RSS' backseat driving can endanger India

Back-seat driving, anyone will tell you, is dangerous. It confuses the driver and can cause accidents. Even then, the worst that can happen is a few mangled bodies and the destruction of the vehicle. But back-seat driving in governance is a disaster.

It can ruin the country because those who try to guide the rulers from outside have their own line to follow. They do not realise that they can make the ones in the gaddi (hot seat) go wrong. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) should face this fact when it seeks to have a defined role.

Already it has its imprint on the working of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Whether ministers or party functionaries, they are conscious of what they are expected to do. Must they rub their noses on the ground every now and then to assure the RSS of their servility?

The agreement that has emerged at the meeting between the Prime Minister and the RSS leaders reportedly says that decisions on all "national issues" would be after consultations between the government and the RSS and its non-political affiliates, including the aggressive Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). This makes the parivar (saffron family) an extra-constitutional authority.

Things may not have yet reached the stage of Sanjay Gandhi's extra-constitutional rule during the emergency. But they are undoubtedly moving towards that direction. If the parivar is allowed to have its way there will be a parallel authority working behind the scenes.

If such an arrangement is accepted, it would mean that the real rulers will not be those whom the people elect but those who sit behind the walls in Delhi's Jhandewalan or at the headquarters in Nagpur where the RSS and its parivar confabulate. Why don't they come out in the open and fight the elections so that the voters know who they are?

What the RSS wants is to arrogate to itself the power, which belongs to the representatives of the people, without facing the polls. It wants to be a third chamber. Already one can see how a particular RSS line comes to be the BJP's viewpoint.

Gujarat is a recent example. The BJP initially felt unhappy and embarrassed. But once the RSS said that the "ethnic cleansing" was because of the Godhra train incident, the BJP began to say the same thing. There is none who has not condemned Godhra. But does it justify the planned, systematic killings at the connivance, if not the command, of the BJP government?

There was a time when the BJP, on the PM's suggestion, was inclined to get rid of Narendra Modi. But the RSS had its way at the BJP's conclave at Goa. Although the Prime Minister does not meet him, the RSS has seen to it that Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani receives him in Delhi and that their meeting is shown on the hapless Doordarshan.

Advani has already announced Modi as the state's chief minister after the election even before a single vote has been cast.

Take another example. The VHP has announced that it will not accept the court verdict on the Ayodhya case. The BJP's opinion is contrary. My fear is that the RSS, without consulting which the VHP would not have made the statement, will come into the picture to see that the court decision is bypassed. If that happens it will be a sad day for the country. For, it will set a dangerous trend that will have far-reaching implications.

In the coalition at the Centre, Home, Finance, External Affairs, Human Resource Development are with the BJP. Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister are from the party. These are top positions.

By wanting to guide governance from outside, the RSS, which has in its parivar the bigoted VHP and the militant Bajrang Dal, may harass the ministers still further. They are already watching their steps, so much so they come out of their office to receive even a petty Sangh pracharak (worker).

Many BJP ministers say in private that they function in fear because they do not know if they will rub a Sangh parivar member on the wrong side by mistake.

Whatever the façade, the RSS is not the party in power. The government and the BJP can act differently. The latter has the authority to advise or even issue fiats because both are the warp and woof of the same outfit. But how can a body, which masquerades as a cultural organisation, become a politically interested lobby? And how will it fit into the system where authority goes with responsibility?

No one has raised these pertinent questions in a big way – neither the politicians, nor the media. It is the BJP in parliament or in the state legislature, which faces the music for the acts of omission and commission, and not the RSS and its parivar.

This is no "communication gap" as the RSS spokesman said after his last meeting with the Prime Minister. What it boils down to is that the RSS is keen to rule without having any responsibility. It wants the shield to continue while it shoots from outside.

In the case of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the RSS clothes have always ill-fitted him. Its ideologue once described him as a mukhauta (mask), which hides the real face of the RSS.

Vajpayee said a few days ago that there would never be a Gujarat again and that the murder of five dalits in the Haryana village showed the arrogance of the upper caste, which masterminded the killing. There was a ring of honesty in what he said.

The RSS parivar seldom accosts Vajpayee directly because it knows that his liberal image has brought the BJP to the point where it has won governance at the centre. But it is an open secret that the RSS is not completely comfortable with him because unlike Advani, Vajpayee often goes out of step at times.

The attack on Brajesh Mishra, the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary, is one way of telling Vajpayee that the RSS does not like the irreverence that he shows towards the parivar. Only a few months ago there was a meeting at the Prime Minister's residence to iron out differences.

The RSS dropped its insistence on Vajpayee consulting it regularly when he threatened to quit. If he has caved in now, it is because of his new thinking not to fight since he does not want to be PM after the tenure of the current Lok Sabha.

One does not see the non-BJP ministers in the coalition even voicing their protest against the dictation by the RSS, much less submitting their resignation. Still they should ponder over the new situation. They came to an understanding with the BJP, not the RSS.

An agreed agenda was accepted. The RSS wants to change it. Certain points on the agreed agenda, an RSS spokesman has said, are irritants to the parivar. Reportedly, one is the building of the Ram Temple on the place where the Babri Masjid stood before its demolition.

The tragedy with the non-BJP constituents – even the humiliated National Conference – is that they have become so greedy for power. They have got so used to it that they cannot do without it any more.

Railway Minister Nitish Kumar, the Samata Party leader, has admitted this in a recent meeting held in Patna in connection with Jayaprakash Narayan's birth centenary.

He said that he for one should be written off because he could not wrest himself from the sinews of power. That is where his qualms of conscience ended. People like