Author: Gautama on TW.
RSS, like every organisation has its blind spots. It can make wrong decisions whose consequences will be detrimental to Hindus given its outreach and influence. Hence Hindus have it in their interest to understand where RSS may be going can be wrong. IMO RSS ignoring the concerns of the general category while going all out to expand its outreach among the other categories is not a correct decision. Is it fair for the RSS to ignore the concerns of crores of honest, hardworking tax paying Indians who have never been a burden on the country, who have gone out of their way to make ends meet, to raise their standards of living, to contribute positively to the growth of this nation? All they have been expecting from the Indian state is opportunity to do so. Not doles. Not reservations. Not tax breaks. And it is these very opportunities that have been shrinking over the years because organisations such as the RSS believe outreach is more important.
RSS’s claim to legitimacy is that the organisation does groundwork and hence knows about the realities better than us keyboard warriors. But it has gotten things wrong, despite all that groundwork. Case in point - Sabarimala. It is not that RSS is a non-existent entity in Kerala. So for an organisation that such kind of groundwork, they should have known what ordinary people on the ground feel about the issue of women’s entry into the Sabarimala temple. And the devotees of Ayyappa in southern India are from the very category that RSS is trying to expand their reach towards. Then what explains RSS’s stance on the issue of women’s entry into the temple until 2018? RSS was in favour of allowing women of all ages into temple.
For several years, RSS thinkers such as R Hari have been writing articles asking for the “discriminatory” practice in the Sabarimala temple to be stopped. Until as recently as 2016 Bhaiyyaji Joshi, a very senior RSS functionary, gave interviews where he repeatedly said that RSS would want the “discrimination” to end. When the verdict first came out in 2018, RSS welcomed it. I remember this because I argued about this with my friends and relatives who are in RSS. Their response was “RSS doesn’t take any decision without putting in serious thought behind it.” And yet, when the common people, and that too mostly women, got onto the streets protesting the interference in the temple tradition, RSS did a grand U-turn. What changed?
Clearly it indicates that either their groundwork is insufficient, or they have failed to correctly interpret the signals that you have been picking up on the ground. Isn’t that a cause of concern? Not just to the active supporters of RSS but also the rest of the Hindu populace? Because like it or not, the Hindu society, including the General Category people have been trusting the RSS to do right by them. The least it can expect is an honest engagement, but all it gets in return is the arrogance emerging from behind the veil of groundwork.