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THE NATION:
RSS
Underlying
Apprehensions
The
Sangh stuck to its guns. G.M. Vaidya, RSS spokesman, affirmed, "We
hope the indigenous Church will not be controlled or dominated by a foreign
Church. And will be able to take a liberal view of accepting the validity
of other religions."
At the root
of Sudarshan's statement, Vaidya explained, lay two RSS apprehensions.
First, addressing a religious congregation during his visit to India in
November 1999 Pope John Paul II had declared that in the third Christian
millennium the Church's objective would be to evangelise all of Asia.
The precedents of Europe in the first millennium and the Americas and
Africa in the second were cited.
The next
"provocation" came at August's Millennium World Peace Summit
in New York. About 1,000 spiritual representatives adopted a declaration
saying all religions were equal. At this point the Vatican intervened
and stressed the supremacy of the Catholic faith. Fears were expressed
that "by placing all religions at par, we (the Catholic Church) are
crossing all limits of tolerance".
The Vatican's
role at the Millennium Summit angered many Muslim scholars and the (Protestant)
Church of England as well. In India, due to Sudarshan, it has triggered
a political mini-crisis. Shortly after the RSS chief's admonition, Laxman
met Richard Celeste, the US ambassador, and parried fears of the BJP curbing
the rights of the Christian clergy. K. Jana Krishnamurthy, BJP vice-president,
too sought to underplay the controversy, "To the best of my understanding
of his speech, Sudarshanji has not questioned the patriotism of any section."
Nevertheless,
Sudarshan's remarks set the tone for the RSS' Rashtriya Raksha Mahashivir
(literally: National Defence Convention) that began in Agra on October
13. The Agra meeting, being attended by 75,000 swyamsevaks, will focus
on the threat of "foreign missionaries and Islamic fundamentalist
forces and the ISI". It is one of 300 such conventions planned across
the country as part of the RSS' platinum jubilee festivities.
Thanks to
the religious issue, the rest of Sudarshan's Vijay Dashmi address was
largely ignored. Among his other proposals was a plan to save Rs 10,000
crore by replacing factory-produced fertiliser with cow dung and cow urine
and promoting sugarcane waste as an alternative to petroleum. Next, chief
ministers who queued up to meet Bill Gates of Microsoft during his recent
trip to India were upbraided. Finally the usual suspects, the World Bank,
the IMF and the WTO, were snarled upon as exploitative. Swadeshi was yet
again presented as a more wholesome alternative to globalisation.
In a sense, Sudarshan's exhortation summed up the principal problem with
the RSS. Anniversaries are moments of renewal. The RSS' leadership-whether
on social issues or economic ones, whether in ideas or their delivery
mechanism-seems to prefer the comfort of a time warp.
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Relics
of old empires exist everywhere. Why can't the Mani Shankar Aiyars of
India let them be? asks INDIA TODAY Senior Editor Ravi Shankar in
