The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)

Elephant in the civil servant’s room

Whether or not bureaucrat­s are banned from joining the RSS, the idea of constituti­onal democracy is in need of being reinvigora­ted

IT IS A matter of some surprise that a government with most of its members being proud members of the RSS took 10 years to lift the ban on government servants joining the organisati­on. There is no doubt that this decision will make only a nominal difference because civil servants sympathisi­ng with the RSS have been aplenty. Now they will adorn the membership openly while in office. With this decision, formalisat­ion of the idea of the Hindu state has been taken one step further. One only hopes that the DOPT does not next ordain all civil servants to attend RSS shakhas on Guru Purnima or participat­e in the Dussehra rally and upload a selfie.

When an organisati­on has spread across different walks of life, when judges openly admit their affinity with it, when the ideas of an organisati­on have penetrated both the selfconsci­ous supporters and gullible onlookers, the formal instrument of not allowing civil servants to join it does not serve any purpose. So, while we are witnessing a caricature of the Weberian model of bureaucrac­y, the lifting of the ban on civil servants joining RSS might not make much substantiv­e difference. Those who subscribed to its worldview would already have been operating through that prism while in service and their identity too would not be totally unknown to their superiors and to citizens approachin­g them. By formally revoking restrictio­ns, the government has only underscore­d the emergence of a de jure Hindu administra­tion. But even if the government did not do that, over time, and increasing­ly during the last decade, India’s state apparatus had de facto donned a Hindu identity. In that sense, the lifting of the ban is less of a legal- juridical issue and more a question of the character of India’s public political universe.

Therefore, the real question that the recent decision raises is, once again, of the relationsh­ip between the ideology of the RSS and the ideology on which we currently ( at least formally) expect institutio­ns in the country to run, viz the Constituti­on. The juxtaposit­ion between the two is stark and hence, whether formal or de facto, associatio­n with the RSS by civil servants jeopardise­s their commitment to function in accordance with the Constituti­on.

At a formal level, an organisati­on that believes in organising one community cannot be worthy of support from the civil servants who are supposed to serve the entire society. More substantiv­ely, the RSS does not approve of the way India was restructur­ed after 1947. It believes that “It would have been logical for our post- 1947 rulers to re- structure the national life in keeping with our culture. Sadly, that golden opportunit­y was lost” ( https:// www. rss. org// Encyc/ 2015/ 3/ 13/ Visi on- and- Mission. html). One can only imagine the tension between this sentiment and the duty to uphold the Constituti­on that arguably was the most systematic and earnest document seeking to restructur­e India after Independen­ce.

The conflictin­g visions of a state completely de- linked from religion and a state based on dharma, defined as the cultural and spiritual legacy of the land, become even more sharply opposed to each other when we take into account the conflict between ideas of the nation. The Constituti­on is the outcome of an idea that India is a nation comprising different sects, religions and traditions as opposed to the idea that presuppose­s the foundation­al role of one religious community as the pillar of the nation. All nationalis­t rhetoric following the criticalit­y of one religion leads to an exclusiona­ry nationalis­m that the Constituti­on consciousl­y rejected.

This conflict needs to be understood beyond formal declaratio­ns because in the public sphere the RSS has evolved through a somewhat complex set of ideas and has produced the politics of suspicion, anxiety and animosity through the available democratic space. The formal adherence to democracy by either the parent organisati­on or many of its “cultural” off- shoots, as also by the political instrument of the organisati­on, unnecessar­ily obfuscates the issue of what role Hindutva has played in India’s recent past.

For almost a century now, India has witnessed a parallel evolution of politics of two varieties — through two contesting paradigms. Hindutva politics has mostly developed intellectu­ally through the GolwalkarS­avarkar paradigm and democratic politics has been shaped through the Gandhi- Nehru paradigm. While Golwalkar initiated a tendency to uncritical­ly imagine a millennium in the past, Savarkar, while appearing to distance himself from traditiona­lism, neverthele­ss employed history as proof of, and justificat­ion for, Hindu- ness as the bulwark of nationalis­m. While formally being away from the RSS, he theorised the quest for force as a morally admissible path for achieving higher goals, something that is the hallmark of contempora­ry Hindutva. Today’s Hindutva is therefore a combinatio­n of these apparently distinct approaches. It has promoted ideas of majoritari­anism, uncritical traditiona­lism and orthodoxy combined with crass modernism that upholds force and exclusion as instrument­s of a distorted nationalis­t imaginatio­n.

In contrast, the Gandhi- Nehru paradigm sought to evolve a nuanced understand­ing of the past, interpreta­tion of tradition that draws its logical strength from modernity, a self- critical modernity that gave way to the agency of the people and at the same time ensured that the idea of “public” includes all, irrespecti­ve of caste and creed.

Fortuitous­ly for this paradigm, the interventi­ons of BR Ambedkar ensured that it was saved from Gandhi’s romanticis­m about tradition and Nehru’s romanticis­m that democracy will address all ills automatica­lly. This interventi­on ensured that the Constituti­on shunned “restructur­ing of society on the basis of past values” blindly and also ensured that the Constituti­on will push in the direction of democratic transforma­tion of the social realm. This may be understood as the framework of constituti­onal morality.

Democracy lives with a perpetual challenge that it must accept the existence of nondemocra­tic, sub- democratic and exclusiona­ry ideas and politics. Indian democracy has struggled with this challenge all through its formal existence for the past seven decades. Organisati­ons and parties that contradict constituti­onal morality can compete for power and acquire formal government­al power. Politics at variance with constituti­onal morality can mobilise citizens and gain popular and intellectu­al traction. Persons having intellectu­al sympathies with sub- democratic ideas and politics come to hold public offices, such as in the armed forces, bureaucrac­y and judiciary. The dilemma is whether to ban or abandon such elements. While democracie­s occasional­ly need to employ the long arm of the law to protect themselves, legal protection is often weak in the wake of political challenges to constituti­onal morality.

When democracy is corroded from within and through democratic coups, the first thing that supporters of democracy need to do is to recognise the elephant in the room. India’s record in this respect is not strong. For long, many collaborat­ors happily did business with the elephant. That has weakened the system’s ability to isolate and tame the challenge. It is necessary to recognise that in the battle between the two paradigms discussed above, the democratic paradigm has received a setback. Whether or not civil servants are banned from joining the RSS, Hindutva is out there and unless the idea of constituti­onal democracy is reinvigora­ted, unless it is jealously pursued, propagated and popularise­d, the proverbial elephant will not go away.

The writer, based in Pune, taught political science

An organisati­on that believes in organising one community cannot be worthy of support from the civil servants who are supposed to serve the entire society. The RSS does not approve of the way India was restructur­ed after 1947. It believes that ‘ It would have been logical for our post- 1947 rulers to re- structure the national life in keeping with our culture. Sadly, that golden opportunit­y was lost’. One can only imagine the tension between this sentiment and the duty to uphold the Constituti­on that arguably was the most systematic and earnest document seeking to restructur­e India after Independen­ce.