‘Republic of Hindutva: How the Sangh is Reshaping Indian Democracy’ review: Ways and means to navigate a democratic and social polity
The Hindu
A historian attempts to re-brand the RSS by foregrounding its humanitarian work while ring-fencing it from links with sectarian violence
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) will be celebrating its centenary in a few years. No organisation that has survived for so long can do so without an astute grasp of India’s socio-political realities, and using that knowledge to evolve and grow. It therefore stands to reason that a study of its recent strategies could yield insights for students of Indian democracy. Social historian Badri Narayan’s Republic of Hindutva: How the Sangh is Reshaping Indian Democracy is meant to be such a study. Taking the BJP’s electoral successes in the 2014 and 2019 elections as a nodal point of analysis, Narayan argues that the RSS has changed, and what we have now is a “new RSS” that, “in a break from its old radical image, does not want to create communal tensions in society.” If it is startling to have the “old” RSS’s radicalism presented merely as a matter of image, Narayan goes a step further and takes at face value the claim of RSS pracharaks that “the blame of communal riots damages their credibility and reputation, which they acquire through hard work”.More Related News