Janata Couldn’t Have Won Without RSS
On the Emergency Day, I present an untold story of India’s pacifist, media-shy right wing organisation in the backdrop of Indira Gandhi’s despotism I have been sympathetic to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh because it is a nationalist organisation. I am not a supporter; there are aspects of its belief system — chiefly science and economics — that I disagree with. This is the first time I am dedicating an article to its wisdom and heroism. For, this is what I learnt over the past few days; it is true, but nobody has told this story before. Even the most extensive of reports on the political developments of the 1970s in WWW has the RSS’s role no more than a paragraph or a footnote. Since the early 1970s, as Indira Gandhi’s popularity waned swiftly after the resounding success in carving a Bangladesh out of Pakistan, a plan to fight for democracy was brewing in the ranks of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS. Unlike the popular belief, Co...