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“To all Indians who love their country and

culture: They must know the nature of the

danger the country is facing and the

unholy alliance its enemies are forging.”

-- Warned

Ram Swarup

Three Decades Ago ============================================== These four thought-provoking articles:

(1) The Politics of Self-Alienation – p. 4 (2) The Dishonest Secularist – p. 9 (3) The RSS Bogey – p. 14 (4) The Embarrassing Allies – p.19

-- written by Ram Swarup in 1979, deal with the larger configuration and deeper motivations of Indian politics -- the politics of self-alienation, which rejects the deeper values of the country and its culture. The learned Author points out how voting in India is along communal and caste lines which gives Muslims a „balancing‟ role, and which in turn makes them the wooed community by all kinds of political parties, and which has also forged a great alliance between opportunist, communal and caste politicians. The author concludes with these words: “We offer these articles in the hope of promoting a larger discussion, particularly amongst those who love their country and culture. They must know the nature of the danger the country is facing and the unholy alliance its enemies are forging” ==============================================

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FOREWORD

By the Author

Here we offer four articles: (1) The Politics of Self-Alienation, (2) The Dishonest Secularist, (3) The RSS Bogey, and (4) The Embarrassing Allies. These are not „election‟ articles though they refer to elections; rather, they deal with the larger configuration and deeper motivations of Indian politics. Indian thinking today is characterized by self-alienation, which has also given birth to its own brand of politics. This politics rejects the deeper values of the country and its culture. Its arrogance has prevented it even from comprehending those values. Voting in India is along communal and caste lines. Thus Muslims, considered a community, do very well in elections. Hindus, on the other hand, represent no single entity, electorally speaking. Their votes are divided into castes. This gives Muslims a „balancing‟ role. This makes them the wooed community by all kinds of political parties. This is the political basis of the country‟s „minority‟ problem. This fact has also created a vast vested interest in communal politics; this has also forged a great alliance between opportunist, communal and caste politicians. This politics dresses itself in left phraseology. It uses the phrases of „secularism‟ and „socialism‟ in order to serve its own ends. It is also from this source that a good deal of anti-RSS propaganda emanates.

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RSS-baiting is, at heart, Hindu-baiting. The slogan is raised by those who would like to use minorities to foist a party or dynastic dictatorship over the majority.

There is the culture of service and also the politics of power. The RSS, in so far as it derives its ethos from Hinduism, represents the former which the latter finds difficult even to appreciate. Hence the misunderstanding about the RSS. We offer these articles in the hope of promoting a larger discussion, particularly amongst those who love their country and culture. They must know the nature of the danger the country is facing and the unholy alliance its enemies are forging. -- RAM SWARUP 25th August 1979.

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THE POLITICS OF SELF-ALIENATION

No society is without its dark spots. The Hindu society too has no lack of them. It was inevitable particularly in a society that has lasted for thousands of years. There is nothing strange in the fact that in its long course of history Hinduism has gathered certain accretions not in tune with new needs. The two reactions But this produced two reactions. Persons like Dayananda, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi went deeper into the truths of their culture. Shaped in that truth, they were filled with a new love and understanding. Themselves raised, they acquired the strength to raise others. They saw deeper than most others the week points of their society. And because they loved, they also earned the right to rebuke, to reform. But this rebuke did not impair their capacity to defend it against the interested attack of its enemies and detractors. The most telling chiding to Hinduism and also its stoutest defence came from them. But in smaller men, the same situation produced an opposite reaction. It filled them with a deep sense of inferiority. They were overwhelmed by the new culture of the West, young, triumphant, positive, confident, aggressive and in some ways brilliant. They met the situation by disowning their own culture, by adopting the ways and attitudes of those they regarded as their superior. They even borrowed their contempt for the culture and people of their land. In their sneeking admiration for the new rulers, they found nothing good in their own society. They became self-alienated. Self-alienation is one of the two ways in which people seek personal equation when confronted with a new and powerful culture. The other way is that of self-discovery.

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But this self-alienation did not always dampen the spirit of its victims. In fact, it became the foundation of dynamic public career of many important people. They became reformers, though their reforms consisted in denouncing and cursing. In their own ways, they also loved the people, though they loved with condescension, loved with a British heart in a brown body. Elites and leftists

This self-alienation was an important component of the intellectual ferment of the British days though it was kept in check partly by the pervading influence of Gandhiji. But with Gandhiji gone, it has come out into the fore and shows itself in all its power. It has many facts and many expressions but its most undisguised incarnation is in the elitist and leftist politics of the day.

The elites are enamoured of the West and they seek solutions of all the country‟s problems in imported models. They would like to cast the country in the image of the West. They fail to see that this is a sterile path in more than one sense and just by reproducing the West in ourselves, we also make no contribution to the pool of the world-good.

But this initiative mentality finds its culmination in Marxists and communists though they would borrow from Russia and China rather than from America and Europe. In them, this mentality has become self-conscious, to use their own phrase. They would import not only technology but also the communist philosophy of life, the Soviet forms of organization, the concepts of class war and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the strategy of capturing the state-power.

All this requires according to them, the liquidation of the „Old Order‟, the necessary first step to the second one of building a socialist society. But if we look deeply into their

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psychology, we shall find that for many of them the first step is enough; their hatred for the country‟s culture is greater than their love for the Soviets. This hatred is also shared by many leftists and even rightists who do not share other communist thesis. Thus the politics of self-alienation is wider than the communist movement. This politics appeals in the name of science and rationality but it is dogmatic and sloganised. It proclaims its love for the poor, but in loving their unfortunate brother, its votaries give up no privileges. It uses secular and radical phraseology but it is built on contempt towards the masses. Its secularism is anti-religious in general, and anti-Hindu in particular. Not only we the secularists allergic to Hinduism, they are even angry with those who do not share their hatred of their country‟s culture and it‟s past. Them they call „obscurantists‟ and „reactionary‟. For his love of Hinduism, not even Gandhi could escape this charge. Let us remember that in his days, he was called a „Hindu Communalist‟ and „reactionary‟ by people representing this mentality. Many have imbibed Gandhi‟s love of other religions but they could not follow him in his love for his own. The reason was simple. His love for other religions was based on self-fulfillment; the so-called love of many who appeal in his name is based on self-alienation. Politics of hatred

In many Hindu Intellectuals and politicians, the hatred of the religion in which they were born has acquired neurotic and even lunatic proportions. In some others it is more self-controlled, more prudently expressed and more profitably directed – it is expressed with an eye to Muslim and Christian votes. Similarly, in some it is expressed emotionally; in others it takes on a more intellectual look. In communists, the madness becomes a method and acquires a long-range aim; it becomes their necessary ideological

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prop which supports their aim of capturing power. They distrust all those who have roots, who have self-esteem, who have any structure of beliefs, any rallying point. They know that people who are ideologically and organizationally cohesive are not an easy prey to their ambitions. Therefore the people must be ideologically disarmed, their culture subverted, they must loose their self-respect, their organic leadership; they must be atomized, their internal differences fanned so that they can be easily picked up. The politics of self-alienation stirs up regional and communal differences and uses minorities in order to perpetuate a party or dynastic rule, or to set up a dictatorship is inherent in this kind of politics, for it holds common people in low estimation. It regards them as backward, superstitious, ignorant, and illiterate. This view gives rise to its own politics of fraud, force and imposition. It knows what is good for other people and in its wisdom it sets up targets for them. Politics of service But the politics of service is different from the politics of power. It requires the capacity to see in common people, even in the midst of their poverty, a new dignity and beauty, new qualities of the mind and the heart. This alone makes us give them due respect and honour; this alone develops in us those qualities of humility, tolerance and understanding, so necessary for any deeper work. In its concrete expression, the politics of self-alienation is not without some valid points. We are ready to submit that some are moved by a valuable impulse. Their revolt is against old forms, narrow loyalties, parochial views and the refusal of the traditionalist to come to terms with the modern world and the modern developments.

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But self-alienation helps them in no way in realizing their positive values; rather, it poisons them at the very source. On the other hand, whatever is valuable in their standpoint can be achieved without denying the deeper values of their culture. Hinduism has the necessary depth, catholicity, dynamism to assimilate all that is good and true. It has also a good deal which is always true, which is not easily found elsewhere and of which we should be proud and which we should cultivate. -- RAM SWARUP 25th August 1979

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THE DISHONEST SECULARIST

Lately, there has been a sudden spurt of „anti-communal‟ slogans. Secularists have appeared from unexpected quarters in suspiciously large numbers. Everywhere, there is a new love for the minorities and a hearty warning against the forces of communalism, especially in their incarnation as the RSS. The whole press, if not the whole country, is drowned in these sentiments and warnings. It must be irksome not only to the RSS against which this whole propaganda is apparently directed but it must be embarrassing to the Muslims as well to have so many champions. With so many choices of the saviours, it is no easy task to decide by whom to be saved. Today secularism has become a profitable business. It has attracted all kinds of shady characters. Even more than patriotism, it has become the first and the last refuge of scoundrels of all descriptions. Ambitious politician use it for vote-catching; communal intellectuals use it for giving themselves a progressive image; aggressive minorities use it for self-aggrandizement. The slogan of secularism has been so often, so monotonously and cynically repeated that it has become hackneyed and trite. It has even lost its abusive potential. It simply bores. It has also lost the power to help the minorities; in fat, it has begun to hurt. People have started reacting negatively to this over-display of love for the minorities. They have begun to feel that the minorities are being pampered, that they are hard to please, that they are getting unreasonable and even impossible.

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Vested interest Secularism is not merely an agnostic or metaphysical idea or even a generous socials impulse; it is hard-nosed election politics; it is a bid for Muslim and Christian votes.

Hindu-Muslim unity is a desirable thing but it does not suit that breed of politicians who prosper on division. „Divide and Rule‟ was no invention of the British; it is an indispensable policy of all who want to perpetuate a party or dynastic rule. The rules of the game do not change simply because the British have left. These have been now adopted by the brown elite they have left behind. They have vested interest in keeping people divided and perpetuating their differences.

In his book „My eleven years with Fakhrudin Ali Ahmed‟, Mr. Fazle Ahmed Rehmaney provides an interesting case which throws great light on the psychology of secularism. During the Emergency days, when members of the Jamat-e-Islami were put in the same jail as the members of the RSS, the former began to discover that the latter were no monsters as they were made to believe by „nationalist‟ propaganda; therefore they began to think better of their Hindu brothers. This sent alarm into the heart of their secularists and nationalists. Maulavis belonging to Jamait-Ul-Ulema-e-Hind met the President and reported to him about the growing rapport between the leaders of the two communities. This „stunned‟ the President and he said that this carried two “ominous future for Congresite Muslim leaders”. He also promised that “he would speak to Indiraji about this dangerous development and ensure that Muslims remain Muslim”

There is vested interest in Muslims retaining their Hindu phobia of the Hindus. This phobia is a veritable cornucopia of votes for which the opportunist elements are competing. It is unfortunate that the Muslim community has thrown up no

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worth while leadership which is interested in the larger question of Hindu-Muslim amity; on the other hand, it has been in the grip of a leadership that has been working merely as the election agent of the ruling clique in the congress politics. Election arithmetic Let us see how Muslim votes cast a disproportionate influence on Indian Politics. The Hindu society is divided into castes. It thinks in terms of castes, it votes in terms of castes. Hindus do not vote for Hindu candidates; they vote for caste candidates. So, if one belongs to the right caste or can manipulate the caste factor successfully and also manage the minority votes on anti-Hindu slogan one is bound to succeed. Thus while the Hindu society is divided, Muslims vote enblock. This gives them disproportionate representation. From the majority point of view, the situations become worse in the prevailing politics of marginal and balancing votes. States have been governed by chief-ministers who headed small, minority groups but which enjoyed the balancing status and therefore, the power of tilting the scales in favour of one or the other major parties. This factor which was not unimportant in the States has now invaded the Centre too. We now know how groups of this kind can dictate their terms and make and unmake Governments. Now what is happening on the floor of different legislatures is also being repeated on a larger canvas in the wider arena of the electorate. Groups which vote en block and also enjoy the power of tilting the scales become important beyond their numbers. They are wooed by politicians of all kinds who care the least bit about majorities or minorities.

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Today, in India, there is no „minority‟ problem; there is a „majority‟ problem. This situation will continue so long as political parties find that they can spite the majority with immunity and get the minority votes into the bargain. But if they knew that their brand of politics also lost them at least as many votes of one community as it won them of the other, they would be more circumspect.

„Casteless‟ leaders Probably it will not be so bad if, under the social conditions of India, important castes returned their genuine leaders so long as they also did not forget their loyalty to the larger India, and above all did not lose their sense of fairness and justice. But the situation becomes worse when the scene is dominated by politicians who either do not belong to important castes, (electorally speaking), or are not themselves important in their castes, but still have ambition of doing well in politics. They have to live by their wits. They become ideologues of caste and communal politics. They also attach themselves to caste and communal politicians. They become their advisors, guides and philosophers. Even more than caste and communal politicians, the Indian politics is vitiated by those rootless elements, men without caste and creed and often event without character, but who have the wits of manipulating caste and communal politics to their advantage. The true measure There is nothing wrong with secularism as such but all doctrine receives their meanings from those who champion them. For example, Gandhiji‟s secularism was religious and even Hindu. But the secularism of most contemporary politicians is anti-religion in general and anti-Hindu in particular. Gandhi loved his own religion and this taught him to love the truths of all religions. This gave him the strength

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to oppose narrow-mindedness in all, whether amongst the Hindus or the Muslims or the Christians. But for modern secularists, Muslim or Christian Communalism is sacred. They have made common cause with this; they walk hand in hand with this. This current secular slogan is nothing but another name for Hindu-baiting. It specializes in using the Muslim sticks for beating the Hindus. -- RAM SWARUP 25th August 1979

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THE RSS BOGEY

Recently, the country is witnessing a spate of anti-RSS propaganda. The RSS leaders have tried to answer it for most of the time by silence but occasionally they have also put up a reluctant defence. The defence failed partly because it was half-hearted but mainly because it did not go sufficiently deep into the motivations of its detractors. It assumed that the cause of their attack was misinformation or some unfortunate misunderstanding which could be removed by a reasoned explanation. But this view is too native. The attack has several components and is made up of several strands and several levels; it also arises from different ideas or even idea systems and also different motives. In all this, misinformation is a factor, but not a very important factor. The attack is willful. Caste and communal politics Another factor, and a very important one, that strikes us in the face, is election politics and election morality or rather amorality. There are Muslim votes in attacks against anyone not denying Hindu culture and loyalty. The cohesion of the Hindus was cultural and not political; which means that it was based on concepts of freedom and natural self-articulation of the society. Socially, the Hindu society is divided into castes; politically, it provides no rallying point. As a result, in the concrete situation of today, if one belongs to the right caste or can manipulate the caste factor successfully, maligning Hinduism loses him no votes; on the contrary, it qualifies him for Muslim votes. It also gives him a progressive image which is a great political and personal asset; for with that image, one can dispense with

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every thing else, even normal honesty and minimum principles.

Today caste and communal politicians work in unison. It is difficult to say who uses whom. Chavans, Reddys, Urs, all are returned on caste votes though they are behind no one in castigating the Jan Sangh and the RSS for their „Communal‟ politics. In the same way, Muslim fanatic communalists have newly discovered that their hearts weep at the plight of the Harijans. Indira Gandhi has been a great manipulator of caste and communal politics and also its greatest beneficiary. Dr. Lohia too made no small contribution to the cause of the caste politics though without much benefit to himself personally. The dominance of the caste factor also explains why the Jan Sangh electoral strength has not been commensurate with its organizational strength. For, the caste option was not open to it, believing as it did in some kind of a larger Hindu entity. This won it no Hindu votes but it made it „communal‟ in the eyes of the Muslims. Hinduism and modern thought

Another component of attack against the RSS is entirely of a different nature. It has a genuine intellectual core. It arises from the inability of the intellect to appreciation the deeper truths of the spirit. The RSS derives its ethos from Hinduism with which modern intellect and modern power politics are not in sympathy. Therefore, they regard the RSS as anachronistic. Here there is room for genuine differences. For, in a way the two view points, the two weltanschauungs are not easily reconciled. Hinduism stresses spiritual and cultural factors; modern intellect emphasizes duties, service, self-abnegation; the latter stresses rights, power, self-

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aggrandizement; the former stresses co-operation, the latter conflict. Hinduism is deeply democratic in temper; it has respect for the ideas and life of the people. Modern thought and political parties are elitist in outlook. They would acquire power and destroy by force or propaganda or both common men‟s ideas and loyalties. They would replace what they regard as people‟s superstitions with beliefs and practices which they regard as rational, enlightened and scientific. There are other differences along the same lines. Hinduism is contemplative; modern political and economic thought is manipulative. Modern political creeds come and go; they are like a flash in the pan, making such noise while they last but soon replaced by other political fashions. The Hindu society stresses more permanent and stable values.

In so far as the RSS derives its inspiration from Hinduism, it tends to imbibe some of its ethos. It believes in discipline, service, silent work, loyalty, brotherliness. This kind of mind has not turn for politics and it does not understand it much. No wonder the values of this kind of mind are not understood by the modern intellect and it looks at them with suspicion. As a result, the RSS does not understand the intellectuals and the politicians and the intellectuals and the politicians do not understand the RSS.

There is nothing that the RSS can do about this kind of attack except to the be patient and to give the opponents time to learn from their own experience. Moral values and deeper human relationships are already breaking down under the impact of modern intellectual ideas. The latter are creating a spiritual vacuum. Many people are beginning to realize that the RSS Work, in one version or another, is needed not only in India but in the whole world.

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Hindu-baiting

There is also another attack which puts on an intellectual face but which in reality is not intellectual. For, it is dishonest, interested are motivated. This attack is sustained, vicious and virulent. It spearheaded by those who have a deep animus against Hinduism especially that give it cohesiveness, identity, the will and the strength to survive and resist and fight back. Those who want Hinduism to have no backbone, who want to disarm it ideologically, are opposed to the work of the RSS. This kind of organization and its kind of work do not suit their designs.

The crowd of Hindu haters is motley and consists of people of different talents, motivations and accomplishments. Hindu-baiting is intellectually fashionable and politically profitable. Some are its ideologues, some its demagogues, some its salesmen, some its toughs and some its beneficiaries. Some provided the brain, some the brawn. Muslim communalism provides the block votes; Hindu opportunists provide the demagogy; and the communists and the leftists provide the ideological dressing. Thus, ideology, political opportunism, communalism and casteism work in close unison.

As a champion of Hindu consolidation and the deeper values of the country, it was inevitable that the RSS should come into conflict with those who have other designs for the country and also with those who seek opportunist alliances in order to win elections.

It should be obvious to anybody that the most vicious anti-RSS propaganda is at heart anti-Hindu propaganda. So long as the RSS is identified with Hinduism in one form or another, it would invite this attack. It cannot hope to convince or please the enemies of Hinduism except by repudiating

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this identification and denying its inspiration. In this repudiation, it will also lose its own raison d‟etre.

But while the enemies of the RSS have worked themselves up to a frenzied point and have whipped up their tirade, the propaganda itself is losing its appeal with the thinking people. They now know that it is emanating from demented minds, from professional Hindu-baiters, from corrupt and opportunist politicians, from agents of foreign powers, from those whole are interested in the dismemberment of the country, from inveterate communalists putting on the mask of a progressive phraseology. Not only has this propaganda ceased hurting the RSS, it is positively helping them instead. For many people do not know much about the RSS, but they know enough about its opponents. “If Indira Gandhi, Bahuguna, Fernandes, Biju are opposed to the RSS, there must be something honest, clean, principled and patriotic about it”, they argue. -- RAM SWARUP 25 August, 1979.

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THE EMBARASSING ALLIES

Emergency brought very divergent people together. But the association provided, not unexpectedly, abortive. The alliance came under the compulsion of abnormal circumstances and psychology; so it was not unnatural that it should give way once normal conditions were restored. People with dissimilar ways of thinking cannot stay together. What is not solved at the level of the mind and the heart cannot be solved at the level of organisation and its artificial arrangements. Om one sense, only the Jan Sangh was the outsider in the new alliance. The rest belonged to what is described as the congress culture. The rest belonged to what is described as the congress culture. The socialists were noisy and at times troublesome but they too belonged to what some of them called, their own satisfaction, the „natural mainstream‟. The relationship between different wings of the Janata Party was a strange relationship. It was also a one-sided relationship. Though quite at daggers drawn with each other, and even treacherous in their mutual dealings, they had one trait in common; they were all embarrassed at their association with the Jan Sangh. But the power equation in the Janata Party and on the larger political scene was such that the Jan Sangh could not be jettisoned immediately. Besides the Jan Sangh group, the partners in the Janata Party consisted of two chief elements; the ideologues and the horse-traders. Their respective roles were not mutually exclusive. The horse-traders appealed in the name of the highest political principles when it suited them and the ideologues were also sharp and shrewd bargainers. Yet the distinction is still there and has its usefulness. Of the two, the horse-traders were important organizationally, but the

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ideologues set the ideological tune. They provided the larger social rationalizing, the intellectual fare of left slogans and phraseology that supports the politics of divisions, conflict and self-alienation; supports caste and communal politics; supports hatred of the deeper values of the country; supports hatred of the majority in the name of the minorities. But in this respect, the Janata Party ideologues were doing no more than what they are doing on the national area on the larger scale. A political case-system

The alliance practiced its own caste-system. In the new dispensation, those who mouthed radical slogans were the Brahmins and the people of Jan Sangh were the political untouchables. Even the Congress (O) Members who were not particularly high in the caste-system thought that they owed it to their status to talk condescendingly of the Jan Sangh and the RSS. From time to time, there were inspired leakages in the press about the discomfiture they felt in their association with the „Communalists‟ and there were talks of bringing all congressmen together. Charan Singh himself stood pretty low in the caste-system. He was kulak, a communalist and a reactionary. But even he thought he could improve his caste by denouncing the Jan Sangh and the RSS people. From the beginning, the high-caste partners in the alliance behaved as if they were obliging the Jan Sangh by allowing it to associate with themselves. They made it abundantly clear to it that it was there on probation; that it must justify the new honour conferred on it. They setup conditions for the Jan Sangh to fulfill to deserve membership in the new club. The conditions were that the Jan Sangh should completely shed its past, that it must repudiate its parentage, delink

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itself with the RSS, joint the „National mainstream‟; in short, change itself completely. All the terms were one-sided. Only the Jan Sangh was to change. That all should change if the alliance was to succeed -- Why? Even the suggestion was preposterous. Others needed no change. They were already perfect, at least politically. Were they not secularists and socialists? Did not their hearts ache with pain at the plight of the minorities and the depressed classes? Did they not heartily denounce the Birlas and the Tatas? Were they not for cow slaughter? Did they not oppose the Freedom of Religions Bill? Were they not denouncing Hindu obscurantism while supporting Sheikhs and Khomeinis in the Middle East? They were already full-blown progressives. Where was room for any change? And yet in their broad-mindedness and charity, they gave the Jan Sangh and even the RSS all the chance. Madhu Limaye offered the RSS an opportunity of becoming his volunteer force. When this did not happen, he rightly concluded that the RSS had not changed and that it had refused to benefit by his alchemic influence and be transformed. Charan Singh too gave them a change to support him in his bid for Prime Ministership. But when this also did not work out, he too discovered that they were communal, though he himself had no better reputation with the pure breed of secularists and radicals. Morarji Bhai was a case apart. Not only of the Jan Sangh alone, it was the duty of the whole nation to support him. Now that he had become the Prime Minister, what more could the people want? Was it not enough for them?

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Low ideological posture

But the Jan Sangh became more mute as the attacks of its detractors became more vicious and vociferous. There could be several reasons for this silence. Perhaps its members had been treated as outcastes so long that they were satisfied if they were accepted and allowed to sit with others and be counted as one of them. They did not want so spoil the game if silence helped it. They were also silent because on many matters they had probably little to say. Politics was not their cup of tea and they did not have pronounced opinions on many political and economic questions. In fact they were ready to borrow their opinions from their opponents if this also pacified them into the bargain. This is proved by the ease with which they accepted the current clitches of secularism and socialism without realising that the slogans represented no idealism but hid corruption and self-seeking, and caste and communal politics of the worst type. There was another reason too. Many important leaders of the Jan Sangh came from the RSS school where they were taught „discipline‟ and „unity‟. Perhaps this affects their own quality of leadership and made them prone to any leadership, whoever set up to offer it, whether it was Morarji Desai, or Charan Singh or Jagjivan Ram. In the same school they were also taught the value of egoless work which is good in its own way. But what is the use if one‟s own ego is replaced by more bloated egos and one becomes their instrument? There were also more creditable motives. The Jan Sangh group wanted to preserve the unity of the Party; it did not want to jeopardize it by putting forward its own demands and taking purist, ideological stand. For the same reason, not

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only did it not object to the ideology of many of its colleagues, it did not also object to their corrupt ways. It thought it was enough if its own ministers were clean. But if its desire for unity was greater than that of its partners, it had to pay a price. It submitted to their attacks in silence hoping that these will cease. Ideological bullying But whatever be the reasons of the low posture of the Jan Sangh, it created an unhealthy relationship. It began to be taken for granted. It became a ready whipping boy, a convenient scape-goat. This also encouraged ideological bullying. And once bullying starts, it knows no end. Bullys do not know where to stop. You yield them one inch, and they begin to demand a yard. The secret of a true and healthy social relationship is mutuality and reciprocity. If it becomes one-sided through greedy expectation or misconceived over-indulgence, it is poisoned. The rot has gone so deep that even after the Janata Party is broken, the same old situation continues. The same old pressures are being exerted on the Jan Sangh as much from inside as from the outside. The Jan Sangh wing is asked to snap its ties with the RSS, and the RSS is approached to close its doors on its old friends in the Jan Sangh. Thus the RSS must give up its proven friends in order curry favour with its proven enemies. It must repudiate Advanis and Bhandaris in order to carry conviction with Limayas and Fernandes. No body even asks the question whether the demand is fair to make. But such is the lure of easy solutions that some even in the Jan Sangh wing are inclined to yield. They do not see that it will solve no problem and will only whet the appetite of their enemies and will only encourage further bullying. This will

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also give the Jan Sangh as well as the RSS an image of cleverness, when many people are looking for different qualities, looking for men of commitment and loyalty. For such as those who stand for cultural self-articulation and not just for elections and ministerial changes, there are no short cuts and no substitutes for a principled stand. Reciprocity Different groups in the Janata Party as well as in the country have been putting forward terms on which they would be prepared to associate with the Jan Sangh. The Jan Sangh should learn to reciprocate the contempt implied in this demand and put forward its own terms. It should refuse to associate with those who have a deep-seated animus against Hinduism, who make it a habit of running down the culture of the country, who are working as agents of foreign powers, who are pursuing caste and communal politics in the name of secularism and socialism, who are corrupt and shifty, and those who are megalomaniacs and fascists. The Jan Sangh should also make it clear they will have no truck with professional RSS-baiters; that to associate with the RSS is an honour; that the RSS needs no certificates from any quarters; that it lives in the hearts of millions of people; that it has won this place by its unselfish and dedicated work. Let others know, foes as well as friends, that it is no leper.

If it takes this unequivocal stand, it will purify the political atmosphere. It will also force other political parties and leaders to take a more principled stand. Otherwise those who are only too ready to bend will be made to crawl. -- RAM SWARUP 25 August 1979.