After the advent of Independence in 1947, the centuries-long struggle for freedom gave place to the task of nation-building precisely in a literal sense. But the crucial question was what should be the goal and the means to achieve it. It was here that the men then at the helm stumbled. They had all along been. While engaged in the freedom struggle, equating the mere transfer of power from the alien rulers with real Independence, they were somewhat bewildered by the turn of circumstances in which they were empowered with authority to rule.
In fact, for them, it was a God-given historic opportunity to shape the nation’s destiny, which was taking a new birth altogether. The real need then was to identify the character and the time-tested basic values, which this ancient nation stood for millennia, and to reshape the nation on that basis with any modifications suited for the changing needs of the day. However, they deemed economic progress and material welfare as the finality of an independent nation.
They had before them two models, both from the West. While the American one had in it the capitalist economy with all-permissive individual freedom, which was eating into the very vitals of her social life, the Russian socialist alternative with its ambitious five-year plans, presented a facade of heaven on the earth, in which the individual was but a cog in the wheel. Being enamoured by both, and material progress alone being made the touchstone, the new rulers opted to simultaneously ape both – an exercise which ultimately tended to make the nation a carbon copy of neither.
In this regard, Sangh’s thinking has been very basic. From its inception, the goal before the Sangh was to attain the “Param Vaibhav” (the pinnacle of glory) of the Hindu Rashtra, the freedom from alien rule being just a step in that direction. The transfer of power can, at the most, be “Swaraj” (one’s own rule) but not “Swatantrya” (actualisation of one’s potential being). The concept of “Param Vaibhav” has ingrained in it the material progress of the nation, but not with its very identity and interests mortgaged.
The Sangh, with its total commitment to the actualisation of “Swa”, in other words, the Hindu ethos, keeping itself away from the powers-that-be, from 1947 onwards, began on its own to extend its influence to varied fields of social life. The Sangh “Pratijna” (pledge), which until then was for the liberation of the Hindu Rashtra, was amended to indicate “Sarvangeena Unnati” (all-round development) of the nation. The entire gamut of social life was planned to be designed on the rock-bed of Hindu nationalism. The swayamsevaks, with the insight and the organisational skill they acquired through the “samskars” on the “sanghasthan” and with the uncompromising urge for the national reassertion, gradually began to enter one after another field of national life. The process commenced as early as the end of my forties and has, in these four decades, encompassed many areas of society.
In 1948, after the assassination of Gandhiji, when the Sangh was unjustly banned, the exuberant student and youth force, which until then was active in the Shakha work only, was mobilised to contact the public with issues of national interest, particularly the draft constitution which was then being debated in the Constituent Assembly. This movement, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), in course of time, has grown into a massive nationwide student organisation, successfully harnessing the buoyancy, time, intelligence, talent and creativity in the students, over and above their educational responsibilities, for nation-building activities. Today, ABVP is recognised as the front-rank student organisation with a nationalist outlook.
Earlier, when most of the Sangh functionaries were unjustly incarcerated, and baseless canards against Sangh were let loose by the establishment, to set the record straight, apart from the “Organiser” weekly in English, a series of language periodicals like “Panchajanya”, “Yuga Dharma” (both Hindi), Vicrama (Kannada) etc., were started. Nowadays, almost all the provinces have vernacular papers belonging to the Sangh School of Thought and command a wide range of readership about this fourth estate of democracy.
The educational system initiated by Macaulay with the motive of producing an army of “brown-skinned Englishmen” to serve the imperial administration as “the most obedient servants” was another legacy of British rule in Bharat. After Independence, there was a dire need to reshape the entire system. In 1952, the first “Saraswati Shishu Mandir” (nursery school) was founded in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, as an attempt towards teaching, along with mandatory academic knowledge, discipline, patriotic outlook, love for mother tongue, high moral values and Hindu principles the thrust of education being based upon a holistic approach to the physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual growth of the pupil. The small sapling of this “Shishu Mandir” – which it was in the fifties – has now grown into a mighty banyan tree as “Vidya Bharati”, an umbrella body for thousands of educational institutions, ranging from nursery to post-graduation level. The education system being evolved by Vidya Bharati is based on age-old Hindu values but having an outer structure by present-day needs of modern education.
The systematic alienation of the tribals, inhabiting remote forest areas but who formed an inseparable part of the Hindu society through proselytisation, was another grave challenge that demanded immediate corrective measures. Far away and uncontaminated by sophisticated modernity, they still need to be literate, committed to their own rustic cultural moorings, and very talented. They had all along been a most exploited lot and an easy prey for unscrupulous conversion by Christian missionaries. The Bharatiya Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram (BKVA) was founded in the early fifties to counter this twin menace of British legacy. The BKVA, now spread over a hundred districts in 21 States, has been striving for the all-round development of the analysis in their natural surroundings, enabling all their latent potentialities and talents to blossom. Over the decades, the Ashram has succeeded in putting a stop to conversions in all its areas of operation and bringing the converts back to the Hindu fold.
The trade union movement, guided by the alien socialist and Marxist philosophy, started in the thirties and was gaining ground when the British left the country. This philosophy, with its faith in class conflict and its methodology of anti-production strikes, was in fact, both in theory and practice, a negation of labour and national interests. Bharatiya Majdoor Sangh, a new labour movement, apolitical in character, based on Hindu tenets, was started in 1955. The BMS believes in conciliation whenever a dispute arises and considers strike the last resort. It does fight against exploitation in any form from whichever party and upholds the all-comprehensive interest of the society as a whole with supreme concern. It is now recognised as a leading labour organisation even at the international level and in the home front, the second biggest one, far ahead of other similar organisations with socialist and Marxist leanings.
While the Sangh was by itself effective in organising the Hindus and inculcating in them healthy “samskars” like discipline and social consciousness, the need for Vishwa Hindu Parishad began to be felt in the sixties, for augmenting certain grey areas of the activities of the former. For example, there was need to organise overseas Hindus residing in about 150 countries and provide them with necessary arrangements for upholding their Hindu samskars and faith in their daily lives. There was also a need to bring all sadhus sannyasins and orthodox mathadhipatis on a common platform to channel their combined influence for the common good of the entire Hindu society. A mechanism to reconvert all those who had been knowingly or unknowingly proselytised to alien faiths and are now desirous of coming back to the Hindu fold was needed. The VHP was founded in 1964 to fill this need.
The VHP is spearheading the movement to rebuild the temple at Sri Ramajanmabhoomi at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. After a four-centuries-long physical struggle fought by the Hindus, a period in which as many as seventy-six battles were fought to recapture the premises, where once stood a beautiful temple, which was desecrated by the Moghul invader Baber, the VHP has now picked up the gauntlet to rebuild the temple, yet more magnificently, at the same spot, whatever be the price in terms of sweat and blood. The first phase of this renewed struggle was won in 1986, when the temple door, which the government unlawfully locked to spite the Hindus, was thrown open to the public by a court order. Again, in 1989, the VHP could accomplish the “Shilanyas” of the proposed temple (foundation-laying ceremony) despite the numerous hurdles, legal and administrative, and the teeth of bitter opposition from all those opposed to the project for their Ulterior motives. The very next year, literally lakhs of Hindus from all over Bharat stormed Ayodhya in a bid to stars “Kar-seva” (rendering physical service as an expression of their devotion), braving the hurdles caused by a hostile government, and successfully hoisted the Bhagawa Flag atop the disputed edifice. There was an unprecedented bloodbath. The VHP is committed to undoing the historical insult to the last nuts and bolts. This determination of the VHP has instilled a spirit of righteous militancy in Hindu society.
With the end of the British Raj, Bharat became a democratic republic with a constitution when the need for a strong political alternative to the ruling party with unalloyed nationalism arose. Though the Sangh preferred to remain apolitical, it was well aware of its commitment to social transformation, including in the political field, based on Hindu values. Politics was and has been wielding an all-pervading influence over every other field of social life. As such, the country needed to evolve a new political culture. In that contest, a few senior Sangh functionaries, driven with the uncompromising commitment to Hindu nationalism, decided to form Bharatiya Jan Sangh in 1951, under the presidentship of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. Apart from electoral battles, the party had been waging many political fights to uphold the nation’s integrity and honour. It was in the forefront of the “Save Kashmir” movement in 1952 and also in the movement against the formation of a Muslim-dominated Malappuram district in Kerala in 1969.
Having firmly established its foothold on the political arena for over twenty-five years, BJS became the strongest constituent in the Janata Party, which assumed power at the centre in 1977, on a common forum of the existing opposition parties. Unnerved with the growing political clout of BJS, when the other constituents made the very membership of Sangh a bone of contention in the Janata Party, the swayamsevaks came out of that party. They formed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980. This new party continued the legacy of the BJS, with “Integral Humanism” propounded by the late Deendayal Upadhyaya as its philosophical base. The BJP, without bothering about its being isolated from other political parties, has been in the vanguard of the movement for Sri Ramajanmabhoomi and also, as a major party, has opposed the move for the transfer of Tin Bigha over to Bangladesh. Their differences are different, and even the opponents of the BJP accept that it has initiated a new political culture. After the general elections 1991, the party has become the main opposition at the centre and is ruling in four States.
As early as 1936, Srimati Lakshmibai Kelkar (Mauseeji) of Wardha prevailed upon Dr Hedgewar that just as men were being trained in Sangh, women also needed to be trained in nationalism and proper samskaras. After many months of discussion, Dr. Hedgewar in the end, promised to extend all help to Mauseeji, to found Rashtra Sevika Samiti, an exclusive women” s organisation, its goal being the same as that of Sangh but which was called upon to operate parallel to the latter and with a different name, prayer and independent structure.
The above is a brief, illustrative account of just a few among the many organisations inspired by the Sangh, generally looked Upon as “Sangh Pariwar”. The “Pariwar” is vast since no field of activity is beyond Swayamsevaks’s reach as such; the description of every activity is beyond the scope of the present book. The swayamsevaks, in whichever field they entered, with their unbeatable drive to translate their “Sarvangeena Unnati” dream, have made it vibrant with Hindu nationalist ethos. Thus, what was started as a humble man-making activity in the form of Sangh Shakha, in a brief span of seven decades, especially after the advent of Independence, has now assumed the form of a unique and mighty nation-building instrument, with its benign influence pervading every field of social life.
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