India After Independence: 1947-2000 (36 page)

Lastly, CPI’s centralized, bureaucratic and basically secret party structure, relying on whole-time party cadres, also did not suit a democratic and open society. Such a party could not hope to develop mass institutions and mass power. This weakness of the party was compounded
in the pre-1962 years by a certain subservience to the Soviet leadership and the importation of the doctrine of ends justifying the means into inner-party disputes.

The Bharatiya Jan Sangh, founded in October 1951, was basically a communal party and has to be studied as such. A communal party is one which is structured around communal ideology. A communal party cannot be defined by specific policies, for it can discard any of its programmatic and policy elements and sometimes adopt the very opposite ones. Its economic, political and social policies are generally a husk or a mask which can be changed at appropriate moments to suit its electoral or other political needs, which it perceives as essential for the capture of political power, which in turn the party needs to implement its communal agenda. A communal party is not a conservative party for it is not committed to the conservation of large elements of the existing social, economic and political structure. It is, however, a right-wing party for it cannot communalize the state and society without strengthening the reactionary and exploitative elements of the economy.

The Jan Sangh could not, however, openly profess its communal ideology as it had to function within two major constraints. Being an electoral party, operating in a secular democratic polity, it had to try to cobble together an electoral majority and therefore appeal, to non-communal voters, as also obey electoral laws forbidding political appeals to religion. Further, because of the firm ideological commitment of the national movement and the anti-communal sentiment in India, especially after the assassination of Gandhiji, communalism had a bad odour about it.

To understand the basic communal character of the Jan Sangh and its politics, first the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is to be studied, for the former was a creation of RSS, and had remained under the latter’s tight ideological and organizational control since its foundation. The Jan Sangh drew its organized strength, centralized character and ideological homogeneity from RSS. Also the grassroot workers, the well-trained and disciplined cadres and organizers, and in time nearly all the top leaders of Jan Sangh, especially its secretaries and general secretaries, were provided by RSS. Founded in 1925, RSS was organized on authoritarian and militaristic lines which, functioning below the surface and glorifying violence, developed basically as an anti-Muslim organization. It did not participate in the anti-imperialist movement or wage any anti-imperialist struggle even of its own conception on the ground that it had to conserve its strength for its main task of protecting Hindus from Muslim domination. The RSS grew in northern India in the forties because of the communalization of politics during the war years and large-scale communal violence during 1946-1947, in which it played an active role. The RSS
was banned and its leaders and workers arrested after the assassination of Gandhiji.

Though not directly involved in the assassination, the RSS had been waging a campaign of hatred against Gandhiji and other Congress leaders, publicly and in its shakhas or branches, often branding them as anti-Hindu and ‘traitors’. For example referring to them, M.S. Golwalkar, the supreme head of the RSS nominated as such for life, wrote in 1939: ‘Strange, very strange, that traitors should sit enthroned as national heroes.’
⁵

Keen on persuading the government to lift the ban on the RSS, its leaders gave an undertaking in 1949 that it would not take part in politics. But, in fact, they were quite keen to do so. Jan Sangh provided the perfect cover for this ‘front organization’.

The basic guidelines of RSS’s communal approach towards Muslims were laid down by Golwalkar in
We or Our Nationhood Defined,
where Muslims were portrayed as a perpetually hostile and alien element within the Indian body politic and society, who must either accept total subordination to Hindus or cease being Muslims. This is evident from the passage below.

In Hindusthan exists and must needs exist the ancient Hindu nation and nought else but the Hindu Nation . . . So long, however, as they (Muslims and other non-Hindus) maintain their racial, religious and cultural differences, they cannot but be only foreigners . . . There are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at the sweet will of the national race. . . . The non-Hindu peoples in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, . . . in one word, they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizen’s rights . . . in this country Hindus alone are the Nation and the Moslems and others, if not actually anti-national are at least outside the body of the Nation.’
⁶

Golwalkar repeatedly referred to Muslims as ‘our foes’, ‘our old and bitter enemies’, ‘our most inveterate enemies’, and so on, and said: ‘We, Hindus, are at war at once with the Moslems on the one hand and British on the other.’
⁷
More recently, in October 1991, Balasaheb Deoras, the successor of Golwalkar as the head of RSS, condemned ‘the aggressive and divisive mentality of the Muslims’ and accused the secular parties of not hesitating ‘to sacrifice national interests and to fulfil even the antinational political aspirations of the Muslims.’
⁸

In view of the carefully cultivated communal feelings among its cadres and adherents by RSS, it was not accidental that, as the noted journalist Krishan Bhatia wrote in 1971, ‘the RSS has been behind some
of the worst communal riots during the past thirty years.’
⁹
At a more popular level, the
Organiser
and the
Panchjanya,
the unofficial organs of RSS, continue till this day to publish articles stressing, with greater or lesser stridency, depending on the political situation, that Hindus constitute the Indian nation and emphasizing the dangers from schemes of the ‘Islamization of India’.

Jan Sangh was launched as a political party in October 1951 with Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee as its president. Ostensibly, Jan Sangh Was an independent party in its own right and under Mookerjee it did enjoy a certain degree of independence, but even then its spearhead was the RSS and its carefully chosen cadres who were put in crucial positions in the new party. After Mookerjee’s death in 1953, the fig leaf of being an independent party was gradually given up. Since 1954, when its second president, Mauli Chandra Sharma, resigned in protest against the RSS domination of the party, Jan Sangh and its later day reincarnation, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have been more openly associated with and controlled by RSS, which has provided them with the bulk of their leaders at the top as well as the lower levels.

Though Jan Sangh over time adopted a radical programme as befitted a petit bourgeouise, national-socialist type party, and supported, for example, a mixed economy based on planning and public sector (the latter controlling the commanding heights of the economy), zamindari abolition, land ceilings and land to the tiller, the cause of agricultural labour and of the working class in the modern sector, regulation of large-scale industries, nationalization of key industries, service cooperatives in the rural sector, ceilings on personal income, etc., these were merely formal positions. The issues which really mattered and on which the party and its members concentrated and exerted themselves were very different, namely communal questions. All the party’s popular slogans and every day agitational issues were filtered through communal glasses or ideology. The party declared itself to be non-communal and secular and formally admitted Muslims as members. Initially, it also declared that its objective was to work not for Hindu Rashtra but Bharatiya Rashtra; but the latter was so defined as to stand for Hindu Rashtra. Admitting Muslims into the party was also perceived by its leaders and cadres as a mere formality and technicality—a political manoeuvre. Jan Sangh workers at the lower level, its leaders in public speeches and its journals promoted in a subtle and subterranean manner distrust and hatred of Muslims.

Jan Sangh consistently accused the secular parties of appeasement of Muslims and pandering to their interests. Even a sober leader like Mookerjee attacked Nehru regularly for following ‘a suicidal policy of appeasement of Muslims.’
¹⁰
On its part, Jan Sangh declared that it would promote national unity by ‘nationalizing all non-Hindus by inculcating in them the ideal of Bharatiya Culture.’
¹¹

Jan Sangh was strongly anti-Pakistan. According to one of its resolutions, Pakistan’s ‘aim is to sustain the faith of Indian Muslims with the ultimate objective of establishing Muslim domination over the rest of
India as well.’
¹²
In its initial years, the Jan Sangh argued for the reuniting of India and Pakistan in pursuit of its central objective of Akhand Bharat. Jan Sangh also accused the government of consistently pursuing a policy of appeasement of Pakistan. It was only later that the slogan of Akhand Bharat was abandoned and even hostility to Pakistan was muted, especially after Jan Sangh merged into Janata Party in 1977 and Atal Behari Vajpayee became the foreign minister; but hostility to Muslims as proxies for Pakistan remained as before.

Jan Sangh emphasized the propagation of Bharatiya culture and the establishment of Bhartiya nationalism. These two terms were never defined except very vaguely as being based on non-western and traditional values. In fact, the word ’Bharatiya’ was a euphemism for the word ‘Hindu’ and an attempt on the part of Jan Sangh to avoid the communal label. As communalism began to grow, Jan Sangh publications openly started using the terms Hindu culture and Hindu nationalism and continue to do so. In reality even the term ‘Hindu nationalism’ was a misnomer and a substitute for the term ‘Hindu communalism’.

Denying the cultural diversity of India, Jan Sangh also raised the slogan of ‘one country, one culture, one nation’ and asserted that all those who did not accept this one culture had imbibed ‘anti-national traits’. There was also a strong element of revivalism in its talk of Bharatiya spiritual and material values; the revival of Bharatiya culture rather than its development engaged them. It also accused Congress of importing foreign technology and promised that instead it would aim at developing ‘a self-sufficient and self-generating economy’ by developing ‘our own technique’.
¹³
A disguised opposition to parliamentary democracy and secularism was also intended when it repeatedly accused Congress of developing Indian political life on the basis of foreign ideas. However, gradually it gave up such revivalist formulations as also its talk of Bharatiya values. Their place was taken by the openly communal term ‘Hindutva’.

For years, Jan Sangh took a strident stand and an agitational approach in favour of Sanskritized Hindi and against the retention of English as an official link language of India. Later, keeping in view its need for expansion in non-Hindi areas, it quietly accepted the 1965 decision to retain English alongwith Hindi so long as the non-Hindi states wanted this. It also opposed the development of Urdu in U.P. and other parts of northern India. It forcefully opposed the Hindu Code Bill, and after its passage pledged to repeal this legislation.

Interestingly, Jan Sangh opposed the linking of religion with politics and did not take up any religious issue other than that of a legal ban on cow-slaughter. The reasons for this change in the eighties will be discussed in chapter 33 on ‘Communalism in Independent India’.

In fact, significant changes in the official programme and policies as also in the social and regional base of Jan Sangh-BJP occurred over the years. Only the centrality of communal ideology remained. And, of course, no party or leadership can be separated from the ideology with
which it operates among the people. Electorally, Jan Sangh remained throughout this phase on the margins of the Indian polity. In 1952, it won 3 seats in the Lok Sabha with 3.06 per cent of the national vote. (The combined total of Jan Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha and Ram Rajya Parishad was 10 seats with 6.4 per cent of the votes. Thus, the overall performance of the three Hindu communal parties was quite poor). In 1957, Jan Sangh won 4 seats in the Lok Sabha with 5.97 per cent of the total votes. This did not mark any real growth of communalism, for it occurred because Jan Sangh absorbed a large part of the political base of Hindu Mahasabha and RRP, the total score of the three parties being 5 MPs with 7.17 per cent of the votes. In 1962, Jan Sangh won 14 seats with 6.44 per cent of the total votes—the three communal parties got 17 seats and 7.69 per cent of the votes. The high-water mark of Jan Sangh before it became BJP was reached in 1967 when it won 35 seats with 9.35 per cent of the popular vote, with Hindu Mahasabha and RRP having disappeared as political forces. Its tally, however, came down again in 1971 when it got 22 seats in the Lok Sabha and 7.4 per cent of the votes. Throughout, the party did not win a single seat in South India and it lost its political hold completely in West Bengal after the death of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. In fact, its political influence was mainly confined to Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan. U.P., Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.

The Swatantra Party, the first authentic all-India secular conservative party, came into being in early August 1959. It had a number of distinguished leaders, most of them old Congressmen, for example, C. Rajagopalachari, Minoo Masani, N.G. Ranga and K.M. Munshi. Right-wing groups and parties had, of course, earlier existed at the local and regional levels, but Swatantra’s formation was the first attempt to bring these highly fragmented right-wing forces together under the umbrella of a single party. The provocation was the left turn which the Congress took at Avadi and the Nagpur Resolution.