The Movement Shaping a Modern India

Udaipur, India

When the India Foundation invited me to participate in a weekend conference with a group of Hindu nationalist intellectuals and political figures aligned with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh organization, I accepted immediately. As I wrote in these pages in March, Americans need to engage more deeply with a movement that is reshaping the politics and culture of one of the most important countries in the world.

The RSS, the leading Hindu nationalist organization, is the most important—and most controversial—civil-society movement in modern India. Seen as the source of the Hindu nationalist ideology behind the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the RSS and the group of affiliated and allied organizations and individuals known as the Sangh Parivar have nurtured a distinctive approach to politics and policy that allowed them to replace the center-left, secularist Indian National Congress as the most powerful force in Indian life.

Founded in 1925 in Maharashtra by Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar out of a belief that India could take its rightful place in the world only through a movement of national, cultural and religious renewal, the RSS aims to mold the characters of young Indian men (and, since a sister division was founded in 1936, women) through a mix of physical and quasimilitary training, educational summer camps and community-service projects. Selected volunteers become pracharaks, a kind of Hindu version of the Jesuits, living communally, refraining from marriage and working on tasks the leadership assigns.

In the beginning, the RSS was one of many religious and nationalistic movements emerging out of the ferment of the Indian national awakening of the early 20th century. For many years it remained on the margins of Indian life. Today Hedgewar’s heirs are at the center of power. Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the RSS at age 8 and became a pracharak in 1972.

Inevitably, American and Western observers look at Hindu nationalism through the lens of the conflict between Hindus and Muslims that has dominated much of South Asia’s modern history. Whether it is allegations that Mr. Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, failed to halt the violence that left hundreds of people dead in 2002, or charges that Hindu nationalist authorities turn a blind eye to lynchings and other forms of violence against religious minorities today, the Hindu nationalist movement is widely blamed for exacerbating intercommunal tensions in a country still haunted by the mass murders and violence associated with the 1947 partition of British India. Many Indian and foreign observers see the RSS as cynically stirring the pot of hatred to gain power by appealing to the lowest instincts of voters.

Concerns about violence are legitimate, but what drives Hindu nationalism is less antagonism against Islam than fear for the future of India. Modern history is a story of multifaith, multilinguistic states falling apart as nationalist forces fight for independence. The Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires fell apart. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia once seemed stable and permanent. Both disappeared almost overnight.

India is as ethnically and linguistically diverse as Europe or Latin America. As the Indian masses gain access to the internet and social media penetrates villages and slums, what glue can keep India together?

What unites the subcontinent, say Hindu nationalists, is a shared culture in which Hindu religion plays a central role. Even Indians who aren’t Hindu have been shaped by this traditional culture. Cultivating pride in that heritage and freeing it from injuries of both British and Mughal domination is the only way, Hindu nationalists believe, to hold this vast and diverse population together. Nehruvian secularism and liberal abstractions like “constitutional patriotism” can’t do the job, they argue.

Religious leaders in many societies have fought the social and cultural changes that come with modernization and have spearheaded resistance against pro-market policy, education for women and other reforms that successful modernity requires. That’s not what I saw in Udaipur. The RSS leadership knows that India must move and move quickly. A powerful and ambitious China looms to the north. Young people need jobs. Living standards need to rise.

RSS leaders believe that India can remain united as the shock waves of modernization propagate across the subcontinent only if the changes are seen as grounded in ancient Hindu principles. While conciliating and reassuring more-conservative Hindu thinkers, they are promoting a future-oriented Hinduism in the hope that its ancient religion and culture can bring a united and self-confident India into the 21st century.

Will it work? And can a Hindu nationalist India avoid corruption scandals, respect civil liberties and reduce communal tensions and violence? Nobody knows, but these are serious people who care deeply about the future of their country and the world. I left Udaipur more hopeful than when I arrived.