The RSS and the ‘blind’ Muslim intellectuals of Hindustan

What explains the efforts of a well-heeled section of elite ‘Muslim intellectuals’ to legitimise the extra-constitutional Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh? What is curious is that they claim to be doing so on behalf of ‘Indian Muslims’. Even more strangely, the exercise comes at a time when large parts of India under the 'amrit kal' of BJP-RSS rule are reeling from unemployment, inflation, corruption and paper leaks, not to speak of unprecedented violence unleashed against Dalits, tribals and Muslims besides women and the working class.

A celebratory report by Mohammed Wajihuddin under the headline ‘Mir Taqi Mir of Contemporary India’ informed readers that several former bureaucrats, scholars and activists attended the inaugural meeting the newly launched initiative Citizens for Fraternity (CFF)-Bharat at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi on 3 June. It was a non-political platform and the only purpose was to promote peace, harmony and fraternity through dialogue, explained the moderator of the event Javed M. Ansari.

The report quoted ‘the initiative's moving force Najeeb Jung, retired IAS, former VC of Jamia Millia Islamia and former lieutenant-governor of Delhi’ as saying, “Despite opposition from within the community, we are going ahead. None of us intends to join any political party and contest elections. We are in pain at the way the two communities are increasingly seeing each other with suspicion". Former chief election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi informed the gathering that CFF units would be opened in all the state capitals and thereafter in districts across the country.

Both Jung and Quraishi mentioned their meeting with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in 2022. "We were attacked by our community members for meeting Bhagwat ji. But we believe only dialogue can lead us to find a solution… We asked Bhagwat ji how would Muslims be treated in a Hindu Rashtra. He said India cannot be imagined without its Muslim population,” recalled Quraishi.

The meeting was kept a secret for reasons best known to the host and the guests. It was later claimed that the meeting scheduled for 30 minutes had actually lasted 75 minutes and was held in a cordial atmosphere. “The insecurity felt by the Muslim community in the wake of recurring incidents of lynching of innocents, calls by Hindutva hotheads for genocide and the marginalisation of the community in almost every sphere” had prompted them to meet the RSS chief, Quraishi had later explained.

If these were indeed their concerns, shouldn’t the delegation have met the prime minister or home minister and demanded corrective steps? If the response was not to their satisfaction, they could have approached the President of India and the judiciary.

However, they chose to meet the RSS top brass, who have no constitutional position or responsibility. They could argue that the RSS does not hide the fact that the BJP is its political arm; the delegation might also point out that from the prime minister to Union cabinet ministers, the governors and chief ministers do not hide the fact that they are members of the RSS.

The meeting succeeded in sending a dismal message to Muslims. When being persecuted, do not rely on institutions of the democratic-secular Indian polity but go and beg for life and liberty from the persecutors themselves. They would possibly advise the persecuted minorities in Pakistan, among them Hindus, Christians, Shias and Ahmadiyas, to enter into similar ‘peace pacts’ with blood-thirsty Islamist gangs.

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The extra-constitutional nature of the RSS did not trouble these Muslim intellectuals then; and it does not seem to have crossed their mind on 3 June, when moderator Ansari innocently declared that the new platform being floated with the blessings of the RSS would be ‘a completely non-political platform’.

“When five prominent Muslims, including Jung, Quraishi, Nai Duniya editor Shahid Siddiqui, Lt-General (rtd) Zameer Uddin Shah and businessman Saeed Sherwani met Bhagwat on 22 August 2022 in New Delhi to discuss communal harmony and ease interfaith tensions, they were slammed by a section of the community… They accused us of having made a deal with the RSS chief. Regardless of the criticism, we continue to believe in dialogue", recalled Md Wajihuddin at the event.

A senior RSS functionary Ram Lal too spoke at the event and called for improved contacts, removal of misunderstandings and creating bonds between community leaders. Mohammed Wajihuddin recalled the anecdote of Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir (1723-1810) and his step-brother summoned by their father on his death bed. He wanted to distribute the two things he was leaving behind, debts and his collection of 300 books.

"Indian Muslims are in a similar situation today; They are being asked to pay for the debts of the past. They are being blamed for Partition, for destroying temples, for starting riots…Lal heard me patiently and replied that the situation will improve,” he went on to add. 

What also troubles me is how these ‘Muslim intellectuals’ arrived at the conclusion that RSS represents all Hindus of India. Have they lost faith in the Hindus of India who do not support the RSS and remain faithful to the democratic-secular polity of India? Did it not strike them that even in the recently concluded West Bengal Assembly elections, despite the disenfranchisement of millions of voters and communal polarisation, the BJP-RSS together could secure only 46.4 per cent of the polled votes? And under whose authority does this bunch of ‘Muslim intellectuals’ pretend to represent Indian Muslims? 

The RSS and its affiliates have been responsible for spreading the bogey that Muslims would soon outnumber the Hindus in India. The ‘Muslim intellectuals’ should have pointed out that despite 1,000 years of ‘repressive’ Muslim rule (as claimed by RSS) the first census in India held in 1871-72 recorded: '140 and a half million Hindus and Sikhs, or 73.5 per cent of the population and almost 41 million Muslims constituting 21.5 per cent'.

Now, Muslims constitute only 14 per cent of the population. They should also have told the RSS leaders that in USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK, the population of Hindus has increased by almost 100 per cent in the last decade or so. Should it be a matter of concern or even alarm for Christians in these countries? 

These ‘Muslim intellectuals’ eager to have a hotline to the de facto rulers of India should also have done some plain speaking on cow slaughter. They ought to have recalled Swami Vivekananda who stated (2 February 1900): “You will be astonished if I tell you that, according to old ceremonials, he is not a good Hindu who does not eat beef.” 

The bogey of cow slaughter as a crime committed by Muslims is propaganda by the RSS. Large numbers of Dalits and Christians too consume beef and RSS-BJP run governments in Goa, all North-eastern states and earlier in Karnataka permitted cow slaughter.

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Minorities in India can survive only if the Constitution that established the Indian democratic-secular-egalitarian polity under the guidance of Dr B.R. Ambedkar survives. It remains the only guarantee against majoritarianism and bigotry. The Constituent Assembly approved the Constitution on 26 November 1949. The RSS instantly rejected it through an editorial in its English organ Organiser (29 November) demanding promulgation of Manusmriti, which RSS icon V.D. Savarkar hailed as the most worship-worthy scripture after the Vedas and which decrees sub-human status for Hindu women and Shudras. 

On the eve of Independence, the Organiser (14 August 1947) denigrated the national flag by declaring that it would “never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours…is injurious to a country”. In the same issue, in an editorial (‘Whither’), the RSS rejected the entire concept of a secular state by arguing: 'In Hindusthan, only the Hindus form the nation and the national structure must be built on that safe and sound foundation…the nation itself must be built up of Hindus, on Hindu traditions, culture, ideas and aspirations.'

Quraishi recalled Bhagwat’s solemn claims that Hindutva is an inclusive concept in which all communities have equal room, that the Indian Constitution is sacrosanct and the entire country has to abide by it, and that the RSS was neither seeking to abandon the Constitution nor disenfranchise the Muslims. If he and the other ‘Muslim intellectuals’ were familiar with Savarkar’s Hindutva (1923) and Golwalkar’s We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) and Bunch of Thoughts (1966) these solemn claims would not have gone unchallenged.

The first two holy books for the RSS demand cleansing of Muslims (and Christians) as Jews were cleansed by Hitler in Germany. The last one has a chapter (XVI) titled ‘Internal Threats’, which declares Muslims and Christians as enemy numbers one and two respectively and describes the Indian Constitution as worthless and anti-Hindu. Bhagwat has never disowned these works. 

Muslims and indeed all Indians would like to know how CFF units in all state capitals of India (28) and all districts (802) will be funded. Will these well-off ‘Muslim intellectuals’ flush with money finance the project? Whose money will this be? Has the RSS roped in corporate India bank-rolling Hindutva to finance this project too? And with these ‘Muslim intellectuals’ taking over the Muslim outreach programme of the RSS, is it curtains for the RSS affiliate Muslim Rashtriya Manch, which had the task of grooming Muslim stooges among Muslims?

It is sad that the ‘Muslim intellectuals’ speaking on behalf of Muslims did not bother to confront the RSS, either in 2022 or in 2026, with pauperisation of Indians, mounting unemployment, hunger and violence against women, which affect the Muslims equally if not more than the  others. They do not seem to have raised the wide misuse of terror laws by the government to keep Muslim and non-Muslim activists perpetually under detention.

India needs intellectuals who stand in defence of the Indian democracy, freedom and the people at large; not intellectuals who surrender before an extra-constitutional body.

Shamsul Islam is an author, academic and activist. More by the writer here