Offstumped – Commentary on Indian Politics

Originally published in The Pioneer. Background material for the column

Rama Guha’s column on the Sangh ban can be found here. EPW’s detailed chronicle of the sequence of events leading to the lifting of the ban by Rakesh Ankit can be found here. Also read about Narendra Modi’s January 24th 2010 Constitution rally on the 6oth anniversary of the Constitution. 

On February 25, 2010, author Ramachandra Guha wrote a column in an English daily on how the Indian state must reconcile with Maoist terror. Mr Guha opened that column with a piece of history to assert that the ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in 1948 was lifted only after the Sangh accepted in writing to abide by the Constitution of India. Mr Guha’s clever assertion draws a dubious parallel between Maoist terror and the RSS and has been taken at face value by many. An extensive chronicle in a well-regarded magazine that appeared earlier last week, however, sets the historical record straight on the sequence of events leading up to the lifting of the ban on the RSS.

In a eight-page long special article in the April 21 edition of the magazine, Rakesh Ankit compiles extracts from a series of letters that were exchanged between the principal actors in the sequence of events that resulted in the ban on the Sangh being lifted. Mr Ankit’s narrative is fascinating and his chronicling style is largely free of political bias.

His narrative focuses exclusively on the period from December 1948 to June 1949 to chronicle the many exchanges between Sardar Patel, DP Mishra, jailed RSS chief Madhavarao Golwalkar and the many intermediaries who attempted to bridge the gap between the Government and the Sangh. One has to read the entire article to appreciate the subtleties and the nuances within the sequence of events and the many letters exchanged. But it is in order that the following points are highlighted, for they raise the question: Would the political history of post-Independence India been different had Sardar Patel and Nehru acted differently.

Extracts of a letter from Golwalkar to HVR Iyengar, Home Secretary to the Government of India, make it amply clear that the Government’s detention of Golwalkar in jail had little to do with any Sangh role or association with Gandhi’s assassination. An angry Golwalkar observes that even six months after framing charges against him, the Government had brought up no case against him or the Sangh, with any evidence being presented on violence, secrecy and communal hatred. In fact, the primary reason for the continued ban on the Sangh and the incarceration of its chief becomes clear in a letter from DP Mishra to Sardar Patel, where he talks of the anti-Sangh political climate in Nagpur. From the same letter it becomes clear that the rationale for the ban and the realpolitik in lifting it was always about a new fledgling national Government in India asserting its might, while being seen to be securing visible concessions from the Sangh without yielding any ground.

It also becomes clear from remarks made by Sardar Patel to DP Mishra in a June 1949 letter that the Government had very little leverage over the Sangh in extracting those concessions .

Ahead of the lifting of the ban on the Sangh, Patel writes to Mishra that “the Government would have found it very difficult to justify our policy or attitude to the public”. In the same letter Patel gloats over how the Government managed “to catch Golwalkar on the wrong foot” and had managed to “turn the tables on Golwalkar”. The specific reference here was to the Government intercepting communication between Golwalkar and Deoras on the Sangh persisting with its agitation despite the ban. It was this intercept that was finally sought to be used as leverage to secure the desired concessions from the Sangh.

While much of the narrative focuses on the attempts by the Government to get the Sangh to commit to a written Constitution (for the Sangh) that met the Government’s approval, it sheds little light specifically on what objections, if any, the Sangh had to the Constitution of India.

In fact, the only significant dialogue on this subject is on the Sangh’s attitude towards the national flag between Golwalkar and TRV Sastri, from which it becomes amply clear that Golwalkar had no issues with the flag. In subsequent exchanges the issue of allegiance to the Constitution of India comes up only once in passing in the context of adult suffrage. The vast body of disagreement between the Sangh and the Government of India was on the draft Constitution of the Sangh at the dictates of the Government and little to nothing on the Constitution of India that was still being debated in the Constituent Assembly.

This must go down in history as the only instance where a public movement was not only suppressed by a ban and its leader cut off from the rest of the organisation with full Government surveillance, but the Government also literally dictated how that organisation should conduct its internal functions. All this was happening while the said organisation had no stake in the process of the drafting of the Indian Constitution, with its leader in jail.

While, through a combination of realpolitik and Government might, Patel and Mishra secured concessions from the Sangh in 1949, more than 60 years on, it must be asked if the political history of India would have been different had they acted differently. After all, 60 years on, the principal opposition to the Indian National Congress comes from a movement that had no participation in the Constituent Assembly and no direct stake in the framing of the Constitution.

If, today, some adherents of the broad movement represented by the Sangh don’t always feel a strong sense of ownership towards the original intent of the Constitution, the blame for it must directly lie with Patel and Nehru. Had they shown the sagacity and the foresight to bring the Sangh into the Constitution drafting process, even if it meant a challenge to the Congress’ monopoly on national politics, perhaps India would not have seen the communal polemics of the past two decades.

More than thirty years back the Sangh stood up for the Constitution to fight the state of Emergency imposed by Mrs Indira Gandhi. On January 24, 2010, a product of the Sangh, Narendra Modi took out a giant replica of BR  Ambedkar and the Constitution to mark its 60th anniversary, marking the distance travelled by this mass movement.

This columnist has in the past advocated for the broad movement represented by the Sangh to embrace Ambedkarite constitutionalism as a coherent framework to guide the movement in matters of Law making and governance.

The magazine’s chronicle is perhaps an opportunity for the Sangh to not only set the record straight on its own history but to also make amends with the past through a tighter embrace with Ambedkarite constitutionalism.

Tailpiece:

If the Sangh’s absence from Constitution making is partly explained by the 1948 ban, its absence in the years before is perhaps explained by its reluctance to participate in electoral politics. Whether the Sangh’s participation in the Constituent Assembly would have made a material difference to the text of the Constitution is an open question but the overwhelming majority enjoyed by the Congress meant that Nehru and Patel had their way on most issues. Ambedkar’s presence in the Constituent Assembly was a sign of how the Congress went out if its way to give him a stake in the Constitution making process. It would not have been beyond the realm of imagination to have done something similar to bring the Sangh into the process. It would also not have been out order for a later in the process participation for the Constituent Assembly continued to welcome new members including in June 1949 when the ban on Sangh was lifted.

Filed under: Ambedkarite Constitutionalism, Narendra Modi