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When the Sangh became part of Janata Parivar – and was never again the ‘outcast'
On a rainy night in late 1974 in Patna, under flickering street lamps, a small group of university students was on the move as they scrawled with chalk on college walls: 'Indira Hatao, Janata Bachao'.
Different party flags fluttered amidst the agitators, with some of them bearing the socialist and Left emblems and others marked with the saffron of the Sangh Parivar. It was here, on the fringes of the Bihar student protests – which ignited Jayaprakash Narayan (JP)'s 'Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution)' Movement – that the RSS first entered the anti-Emergency stir. As historian Rajni Kothari later observed in his memoirs, this student uprising 'mainstreamed the RSS and gave it political legitimacy'.
This legitimacy, for most part, was earned by RSS volunteers who faced jail for mobilising people, organising protests and engineering what was then called the 'underground resistance'.
The JP Movement began in March 1974, when Bihar students first rose in protest against 'corruption and misgovernance' of the then Congress-led state government. This snowballed into a revolt against 'misrule and authoritarianism' of the Indira Gandhi-led Congress dispensation at the Centre, which got moral and organisational support from JP as well as diverse Opposition outfits, including the socialists, Congress (O), CPI(M), Jana Sangh, and RSS volunteers.
Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil explain in their book India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency 1975-77 that the RSS's grassroots networks 'provided JP's movement with the discipline and rural penetration it so sorely needed'.
It was, perhaps, in appreciation of this organisational strength that JP, when cornered by Left-leaning critics on his alliance with the Sangh, said: 'If RSS is fascist, I am a fascist.'
In their book The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, Walter Andersen and Sridhar Damle, drawing from archival correspondence, paint the RSS not as a passive outfit but as an active force integrating into the umbrella resistance organisation Lok Sangharsh Samiti (LSS) against the Emergency: 'The grassroots structure of the LSS included many RSS workers… presenting the RSS cadre with an unprecedented opportunity to gain political experience and … establish a working relationship with political leaders.'
On November 4, 1974, JP and Nanaji Deshmukh, the seasoned Jana Sangh leader and ex-RSS pracharak, led a massive rally in Patna, demanding political accountability. As police descended on the peaceful gathering with batons, JP, then aged 72, was brutally hit – his collarbone, elbows, and legs shattered by the blows. Nanaji was said to have hurled himself over JP's unconscious body, shielding him from further assaults. Public admiration for JP and Nanaji soared, and for many, it marked the point where the Indira Gandhi government lost the moral mandate to rule the country.
When Indira imposed Emergency on June 25, 1975, the RSS was among the first casualties. Four days after JP's arrest, then RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras was held at the Nagpur station. The RSS itself was banned on July 4. In subsequent crackdowns, many of the Sangh Parivar's prominent leaders such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani and Nanaji were put behind bars.
Despite being outlawed, the Sangh chose resistance over retreat. Thousands of its swayamsevaks and ABVP cadres courted arrest by joining satyagrahas – protesting not just the organisation's ban, but also the government's broader strike on civil liberties and constitutional rights. As repression intensified, the resistance went underground.
RSS volunteers built covert networks to print and circulate banned literature, raised funds to sustain the pushback, and established secret lines of communication between jailed leaders and overground activists.
Reporting on the Emergency, The Economist wrote on January 24, 1976: 'In formal terms, the underground is an alliance of four Opposition parties …But the shock troops of the movement come largely from the Jana Sangh and its banned affiliate RSS … (of whom 80,000, including 6,000 full-time party workers, are in prison).'
According to RSS publicity in-charge Sunil Ambekar, more than 25,000 Sangh workers were arrested under the MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act) alone. 'Over 44,000 more were arrested during the agitation. Some swayamsevaks even died during detention. But ultimately, democracy was re-established,' he told The Indian Express.
Former RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya, who actively participated in the movement and was known to be close to JP, put the figure of arrested RSS workers at 1.3 lakh.
RSS sources said volunteers took risks in city squares and village crossroads alike. In Meerut on August 9, 1975, satyagraha slogans erupted amid festive crowds. On August 15 that year, RSS cadres distributed pamphlets outside the Red Fort in Delhi.
RSS activists circulated their underground newspapers – Motherland, Panchajanya – even though the press was tightly gagged. K R Malkani, the editor of Organiser and Motherland, was among the first few journalists arrested during the Emergency.
At the same time, the Sangh also courted controversy. Observers point out that RSS chief Deoras wrote at least two letters to Mrs Gandhi from Yerwada jail, in August and November 1975, lauding her Red Fort address and pledging support for her 20-Point plan if the ban on the RSS was eased. There were also allegations that some RSS detainees wrote apology letters to the government even as a majority refused to buckle under pressure.
Some critics like A G Noorani accused Sangh functionaries of 'grovelling before the Congress dispensation'. RSS sympathisers, however, claim it was a calculated strategy, aimed not at undermining democracy, but retrieving institutional legitimacy and securing the release of imprisoned volunteers.
'Sangh workers were in jail, yet they continued the struggle. Also, it would be a good thing to come out of jail and continue the agitation. Had Sangh been in a compromising mood, it would not have joined the movement itself,' Ambekar says.
As regards Deoras's letters, many RSS sympathisers draw a parallel with Mahatma Gandhi's own letter to the Viceroy in his early days of defiance. 'It was an act of a guardian who was worried about his wards. Thousands of ordinary workers were rotting in jails and their families were suffering. The letters were an attempt to open dialogue,' Govindacharya told The Indian Express.
He also points out that RSS critics never mention how Deoras rejected Mrs Gandhi's offer to revoke the ban on the RSS in exchange for the Jana Sangh not participating in the elections post-Emergency.
Ambekar says, 'The letters of Deoras ji should be looked at comprehensively and in the right perspective… But did RSS withdraw from the movement? A decisive battle was waged and the Emergency was defeated – and a new government was formed.'
However, these rows and the refusal of Jana Sangh leaders to dissociate from the RSS even as they joined the Janata Party government following the Emergency were said to have even changed JP's sympathetic approach towards the RSS.
In his book The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, Jaffrelot writes that JP felt 'used' and felt that the ideological divergence between his Gandhian socialism and Hindutva could not be papered over indefinitely.
Ambekar, however, denies it. 'Jayaprakash ji always knew what the Jana Sangh was. These things had been discussed beforehand. If at all he was disappointed, he must have been so with the people who forced the Jana Sangh to walk out of the government,' he says.
Yet, the Emergency altered the RSS's trajectory. The Sangh emerged with new-found credibility, its contributions finally recognised by broad swathes of Indian society and political class.
Once ostracised in early years of the Republic for its association with Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse, the RSS now joined national discourse as a legitimate player. Barely three years after Emergency, its political wing BJP was born; the BJP under Narendra Modi is now into its third consecutive term in power.
