NAGPUR: Brandishing bamboo sticks and singing patriotic anthems, thousands of uniformed men parade in central India, a stunning show of force by the country’s million-strong Hindu ultranationalist group.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the National Volunteer Organization (RSS), celebrated its centenary this month with a grand ceremony at its headquarters in Nagpur.
AFP was one of the few foreign media outlets granted exceptional access to the group, which forms the ideological and organizational backbone of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in power since 2014.
Like the 75-year-old prime minister, critics accuse him of eroding the rights of India’s Muslim minority and undermining the secular constitution.
At the parade, RSS volunteers in white shirts, brown pants and black hats marched, boxed and stretched to the rhythm of strident whistles and barked orders.
“Forever I bow to you, beloved Homeland! Homeland of us Hindus!” they sang, in a scene that evoked paramilitary exercises of the past.
“May my life […] Be dedicated to your cause!”
‘Proud’
Hindus make up about 80% of India’s 1.4 billion people.
Founded in 1925, the RSS calls itself “the largest organization in the world”, although it does not provide membership figures.
At the center of their vision is “Hindutva”, the belief that Hindus not only represent a religious group but are the true national identity of India.
“They are willing to fight those who stand in their way. […] that means minorities, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and other Hindus who do not subscribe to the idea,” said historian Mridula Mukherjee.
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat uses softer language, saying that minorities are accepted but “should not cause division.”
Anant Pophali, 53, said three generations of his family had been involved with the group. “The RSS made me proud to be an Indian,” said the insurance company worker.
bloody origins
The RSS was formed during the imperial rule of the British. But it diverged sharply from the independence efforts of Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party, whose leader Jawaharlal Nehru considered them “fascist by nature.”
Mukherjee said the files showed “a link between the RSS and fascist movements in Europe.”
“They have said, very clearly, that the way the Nazis treated Jews should be the same way our own minorities should be treated,” he said. AFP.
The RSS does not directly comment on these parallels, but Bhagwat insisted that “we are more acceptable today.”
The RSS was an armed Hindu militia during the bloody partition of India in 1947 and the creation of Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Hindu extremists blamed Gandhi for dividing India. A former RSS member murdered him in 1948 and the group was banned for almost two years.
But the RSS quietly rebuilt itself, focusing on recruiting local units known as “shakhas”. Today, it has 83,000 of them throughout the country, as well as more than 50,000 schools and 120,000 social welfare projects.
At a shakha in Nagpur, Alhad Sadachar, 49, said the unit was “meant to develop unity”.
“You can get a lot of good energy, a lot of good values, like helping those in need,” he said.
In a shaka that AFP When allowed to attend, dozens of members, many of them middle-aged or elderly, and not in uniform, gathered for an hour of calisthenics and songs.
But in a show of symbolism, they gathered under a saffron flag – the color of Hinduism – instead of the Indian tricolor.
‘A country that is one’
The RSS remains deeply political. The group reemerged in the late 1980s, spearheading a movement that ended with a violent mob demolishing a centuries-old mosque in Ayodhya, now replaced by a gleaming temple dedicated to the Hindu god Rama.
“That was the turning point,” historian Mukherjee said, adding that the RSS was “able to create a mass mobilization on religious issues, which at its core became clearly anti-Muslim.”
The group helped Modi’s BJP party win a landslide election victory in 2014.
Since then, Modi – a former RSS “pracharak”, or organizer – has pursued policies that his critics say marginalize India’s roughly 220 million Muslims, 15% of the population.
“There has been a clear increase in terms of violence, lynchings and hate speech since Modi came to power,” said Raqib Hameed Naik, director of the US-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate.
RSS leaders deny that they participated in atrocities. “Such allegations are baseless,” Bhagwat said.
“The RSS never committed atrocities. And if it happens anyway, I condemn it.”
Under Modi, it has expanded its reach. “The RSS has been able to move Indian society in a direction that is more nationalist, less liberal in the Western sense,” said Swapan Dasgupta, a former nationalist parliamentarian.
But volunteer Vyankatesh Somalwar, 44, said the group only promoted “good values.”
“The most important thing is to contribute to your country,” he said. “A country that is, above all.”
