"Our country is not wanting in people who lightly say well give up, whenever there is an aggression or even a threat of aggression on parts of our motherland. If Chinese occupy portions of Ladakh, they say--let it go -- not a blade of grass grows there. Some time back a subtle propaganda was carried on about NEFA insinuating that it was a God forsaken place, unfit for human habitation...the same story has been repeated in case of the Run of Kutch".

Words of Mr Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, known popularly as Guruji, the RSS ideologue and the one who took over from the founder. These words of caution on the character of national discourse formed the theme of discussions-- charachas--in the RSS shakhas. But those were old times. The way Sangh Parivaar is acquiescing with BJP led NDA's policy on Kashmir today, would have been unthinkable then. A wave of pragmatic politics seems to have gripped the RSS family.

Tacit Connivance

Take for instance Parivaar's endorsement of the unilateral cease-fire by the government. If the detailed write-up on cease-fire by the editor of RSS mouthpiece Organiser is any indicator of the Sangh's thinking then the government decision on the cease-fire "has come with a rider of hope". And "with the extension of cease-fire now India has successfully taken Pakistan on the ground of its own choice". The rationalization bordering on some form of bravado defies both the strategic outlook as well as patriotic sensitivity. The heavy cost in the range of 1:5 to 1:10 which India paid in Kargil was primarily a result of India's taking on Pakistan on the ground of later's choice.

The peace diplomacy of the NDA government has gradually pushed India to endorse various features of Pakistani policy on Kashmir one after the other. From an externally sponsored movement Kashmir insurgency has now got the legitimacy of an indigenous uprising which NDA leaders have qualified as internal dissidence. Terrorist violence of the variety which the rabidly fundamentalist outfits like Hizbul Mujahideen unleashed have received political respectability from the Government of India. Vajpayee has resolved not to traverse on the old beaten tracks and find a solution to Kashmir problem within the imperatives of Insaniyat lifting the condition of a solution within the framework of India Constitution.

RSS has chosen to put up with these trends. Even when peace flirtations with Hizb lead to gruesome killings of pilgrims enroute to the shrine of Amarnath and eight massacres in the state within days of government's accepting the cease-fire offer, RSS only resorted to symbolic protestations. It found it wise not offer any concrete affront to the Government through whatever manoeuvrability it has within BJP. For the Sangh Parivaar the area of concern with NDA government is its economic policy. On the issues of national security, RSS prefers to go with the government line.

RSS walked with the government line earlier as well when Jagmohan was removed as the Governor of J&K in 1990. "Islamic fundamentalist forces and the secret agencies of America came together to see the exit of Jagmohan as the governor of the state," RSS Prant Pracharak declared later on. But RSS did not put its foot down when the United Front government depended entirely on the BJP support to forestall the move.

Internal preferences and Priorities:

Why has Sangh Parivaar embarked on an exercise of jettisoning its own chequered legacy? The accusation that RSS is gradually abondoming its principles for chasing elusive gains of power is receiving a credibility in public discourse. The special correspondent of The Statesman Sudesh K. Verma emphatically observed recently in one of his columns, "The RSS which fed its cadres on the concept of Akhand Bharta and BJP with its talk of scrapping Article 370 appear to have realised the futility of continuing with the hype. Both have apparently conceded that for a permanent solution to the Kashmir valley, both concepts have to be given a go bye".

RSS insiders try to rationalize such observations as a fall out of coalition politics and only tactical transitory fluctuations in its ideograph. However, there are deffinite indicators other than Sangh Parivaar's present position on Article 370 or partition of India which point towards a drift. These indicators are internal preferences and priorities of the RSS agenda. RSS responses towards Kashmir crisis and the genocidal war against the non-Muslim minorities in the state mirror them more clearly than anything else.

In the summer of 1990, during an RSS camp in Jammu, a senior activists from its Kashmir unit gave went to his feelings in a meeting attended by the inner core of Kashmir province. Sh Dattopant Thengadi, RSS ideologue and founder of Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh was presiding over the meeting. The Swayamsevak spoke thus, "Will it serve any purpose convincing a Swayamsevak as to how Nehru and Congress complicated the Kashmir issue? Hindus of Kashmir stand thrown out and destroyed. Who else will known better than the RSS activists of Kashmir? Infact, we should be asking ourselves equally other relevant aspects of the national failure in Kashmir. Did any one among the RSS echelons foresee such a situation? If no, what were the reasons. And if yes, what did RSS do to forestall this situation. It is time when the RSS starts looking within for the answers".

Such expressions were quite common those days among the Kashmiri Swayamsevaks. To escape the inconvenience caused by such manifest dissatisfaction and also the implications of a serious introspection, the state RSS leadership responded by dismantling the Kashmir Vibhag. The priorities which the RSS and its allied units had set for themselves during the critical months of 1989-90, not only depicted a suicidal naivety but were also misplaced.

Subsequent to the killing of RSS leader Advocate P.N. Bhat, from Anantnag, on December 27, 1989, the Hindu minority in the district was terror stricken. No body was sure whether even a proper cremation of late Bhat would be allowed. RSS activists in the district and elsewhere in the Valley were at a loss to decide what to do. Most of them had been issued threats to quit or to perish. Very recently, there had been contact drives conducted by them for Ram Shila Pujan. Spectre of their inevitable displacement loomed large. Those RSS activists who managed to attend the cremation of late PN Bhat, were amazed when the RSS Pracharak who also attended the funeral appeared concerned with his itenary (Pravaas) of visiting different pockets in Anantnag with the message of Ayodhya. The then Sambhag Pracharak of Jammu and Kashmir, had stopped visiting Kashmir for a long time. In such an atmosphere of absence of priority with regard to imminent developments in Kashmir and lack of direction, the RSS organisation had been virtually rendered rudderless. RSS activists started leaving the Valley. The right hand not knowing what the left was doing.

1989 had witnessed more than one thousand five hundred violent incidents. These included 350 bomb blasts and selective killings of prominent Kashmiri Hindus. The exodus of Hindus began towards the last months of that very year. Sangh Parivaar, chose to remain blissfully non-indulgent on the issue. Why did RSS peripheralise these critical developments in Kashmir vis a vis its agenda?

Origins of Drift:

Those were the times when RSS family was totally focussed on Ahodhya campaign. The dominant thinking in the organisation entertained no diversion or shift of emphasis which the Kashmir crisis had the potential to exert. 

Ayodhya campaign had two basic features. One that it constituted expression of the civilizational assertion of India and a decisive challenge to the approach of self-negation. Second, it was visualised as 'the instrumentality' for capturing the political power in India. The first attribute was revolutionary in content aimed at dismantling the existing paradigms of nation building. The second attribute concerned with capturing political power through widening of the legislative base, and hence, could not operate outside the limitations of the existing cliches. It inherently carried the compulsions of maintaining the status quo ante. As the legislative base widened and crossed a particular threshold, it assumed its own dynamics to contain and obstruct the revolutionary content of the movement.

The end of 1980s constituted the times when Ayodhya campaign crossed the threshold where the accruing political power to the Sangh Parivaar had already assumed control of its revolutionary objectives. The movement had lead to the sensitization of the nation towards the issues of national identity and security in its initial stages. But the ascendence of Sangh Parivaar along the ladders of power lead to desensitization of the organisation to these very issues.

The flaw in the Sangh's strategy could be a lack of grasp, but it certainly was not an involuntary development. Till 1980s, the essence of RSS activities was that 'man not the system' was important. And total transformation and moulding of the people for an organised national life could primarily be achieved by taking individual after individual'. In 1980s the "Simhasan Chado" directive in RSS signified a major shift. The discourse in the Sangh Parivaar at that time reflected that capture of political power had become essential for bringing about the desired transformation in the nation. The Sangh by that time had penetrated significantly into all aspects of national life and needed a strategy to act as a force multiplier. Ram Janam Bhoomi Movement constituted this strategy. The failure of RSS lay in not understanding the conflict between a revolutionary change which RSS craved to bring about and the simultaneous desire to capture political power.

Pitfalls of New Thinking

After long dithering RSS has now formally decided to support trifurcation of the existing state of Jammu and Kashmir. It may be an outcome of the realization within the Parivaar to incorporate Kashmir crisis into its agenda with a distinct priority. There have been two attempts earlier during the last decade on the part of RSS to introduce Kashmir situation into the national discourse on the merit and weight it deserved, and not merely as a complementary argument to its expositions on pseudo secularism.

The first one was the Kashmir Chalo March undertaken by ABVP in September 1990. This campaign was more a result of the understanding and sensitivity shown by RS stalwart Late Bhau Rao Deoras towards the critical developments in the state. During his visits to Jammu in 19990, subsequent to the mass exodus of minority Hindus from Kashmir valley, Bhaurao was dissatisfied with the response of Sangh Parivaar. In a reprimanding mood in one of the meetings of Jammu and Kashmir Sambhag, he asked every office bearer of RSS and its affiliate units like the VHP, ABVP, Vidya Bharti Vikas Bharti etcetra, "Aap Kashmiri Vishthapiton Ke Liye Kya Kar Rahen Hein?" (What are you doing concerning the displaced Hindus from Kashmir). He spared none, including the Sambhag Pracharak in his outburst. "Aap Sab Ko Malum Hona Chahiye, Mein In Vishtahpiton Ko Marne Ke Liye Nahin Chhor Sakta".

The overwhelming response to the ABVP March to Kashmir provided a prelude to another similar campaign under the banner of Ekta Yatra lead by Dr Murali Manohar Joshi. Commenting on the Ekta Yatra in 1991, the senior Editor of Times of India, K. Sunder Rajan wrote, "It was the first step towards donning a national image and identity that would enable it (BJP) to face critics who have so far been accusing it of narrowing its vision to the sectarian issues like Ayodhya dispute".

Both these attempts of ABVP and BJP were undermined and restrained more from within than outside for obvious compulsions of pragmatic politics which had gripped the Parivaar.

Will Sangh Parivaar be able to roughshod its internal opposition to the proposal of the reorganisation of the state, now? Besides this doubt, there are other reasons for scepticism amongst its ardent supporters, especially a proclivity which RSS has shown in eventually toeing the State line on the national security. RSS also appears to have relapsed into a give and take mode on the Kashmir issue. It believes that the cease-fire diplomacy initiated by the Vajpayee lead coalition is a step towards a solution to Kashmir. "He has virtually drawn a road-map to peace. Cease-fire is only the first phase of a long drawn strategy for a lasting peace", comments the Editor of RSS mouthpiece.

Is trifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir state, with Jammu and Ladakh becoming fully integrated units of the Indian Union only a give and take bargain which the RSS is aiming at? Conversely, is RSS ready for granting maximum autonomy or semi-independence to the Kashmir region? The trial baloon of 'autonomous district' for displaced Hindus in the Valley tantamounts to denying the genuine rights of those Kashmiris who support a politico-administrative dispensation within the Valley of Kashmir with a free and unrestricted flow of the Indian Constitution. RSS is agreeing on trifurcation. What, other than the logic of political expediency and bargain, stops it from supporting the creation of Panun Kashmir with the status of a union territory in the Kashmir Valley?

RSS at the Cross Road of History:

RSS is reluctant to link the solution of Kashmir to the core issue of secular nation building. Its public expositions on reorganisation of J&K fall short of linking it with the stabilization of the northern frontiers of India and reversal of the genocide of the Hindus in the State. Support to Panun Kashmir can lead to erosion of Muslim support to separate state of Jammu, RSS insiders argue. It is an indirect admission that the apparent support to Jammu's aspirations from some sections of the Muslims inhabiting the region, is quite fragile and borders on a blackmail. The attitude also smacks of investing 'Muslim communalism with veto' as HV Sheshadri, former General Secretary of RSS, remarked on the tendency of Congress pampering the 'divisive tendencies' of Muslims before the independence of India.

Kashmir crisis has brought RSS to the very cross roads of history where Congress stood in the 40s when partition of India was being gradually rationalised in order to make it a fiat accompli for people of India. Quoting Krishna Menon on the failure of Congress to avert partition, Sh HV Sheshadri writes, "The Congress men so much and position that they had no heart to continue to fight to preserve the unity of the nation". He further says, "The fight for United Bharat involved essentially a battle of wills and visions. It is small wonder that the Congress leadership with their will eroded and scuttled by exhaustion and temptation of power, lost the battle".

The peace diplomacy and the attendent humiliation it brought in terms of worsening security and political scenario for non-Muslims of the state and the way Sangh Parivaar is relating itself to these developments leads to only one assessment. The Sangh Parivaar is tired on Kashmir. Has it also suffered the erosion of will and vision to quote the expressions of its tallest leaders in its desire to hold on to power whatever be the consequences.