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A dictator who has seized power enjoys one great convenience: he no longer needs a mask. Once the state machinery is under his control , he can drop the pretence of being moral, or democratic, or fair, and simply rule.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), though a believer of totalitarianism, has never enjoyed this convenience, and it never will. It is forever condemned to live inside its own contradictions.

The contradictions are plenty. It poses as a moral force, yet practises and sanctifies every political immorality. It poses as a promoter of Indian democracy, yet believes in centralised control by the unelected. It speaks of a united Hindu society, yet wants the caste system to prevail and thrive.

It imagines itself as the saviour and final arbiter of the Hindu faith, yet allows temples to be looted of their donations by its own cadre. It keeps promising a national unity that it actively dismantles through its pet project of hatred and divisive propaganda.

Chal, charitra aur chehra (Conduct, character, and countenance)

The gap between its sermons and its actions is not an aberration. It is the fatal flaw in its design, a flaw that now produces a visible distance between its kathni and karni, its utterances and its deeds.

The double-tongued approach may have served the RSS in its quest for power, but it now exposes the very contradictions that will bring its hegemony down, regardless of how firm its hold on power. Indeed, the greater its hold on power, the more exposed those contradictions become.

This is an organisation that built its entire persona on chal, charitra aur chehra, that is, conduct, character and countenance. The RSS was branded well and was marketed well. The image crafted was of an organisation that preached and practised sacrifice, honesty and moral superiority. 

RSS’s promise was to rise above immoral compromises of politics and political compulsions. Yet the political vehicle the Sangh nurtured, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), now runs a most brazen project of co-opting the corrupt and legitimising political immorality.

The “washing machine” phenomenon needs no further elaboration. And none in RSS ever objected to degradation of its own professed values. Not even a perfunctory lip service was ever paid to condemn it.

Worse, the rot of corruption has reached the very sanctums the RSS claims to defend. Allegations of theft and financial impropriety have swirled around the management of its showcase shrines, from the Ram Mandir donations to the temple economies of Badrinath and Mahakaleshwar. There seems to be little moral compunction or any genuine outrage within RSS at the organised loot and plunder of temple treasures, deceitfully overseen by its own chosen cadres.

The mask of morality lies in tatters, and the face that emerges from behind it smacks........

© The Wire