by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
On the face of it, the fact of
the annual RSS pratinidhi sabha that concluded in Nagpur last week, giving one more three-year
term to its general secretary (sahkaryavah), Suresh Bhaiyaji Joshi, is not of
much political consequence for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government.
Though there had been a strong buzz that Dattatreya Hosabale, a joint general
secretary known for his closeness to Modi, might be the winner this time, it
proved a flop. Hosabale himself said that there was no need to change the
"general" as the "army is doing well".
However, there was an unmistakable sense of
relief in the RSS ranks following the decision. It was felt that there would be
'business as usual' with no change of general secretary, who is in fact the
chief executive of the brotherhood, while the sarsanchalak, Mohan Bhagwat, is
the chief mentor, a post which is high yet mainly titular. Be it in framing
policy or moving personnel, it is the sahkaryavah whose word is law in the
sangh. It is a fact that every BJP bigwig including powerful ministers must
keep this in mind at his own sufferance. And it is one of the 'brotherhood's'
worst kept secrets that Bhaiyaji Joshi is not the one who gets swayed by Modi's
reformist agenda. Nothing would have pleased the Prime Minister more if
Hosabale hadn't cracked so unceremoniously. He is much younger than Modi;
besides, the two had worked together in their younger days in the sangh's
student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). But Bhaiyaji is a
tough cookie.
Modi sensed it from his early days in power at
the Centre when an RSS group confronted his acolyte, HRD Minister Smriti Irani,
demanding scrapping of the four-year university programme (FYUP) that had been
introduced by the Delhi
University at the
instance of her UPA predecessor Kapil Sibal. Reportedly emboldened by a nod
from Bhaiyaji, the RSS interlocutors demanded that undergraduate courses be
reverted to three years, thus making the Indian university degree more
affordable to the poor. The Modi government wisely decided not to confront its
mother organisation by refusing to turn back from an elitist experiment. FYUP
was scrapped before its proponents could even blink.
Over time, there came numerous occasions for
Modi to be reminded that the RSS hadn't given him unqualified power to call the
shots. The 'Shiksha Bachao' (Save Education) committee chief Dina Nath Batra,
known for his closeness to Bhaiyaji, and famous for having forced the publisher
of Harvard Sanskrit scholar Wendy Doniger's book on Hinduism to pulp it,
launched a move to make the aptitude tests for candidates seeking government
jobs less dependent on English skills and more on fluency in Hindi or other
Indian languages. Once again an anti-elitist move, it is known to have been
accepted by the government in principle and a committee has been set up to
advise the Union Public Service Commission on the nitty-gritty of
de-Anglicisation of its entry tests.
But the Big Brother was not contented with
needling the government merely on cultural issues. The objection to WTO's Bali
Agreement that India must not surrender its right to subsidise food came not
from any opposition party—the UPA government had in fact buckled a year ago—but
due to persistent pressure of Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), an outfit that
preaches ultra-nationalist economic ideology.
No reform measure attempted by the Modi
government has gone unopposed by RSS's nationalist hardliners, whose thinking
process, strangely, resembles socialists of the past. It is much due to
sustained opposition from this cabal that the government's steps at labour
reform have been glaciated in parliamentary committees. Notable among these are
proposed amendments to the Apprentice Act 1961, or the Factories Act 1948, not
to speak of an amendment that could make lakhs of small enterprises free from
the costly and pointless obligation of furnishing regular returns and
maintaining registry. These reforms were all tabled before Parliament last year
but are yet to be enacted. There is no effort either to change the Industrial
Disputes Act in line with the state government of Rajasthan, by making
retrenchment of workers in smaller establishments more a labour issue than
political, with the government to have the final call. It is argued that the
absence of an 'exit policy' for labour and capital has been largely responsible
for turning investors away. But the Bharatiya Majdoor Sangh (BMS), trade union
wing of the RSS, is aligned with other central trade union organisations,
including those led by the communist parties, in blocking changes in the ID
Act. Moreover, the opposition parties, particularly the Congress, were no doubt
stumbling block for the Modi government's land acquisition law. Surface
Transport and former Rural Development Minister Nitin Gadkari took it as his
mission to win over the RSS, and was successful in convincing Mohan Bhagwat. But even after nine amendments, the Modi land bill is not out of
the woods as yet. The hardcore of the RSS somehow has a distaste for the label
of being “pro-industry” and “pro-growth”. The RSS’s
ideological arms, like SJM and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, always played off against
modernity. During the first NDA government under A. B. Vajpayee, the late
Dattopant Thengadi, founder of BMS, made it an ordeal for the government to
divest its stakes in its tottering PSUs. It was an embarrassment for a
government that had set up, for the first time in the economic history of
independent India,
a ministry for “disinvestment”. K. Sudarshan, the then RSS chief, would unleash
his “nationalist” army of SJM every time Vajpayee toyed with reformist ideas.
Why does RSS refuse to come to terms with the idea of a
modern state conscious of its cultural heritage yet open to new ideas? Having a
big brother is never a good idea. But it would be wrong to say if the big
brother is a bully and bereft of brains.
(The author is national editor Lokmat group)
