Sangh Parivar

The Sangh Parivar (translation: "Family of the Sangh" or the "RSS family") is an umbrella term for the collection of Hindutva organisations formed by, and affiliated to, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindutva paramilitary organisation. These include the political party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), religious organisation Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), students union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), among many others in India and overseas. In total, the Sangh Parivar has over 2,500 organisations.

The Sangh Parivar represents the Hindutva ideology and movement in India. Members of the Sangh Parivar or the supporters of its ideology are often referred to as "Sanghis".

History

In the 1960s, the volunteers of the RSS joined the different social and political movements in India, including the Bhoodan, a land reform movement led by prominent Gandhian Vinobha Bhave and the Sarvodaya led by another Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan. The RSS also supported the formation of a trade union, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and a student's organisation Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and many other organisations like Seva Bharati, Lok Bharati and Deendayal Research Institute among others.

These organisations started and supported by the RSS volunteers came to be known collectively as the Sangh Parivar.

Demolition of the Babri Masjid

According to a report by the UPA-instituted Liberhan Commission, the Sangh Parivar organised the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The Commission said— "The blame or the credit for the entire temple construction movement at Ayodhya must necessarily be attributed to the Sangh Parivar".

It also noted that the Sangh Parivar is an "extensive and widespread organic body", which encompasses organisations, which address and bring together just about every type of social, professional and other demographic grouping of individuals.

Each time, a new demographic group has emerged, the Sangh Parivar has hived off some of its RSS inner-core leadership to harness that group and bring it within the fold, enhancing the voter base of the Parivar.

Ideology

Economics

While the BJP governments have often been seen as industry friendly, the opinions and the views of the Sangh Parivar constituents like Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) has its own stands on "Bharatiya" approach to labour rights.[independent source needed] The Sangh Parivar, as a whole, even the BJP in its earlier days, has advocated 'Swadeshi' (Self Reliance). Sangh Parivar leaders have been very vocal in their criticism of globalisation, especially its impact on the poor and native people.[citation needed] In 2000, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) led a protest against the role of international agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Social reform

The VHP founded a number of educational institutes such as Bharat Sevashram, Hindu Milan Mandir, Ekal Vidalayas and schools in tribal locations.

Social and political empowerment

The emergence of the Sangh Parivar in Indian politics has also brought many representatives of the backward classes, who had been victims of social neglect and casteism, to comparatively prominent positions in the government and administration. At the same time, the Sangh has refused to allow said backward classes a share in the national wealth.

In many villages across India, Dharma Raksha Samitis (Duty/Religion Protection Committees) promote religious discourse and form an arena for bhajan performance. The Sangh sponsors calendars of Hindu deities and provides instruction on sanctioned methods of conducting Ganesh Chaturthi and Navaratri.

Politics

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which represents the Sangh Parivar in national politics, has formed three governments in India, most recently being in power from May 2014 under the leadership of Prime minister Narendra Modi, re-elected in May 2019 and again re-elected in 2024.

Political opponents of the BJP allege that the party's moderate face merely serves to cover the Sangh Parivar's "hidden agenda" of undiluted Hindutva, detectable by the BJP's efforts to change the content of history textbooks and syllabi as well as other aspects of the education system.

Such criticism of the BJP arises in part from the fact that BJP had only 2 seats in the parliament in 1984 and after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 the party gained national recognition, and rose to power in 1998.[full citation needed]

Reception

The Sangh Parivar has been described with monikers spanning the spectrum from "patriotic Hindus" to "Hindu nationalist". Some have also labeled them "Hindu chauvinist". While its constituent organisations present themselves as embedded in the traditional ethos of Hinduism, their ideological opponents have characterised them as the representatives of authoritarian, xenophobic and majoritarian religious nationalism in India, These organisations have been accused of involvement with Hindu terrorism.

Fascism

The Sangh Parivar has been described as fascist by several scholars and academics. According to historian Sumit Sarkar, Muslims are portrayed by the Sangh Parivar as an inherently unpatriotic minority with undue privilege in the propaganda disseminated by its organisations, similar to the depiction of Jews in Nazi propaganda. All dissent, and even the possibility of dissent, is framed as a form of "pseudo-secular" minority appeasement. At the same time, the Sangh Parivar presents itself as uniquely indigenous and authentically Hindu, framing secular ideals as fundamentally anti-Hindu.

What I am suggesting is that in its staging of spectacles, in its techniques of mobilisations, in the multiplicity of its fronts, in the shadowy traffic between its parliamentary and non-parliamentary organs, in the seamless interplay of form and content in its ideological interpellations, in the connection it asserts between a resurgent national tradition and the regaining of masculinist virility, in its simultaneous claims to legality and extra-legality, in its construction of a mythic history which authorises it to be above history, and in its organisation of a dharm sansad that authorises it to be above the civil parliament whenever it so chooses, the Sangh Parivar is a classically fascist force with large Indian twists of course, as every fascism must always take a specifically national form.

Whereas fascism rose to power in Italy and Germany within roughly a decade of its emergence, Hindutva, under the Sangh Parivar, followed a far longer period of gestation. Since the 1950s, its network of organisations has focused on ideological indoctrination and the circulation of ideas through popular culture, which Sarkar compares to philosopher Antonio Gramsci's theory of the "war of position", with the aim of ultimately creating a "Hindu Rashtra" (lit. 'Hindu Nation'). The growth of the Sangh Parivar has been driven by a combination of street violence, infiltration of the police, and collusion with centrist political and judicial leaders.

List of organisations

Major organisations that make up the Sangh Parivar

The Sangh Parivar encompasses over 2,500 organisations across India and around the world. The following is a non-exhaustive list of notable organisations.

Political

Economic and occupational

Social services

Women

Religious and militant

Regional

Educational organisations

Socio-ethnic

News and communication

Think tanks

Overseas

Others

See also

References

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  2. ↑ Andersen & Damle 1987, p. 115.
  3. ↑ Hansen, Thomas Blom (2014), "Controlled Emancipation: Women and Hindu Nationalism", in Bodil Folke Frederiksen; Fiona Wilson (eds.), Ethnicity, Gender and the Subversion of Nationalism, Routledge, p. 93, ISBN 978-1-135-20566-9, archived from the original on 7 February 2023, retrieved 26 May 2019: "The RSS usually calls its network of organisation the RSS family (Sangh Parivar), consciously evoking connotations of warmth, security and emotional attachment beyond ideology and reasoning. The family metaphor is central and highly operational as an instrument of recruitment and cohesion for the movement, which offers a sort of surrogate family to the activists. The family metaphor also refers to the authoritarian and paternalist authority structure which operates within the movement."
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Bibliography