taking part in atrocities. “These allegations are baseless,” Bhagwat said.
“Atrocities were never committed by RSS. And if it does happen, I condemn it.”
Under Modi, it has expanded its reach.”The RSS has been able to move Indian society in a direction that is more nationalist, less liberal in the Western sense,” said Swapan Dasgupta, a former nationalist parliamentarian.
But volunteer Vyankatesh Somalwar, 44, said the group was only pushing “good values”.
“The most important thing is to contribute to your country,” he said. “A country that is one, above all.”
