The Nation: The Government; RSS on the Rampage

With the BJP firmly in the saddle, the Sangh Parivar wants more say in the Government's policies and functioning.

Yashwant Sinha with RSS leader Sudarshan

September 13, a drizzly Sunday in Delhi, the speakers at the inauguration ceremony of the "Swadeshi Mela" office presented a picture in contrast. Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, dressed in a blended-silk kurta, sat somewhat stiffly through a meandering speech, which came from K.S. Sudarshan, the joint general-secretary (sahsarkaryavaha) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the saffron "high command" of the ruling BJP. As Sudarshan rambled on, lacing his critique of globalisation with earthy tales from the Indian epics, Sinha looked discomfited. Sudarshan's phraseology was hick-town, but his attacks were poisoned darts aimed at the proponents of reform, including Sinha. Sudarshan said the post-1991 reform was as bad as the pre-1991 socialist tilt. He criticised trade liberalisation because it "destroys our national self-confidence", ridiculed the "urban orientation" of economic policy-makers and lambasted the import of "job-killing" technologies which is "pushing our youngsters into terrorism and crimes".

The embarrassed finance minister rose to speak with palpable trepidation. A former bureaucrat with a modern mind and a late convert to the saffron cult, Sinha knew that his cocktail-circuit image as a reformer might blow on his face before this swadeshi Ayatollah. Playing as safe as he could, he spoke about the success of the Resurgent India Bond, said a few politically correct things about traditional capitalism being on the retreat and ended his speech -- a bit too hurriedly -- with the promise of a "compassionate economic order (karuna par adharit ...)".

Sinha's discomfiture is understandable. With the BJP in the saddle, the saffron flag (bhagwa dhwaj) of the RSS has begun casting its long shadow on the Government. Of course the RSS has velvet gloves on its mailed fist. But fist it has, with 1.25 lakh shakhas, 15 lakh student members of the ABVP (larger than the Congress' NSUI), 45 lakh members of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (the country's largest trade union organisation) and the mammoth Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), whose members nobody has counted as it not a registered body (many liken its size to the entire Catholic Church). The BJP, with its 1.7 crore "traceable" members is but a subsidiary of the Sangh. So if the Sangh asks the BJP to bend, it would better crawl.

ROLLBACK--SJM STYLE

Ban on foreign investment in the insurance sector.

No control counterguarantee for any project. "Why should the government take business risk."

Review of new exim policy.

Withdraw ban on manufacture of common salt.

No 100 per cent FDI in liquor and tobacco sectors.

To qualify as 'swadeshi', a firm must have at least 51 per cent domestic stake.

That the saffron high command is not endorsing the BJP's style of governance became evident from a rather imperious visit to Lucknow by RSS sarsanghchalak (supremo) Rajendra Singh, known in saffron circles as Rajju Bhaiyya. Riding over the head of Kalyan Singh, the BJP chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, the RSS leader summoned over 60 top IAS and IPS officers,including the chief secretary and the director-general of police, to lecture them on the state's declining law-and-order situation.

The Sangh has not even spared Home Minister L.K. Advani, considered a saffron diehard. After the massacre of 26 people, all of them Hindus, at Doda in Jammu and Kashmir VHP President Vishnu Hari Dalmia said, "Anyone would feel greatly embarassed to defend the performance of the first BJP Government at the Centre in the face of such gruesome killings." A week later on August 8, VHP Secretary General Acharya Giriraj Kishore gave Advani six months to "improve" his performance. Besides, minor skirmishes between the Sangh and the Government have continued. Panchjanya, the RSS mouthpiece, upbraided Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for forgetting to include Janmashtami (birthday of Lord Krishna) greetings in his August 15 speech and for "overlooking" the late Deendayal Upadhyaya, former Jan Sangh president and ideologue, in the laudatory but routine list of past national leaders.

The saffron intervention, however, has taken a new turn under the leadership of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), a forum of the RSS formed five years ago. A brainchild of the late Balasaheb Deoras, former RSS chief, the SJM was conceived as a protectionist bulwark against the economic liberalisation begun by the Congress government of P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1991. But it is one thing for an RSS outfit to criticise the Congress or the United Front, another to attack a government of the Sangh. Last week, the Vajpayee Government was embarassed when the SJM took its protest to the street. Its 24-day "Chetna Yatra" started on September 17 and will carry its anti-globalisation programme on 25 "raths" to 300 of the country's 500-odd districts through public rallies and musical compositions based on economic"patriotism".

Muralidhar Rao, SJM's organising secretary, is a 34-year-old RSS pracharak with a masters in political science from Osmania University and has worked for the Sangh in Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir. In December 1994, the SJM organised a "Chetna Yatra" whose thrust was opposition to India signing the GATT. Though the present war cry is against globalisation -- the SJM is opposed tooth and nail to let the Indian rupee fully float and would even like India to give up its WTO membership in 1999 -- the "Chetna Yatra '98" has carefully calibrated the jolts it can deliver to the Vajpayee Government. These are:

Roll back most of the 380 items that Commerce Minister R.K. Hegde transferred in his exim policy from the "restricted" list to the OGL;

Last week the Union Finance Ministry cleared the proposal for cigarette and tobacco majors to hold 100 per cent stakes in Indian outfits. Following the announcement, the RSS and the SJM have been at the throats of the PMO and the Finance Ministry for clearing this proposal. Every possible suspect, from Sinha to influential Parliament member Pramod Mahajan, has been contacted by the RSS high priests.

The SJM is now going to town on the Maruti agreement, with Disha, its publication in Maharashtra, criticising the "sacrifice" of the current Maruti managing director "to promote Suzuki". Mahesh Chandra Sharma, MP and convener of the "Chetna Yatra", even objects to an Andhra Pradesh Government tender for a Japanese grant-in-aid irrigation project which excludes use of Indian goods. Such exclusion "hurts sovereignty", says Sharma. At the root of the hurry to remove the ban on non-iodised salt is an urge to stop the operations of Cargill Corporation, the world's sixth largest food company (last year's sales: $51 billion) with an eye on the Indian food and agri-market, including the market for salt. Rao says the "open invitation" to Cargill will be a "disaster".

The RSS has been acting as a pressure group right from the infancy of the Vajpayee Government. Sudarshan stormed into Vajpayee's residence late at night at the time of ministry-making in March to prevent Jaswant Singh from being made the finance minister (some allude it to the prompting of interested corporates). But the high priests are not happy even with Sinha's appointment. They want a bureaucracy which is amenable. In late August, when Montek Singh Ahluwalia was being shunted out to the Planning Commission from the finance secretary's post, Keshav Kunj, the RSS office in Delhi, wanted Y. Venugopal Reddy, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, to replace him. However, on August 27 the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, instead of obliging the RSS, chose Vijay Kelkar. That put the saffron "high command" on a short fuse. On August 30 and 31, a meeting of the SJM's steering committee attended by representatives of sister organisations VHP, ABVP and, most important, Sudarshan, was held. The SJM's agitation was charted out there almost as a revolt against the Government.

However, the Sangh-SJM leadership -- a bunch of dusty men who live in the past -- would not have seen so many opportunities to interfere with the Government if it was left to itself. The man who drives from the Sangh's back seat is S. Gurumurthy, the SJM joint convenor and a Chennai-based chartered accountant. With a good many corporates on his client list, Gurumurthy perhaps has private agendas tucked in the public cause of the SJM which he espouses with great authority. When in the capital, he operates from the ministerial residence of Uma Bharati, which is also the operational headquarters of Rao. In his articles and press briefings, Gurumurthy harps on the need to seek amendments to the WTO agreement and to thwart all moves towards full convertibility of the rupee. Interestingly, both these policies suit the strategic interests of the large domestic corporations which are seeking a reprieve from foreign competition, and a stable rupee to make the import of raw material (or plant and machinery) affordable.

There is also increasing evidence of private interest masquerading as public interest and goading the army of SJM pracharaks to influence policy. The demand for extending the licence period of cellular telephone operators has thus recently surfaced on the SJM agenda, ignoring the fact that the beneficiaries of such extension may include some 100 per cent foreign-owned companies. There have also been instances of plain lobbying -- be it in the Ministry of Aviation or the I&B Ministry -- being clothed in the swadeshi attire.

The diktat of the SJM/RSS "headquarters" on economic policy is a party/government tussle that is going to explode like a time bomb. It has left the BJP leadership red-faced. Says BJP General Secretary M. Venkaiah Naidu, "I don't mind khadi towels becoming mandatory in all government guest houses but when it comes to skill and technology, we have to look outside. The swadeshi lobby must understand that it is a coalition government." The Sangh Parivar, with its Taliban-like adherence to ideology, turns its back on the fact that its "family member", the BJP, is not in power on its own but in coalition with 18 partners, some of whom swear by socialism while some others stand by regional agenda.

The RSS is demanding control in the seven states where the BJP is in power, either on its own or in coalition. In Uttar Pradesh, where the Sangh Parivar runs a virtual super-cabinet to oversee the performance of Kalyan, most ministers, including Kalyan, have capitulated under the pressure. With assembly elections due in the three mainline states of Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the RSS has wrested the levers of political power through its various fronts. In Delhi, the Sangh has placed its favourite as the lieutenant governor and is now packing the governing bodies of nearly all the 28 government colleges with its people. In Rajasthan, the Parivar is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the wily BJP Chief Minister Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, a non-conformist by saffron standards, for turf expansion by inducting more members into the Cabinet. In Madhya Pradesh, where the party is out of power, the Sangh strategy operates through Governor Bhai Mahavir, a trusted clan member.

Unlike in the north, the RSS does not have a confrontationist role in Maharashtra. In the words of Mahajan, it is a "friend, philosopher and guide". The RSS in the state goes by the political decision of the BJP and not the other way round. And the proof lies in the backing that Suresh Kalmadi got in the Lok Sabha polls despite the fact that Avinash Dharmadhikari, a former IAS officer with close links to the BJP and the son-in-law of a pracharak, was contesting against him.

Similarly, the RSS and the Keshubhai Patel Government in Gujarat share a cordial relationship. The link between the two is Sanjay Joshi, a former RSS pracharak who has been loaned to the state BJP. Most of the ministers holding important portfolios -- Finance Minister Vajubhai Vala, Minister of State for Power Kaushik Patel and Minister of State for Home Haren Pandya -- are RSS men who consult the parent body before taking major policy decisions. The Sangh has problems only with Industry Minister Suresh Mehta and his small group of followers.

In 1925, when the RSS was born, little did its founders know that their club of gymnastically oriented Hindutva-worshippers would one day spread branches into every corner of an independent republic and even taste the power of governance. The club was famous for its mental drill aimed at regimentation -- soochna ke baad sochna nahin (don't think after getting started) was the RSS maxim. Seven decades later, the new progeny of men in khaki shorts is still regimented in its undisputing adherence to the Sangh leadership.

And therein lies the strength of the BJP whose 1.7 crore members are but a mirage if seen outside the Sangh's embrace. "Everything is under the Sangh, nothing is under the BJP," says Hasubhai Dave, BMS general secretary. In the late '70s, when former Jan Sanghis in the Janata Party were pressured by their allies to forsake the "dual membership" of the RSS, they had no option but to break away, pulling down the first non-Congress government at the Centre led by Morarji Desai.

While that government was formed more because of an accident -- the dreaded Emergency had brought together the motley bunch that went on to become the Janata Party -- the current government came to power following a decisive mandate in favour of the coalition's major partner, the BJP and particularily its leader. Vajpayee has so far showed no signs of succumbing to pressure to deviate from the National Agenda for Governance, the document on which the 18 coalition partners had reached a consensus. It is this basic trust that holds many of the coalition partners.On the other hand, the RSS has its own agenda. A tussle between the two could thus turn out to be a ticking bomb that could blow up the first non-Congress government to win power on a positive vote. Should that happen, the Congress is waiting in the wings.