Packaging Modi’s India: The RSS and its Constituencies 

On June 9, 2024, Narendra Modi was sworn in for a third consecutive term as Indian prime minister. However, unlike his previous terms, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had failed to secure a majority in parliament and had to form a coalition government with parties that do not necessarily share its Hindu supremacist agenda. The Indian electorate had clipped Modi’s wings after ten years of major policy failures on the economic front, the arrests of activists, scholars, students, journalists, and opposition members, brazen attempts to muzzle the media, escalating violence against religious minorities by his Hindu supremacist base, and India’s precipitous decline on multiple global democratic indices. Rumors about tensions between the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the organization that spawned both the party and Modi, began to circulate amid tempered criticism of Modi’s electoral campaign by RSS ideologues. The RSS had played a critical role in Modi’s first two terms, packaging Modi’s agenda for diverse constituencies in India and abroad. Its messaging was variegated, often equivocal, and not always consistent with other groups that constitute the Hindu nationalist ecosystem. Its well-known periodical, The Organiser, is a key platform for its differentiated messaging strategy, enabling the RSS to appeal to diverse constituencies divided by class, caste, religion, gender, and nationality. In the wake of the 2024 election, this strategy worked to retain support for their project from diverse constituencies, and flex their power in Modi’s third term.

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A Hindu supremacist, all-male paramilitary organization founded in 1925, whose early ideologues were deeply inspired by European fascism, the RSS holds daily shakhas, sessions that combine physical training with ideological instruction modeled on youth camps in Mussolini’s Italy (Casolari 2020, Bhatt 2001,123-124). From its inception, the RSS has been committed to the idea that India is a Hindu nation. The RSS casts Indian Muslims and Christians as a threat because of their affiliation with what it constructs as “foreign” religions and cultures. The second leader of the RSS, M.S. Golwalkar, saw Nazi Germany as a role model for Hindu India, saying, “Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has… shown how… impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences… to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan [India] to learn and profit by” (1939,35). While the RSS has tried to distance itself from this endorsement of Nazi Germany, Golwalkar’s supremacist vision continues to guide it, and the multiple organizations it has spawned since the 1920s, including the BJP.

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Modi, India’s prime minister since 2014, joined the RSS as a child, and remained an active member until he was recruited into the BJP in 1987 (Jaffrelot 2021,34-36). Constitutional amendments brought in by Modi’s government bear unmistakable traces of the RSS playbook, and its expansionary nationalism that sees much of South Asia as Akhand Bharat, an undivided Hindu India. Christophe Jaffrelot notes that shortly after the 2014 election the RSS “reminded” Amit Shah (then BJP president, now India’s Home Minister) of its agenda, including, among other things, revoking Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that established Kashmir’s sovereignty (Jaffrelot 2021,166). This foreshadowed the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A of the constitution in 2019, which dismantled the last vestiges of Kashmir’s sovereignty and took India a step closer to Akhand Bharat. For RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, Akhand Bharat is a natural, and ultimately inevitable, manifestation of “India’s inherent character.”

With an absolute majority in parliament from 2014 till the 2024 elections, Modi’s BJP pushed through changes that have transformed India, often deploying authoritarian tactics to silence the opposition. For instance, a draconian new criminal code that extends police powers considerably, was passed with minimal dissent in parliament in December 2023 after the suspension of many members of the opposition. The institutions of the state have also been harnessed to advance its agenda and mute the opposition. Opposition members have faced criminal charges, and chief ministers of two states (Jharkhand and Delhi) were jailed before the 2024 election on corruption charges. Such acts are characteristic of what Thomas Hansen and Srirupa Roy call democratic authoritarianism, “a politics that simultaneously advances and violates ideas and practices of popular and constitutional democracy” (2022,1-2). While accepted norms might restrain many governments from using the full extent of the powers invested in the national executive (8-9), the Modi government “makes full use of its discretionary authority to transform and dismantle democratic institutions” (9).

Journalists critical of the Modi regime have also been targeted by state authorities, and charged with everything from tax evasion to sedition. The frequency of attacks against independent media led to India being ranked 159 out of 180 on the Reporters Without Borders World Freedom Index in 2024. India has been classified as an “electoral autocracy” and one of the “top 6 autocratizers” by the V-Dem Index, and as a “flawed democracy” by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. India’s rapid fall on multiple global indices, the intimidation, surveillance, and arrests of critics, and increasing violence by Hindu supremacists against religious minorities and others, are now routinely covered by the international press and media.

Image by Martin Jernberg

The RSS has responded to this negative coverage by repackaging Modi’s India for its global base in periodicals like The Organiser. Launched in 1947 as its first national publication (Andersen and Damle 1987,115), The  Organiser has become a key platform to render Modi’s India into something more palatable for the RSS’s diverse constituents. An English-language weekly that is accessible online, The Organiser can reach potential voters in non-Hindi speaking states, and supporters in the diaspora. Prafulla Ketkar, Organiser editor since 2013, often uses his editorials to rationalize assaults on democratic freedoms by vilifying independent media and speaking of nebulous threats to India.

On the eve of the 2024 national election, Ketkar warned readers to be vigilant of the media, saying, “Western countries, think tanks and media houses have started meddling in the internal affairs of one of the ancient and most successful democracies.” Referencing the arrest of then chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, Ketkar says, “the arrest of a politician in a corruption case” is being used “to cast aspersions and create doubts about democracy” in India. “[T]hink tanks… develop dubious reports on democratic participation, religious freedom and the free press to sustain the same…. Some political parties and colonised minds… amplify that for… short-term interests."

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Ketkar’s editorials routinely construct Modi’s critics as anti-national elements plotting to subvert India’s democracy. In multiple editorials, Ketkar accuses Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party, of “compromising with the national interest.” Addressing the widely heralded Bharat Jodo Yatra, Gandhi’s foot march across India to unite people against Modi’s divisive politics, Ketkar said, “In the name of Bharat Jodo Yatra, the Congress scion made irresponsible statements while associating with… members of the breaking-India forces.” The BBC, after airing a documentary speculating on Modi’s involvement in the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, India: The Modi Question, was described as having a “communist-Islamist” staff and an anti-India agenda.

Those engaged in the many mass protests in Modi’s India, including the farmers who forced the government to repeal three pro-business farm laws it pushed through parliament, are described as having been “mobilised by … communists of various shades… using this agitation to challenge and weaken the democratic structure.” The specter of internal and external enemies, and the casting of communism and Islam as threats, are not unique to the RSS. Such discourses enable authoritarian leaders and regimes across the world to weaponize state institutions against critics, and curtail democratic freedoms in the name of protecting democracy (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018,62-64,92-93; Hansen and Roy 2022,18).

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As I have argued elsewhere (Menon 2010), the expansionary power of the Hindu Right is rooted in its ability to articulate with myriad anxieties, desires, and interests, and to calibrate its image to appeal to and accommodate diverse groups, not unlike the tactics of the right elsewhere in the world. Ketkar’s editorials showcase this process, as evident in his use of anti-colonial and social justice rhetoric to appeal to liberal constituencies. For instance, Ketkar often accuses critics of having a colonial mindset, while painting Modi’s government as an anti-colonial force. Everything from building a temple at the site of a mosque destroyed by the Hindu Right to replacing the colonial-era sedition law with a repackaged version that extends the minimum sentence is constructed as evidence of the government’s anti-colonial stance. Hindu nationalism itself is constructed as an anti-colonial politics.

Moreover, Ketkar’s editorials often begin with epigraphs that appropriate the legacies of figures who have been central to struggles for social justice. Gandhi is frequently quoted, as is B.R. Ambedkar who fought against casteism in India. Such genuflections and appropriations enable the RSS to appeal to its varied constituencies, including those with liberal pretensions, even as Modi’s India consolidates state power and entrenches upper-caste norms. And for those disturbed by rising Hindu supremacist violence, the RSS offers a mild critique and quick rejection that allows supporters to distance themselves from these acts, even though the individuals and organizations responsible have been spawned by the RSS and enable Modi’s power. Indeed, violence has always undergirded the BJP’s democratic successes (van der Veer 2015,26).

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What of post-election critiques of Modi’s BJP by RSS ideologues? During the election, Modi’s coterie within the BJP fixated on brand Modi, and suggested that the RSS was superfluous to its success. Meanwhile, Modi referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children” in speeches that were widely covered by the international press—potentially alienating liberal constituents. After the election, an RSS ideologue called the results “a reality check for [an] overconfident BJP,” and said the singular focus on Modi became a liability. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat questioned Modi’s lack of decorum during the election and critiqued the exacerbation of “social tensions.” However, he tempered his critique with discussions of the BJP’s achievements since 2014, reminding his audience of the party’s accomplishments while distancing the RSS from Modi’s words. Bhagwat’s comments are part of the RSS’s differentiated messaging that placates moderate members of its global base and asserts its political centrality, while continuing to endorse such polarizing rhetoric. In the RSS’s long-game Hindu supremacy must prevail, even if Modi does not.

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Such messaging enables the RSS to resonate with diverse audiences. Positioning the government as anti-communist to pander to conservatives in India and abroad, it presents it as anti-colonial and aligned with social justice struggles to connect with liberal interests. It paints protests and critique as attempts to tarnish India’s reputation on the global stage, and rationalizes authoritarian tendencies by raising spectral threats. And by critiquing Modi for his rhetorical excesses during the election, it mollifies those alarmed by the extensive international coverage of them. Honed over decades to appeal to diverse constituencies, this variegated messaging is a conscious strategy to ensure continued support for its Hindu supremacist agenda, with or without Modi.  

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References:

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Anderson, Walter K. and Shridhar D. Damle. 1987. The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya

Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism. Boulder and London: Westview Press.

Bhatt, Chetan. 2001. Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies, and Modern Myths. Oxford: Berg.

Casolari, Marzia. 2020. In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Relationships Between Indian Radical

Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism. London: Routledge.

Golwalkar, M.S. 1939. We or our Nationhood Defined. Nagpur: Bharat Publications.

Hansen, Thomas Blom and Srirupa Roy. 2022. “What is New About ‘New Hindutva.’” In Saffron

Republic: Hindu Nationalism and State Power in India, edited by T.B. Hansen and S. Roy, 1-24. Cambridge University Press.

Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2021. Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy.

Chennai: Context.

Levitsky, Steven and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Broadway Books.

Menon, Kalyani Devaki. 2010. Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India.

Philadelphia: University of  Pennsylvania Press.

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van der Veer, Peter. 2015. “What Transcends the Nation?” Asian Ethnology 80(1):19-30.