Parivar ko gussa kyon aata hai?

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's latest demand is for sacking those in the National Democratic Alliance who support free inflow of foreign direct investment and a Western model of development. RSS chief K S Sudarshan went on to dub the present economic policies as being 'urban-based, high energy consumptive, labour displacing and ecologically destructive.'

A demand for booting out, at one go, the prime minister, finance minister, commerce minister, minister for external affairs, minister for information and technology -- ooof, that is anger, wrath, gussa, maha gussa.

A few days earlier to Sudarshan's diktat, Dattopant Thengadi, another RSS veteran, expressed his wrath as well. As chief of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, which claims to be the country's largest trade union body, he condemned the NDA government's move to bring such labour reforms as it would, in essence, facilitate a hire and fire policy in a large section of the organised corporate sector. He warned of dire consequences, of rebellious reaction. That too was gussa.

Last Sunday, we read more rage, more wrath in The Indian Express. Pravin Togadia, international general secretary of the VHP, demanded an Indian leadership that would have the guts to cure the madrassas of the concepts of Darul-Islam, kafir and jehad, or to ban them. He thinks 'What we need today is a Bush Jr or an Ariel Sharon or a Chhatrapati Shivaji who will dismantle the jehadi network, dismember its patron, Pakistan, and realise the aspirations of the majority community in a true democratic spirit.'

Such red-hot gussa from the Parivar is not exceptional. We are singed by it now and again -- whenever Sudarshan or Ashok Singhal speak in public. We see it when Thackeray speaks on television, when colour pictures show the Bajrang Dal boys with bandanas.

Just why does the Parivar get so angry so often?

No easy explanation seems available to columnists who are not psychoanalysts. After all, the RSS and VHP leaders are no rag tag people. On the contrary, all of them are highly educated and men of standing in society. Sudarshan, for instance, is a B Tech; Togadia was a cancer surgeon with a very lucrative practice, and Thackeray was a noted Marathi language editor as well as a popular cartoonist. How is it then that these men of considerable substance have become such indignant proponents of Hinduism, the most tolerant faith in the world? Perhaps these proponents of Hinduism have tended to forget Krishna's message in the Bhagavad Gita that 'It is wrath which prompts man to commit sin. Consider these two as the direct enemies of man.'

Or, maybe, these Parivar leaders see themselves as modern kshatriyas like Arjuna of the Gita whom Krishna exhorted that 'You should fight since you are a kshatriya. It is your duty to fight. A righteous war is the greatest good that can happen to a kshatriya.'

The next question then to Sudarshan would be: 'Is the call for a ban on foreign investment and on so-called 'western model of development' a call for a righteous war?'

For an answer, first consider the fact that those who advocate foreign direct investment do so with data supporting their contention that it not only brings in hard currency and boosts the existing stock of domestic resources available for investment, but also brings in know-how, managerial expertise and export capability. Sudarshan offers no such weighty arguments to his position; rather, he says that instead of the burden of oil imports, the worth of the products made from cow dung and cow urine should be recognised and India should be run on 'bio diesel.'

The RSS chief's advocacy of swadeshi is thus based on the 'either or' formula when, in reality, such an option is not being insisted upon at all by the reformists -- either in government or by the corporate sector. Who, for instance, has refused to accept proven swadeshi technology or denied it a chance to prove itself?

Remember that 'genius' Ramar Pillai who said he could produce petrol from water? He was given several opportunities by the government to prove his claim; the mass media too closely followed his demos. It was only after he was given full scope that he was pronounced a fraud. It was not any perceived bias against swadeshi which killed that project.

On the other hand, an Indian recently obtained a world patent for certain medicinal drugs based on the distillate of cow urine; pills and liquid based on that patent are known to be available in Mumbai. The government hasn't banned it; nor has the westernised sector of India opposed it. But why hasn't the RSS itself bent backwards to get an Indian pharma company to go in for large-scale commercial production of those products? The government has not balked it, has it? Indeed, every government in New Delhi has encouraged ayurveda and alternative medicines to grow as fast and as much as they can.

The same effort to encourage indigenisation is true of all other industrial fields: be it the super computer or the 'pocket' computer, the Light Combat Aircraft or the multipurpose satellite vehicle, the hand-driven water pump or the handmade textile fabric. The truth is that LPG and 'gobar' gas can coexist and do coexist in India. FDI doesn't come in to make Kolhapuri chappals while mobile phone handsets are imported because even FDI in the field has not yet attracted the world's mass manufacturers of that unique communication gadget. So should cellular phones be prohibited till some swadeshi manufacturer comes along?

Incidentally, the RSS chief must be informed of a vital statistic that's been culled from official government publications by R Vaidyanathan, professor of finance at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. The professor has revealed that corporate India -- pontificated nowadays as India Inc and around which a lot of talk of economic reforms hovers -- contributes just about 13 per cent of the national income while non-corporate sectors (excluding government and agriculture) contribute 35 per cent of the national income.

Let's shift to Togadia. A war against jehadi terror and Pakistan is no doubt a righteous war. But is it right to "dismember" Pakistan and be crippled ourselves in the process? To evoke Bush Jr at our helm is to forget that America always avoids a war on its own soil. To evoke Ariel Sharon is to overlook America's eternal blessings to Israel. And to suggest a ban on madrassas is to forget that we are a democracy governed by a Constitution zealously guarded by an independent judiciary. To 'realise the aspirations of the majority community in a true democratic spirit' does not mean Musharraf's ';guided democracy' where the blasphemy law goes unchallenged.

Besides, what evidence exists to prove that the majority community in its entirety wants such goals as a uniform civil code, a Ram temple at Ayodhya and abrogation of Article 370 at the cost of hurting 140 million Muslims in our land? If such evidence existed, the BJP would have romped home in the Lok Sabha with a thumping majority in 1994, 1998 and 1999, and the Congress wouldn't be ruling in more than a dozen states in our federation. These aspirations in themselves may well be justifiable on their own, but the fact is that they haven't yet been 'bought' by millions in the majority community itself. Why, the sect that runs the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar itself apparently keeps a distance from the VHP.

To 'sell' those aspirations is the task of the Parivar. They have to be sold persuasively with logic, with the help of facts and with a lot of patience; haste and anger will not do.

But this is what the Parivar would seem to have failed in doing till now.

One reason may well be that the Sangh doesn't smile and laugh enough. It seems too grim and serious at all times. When did you read about Sudarshan's speech tickling his audiences? When did the VHP take delight in the batting of Sachin Tendulkar or the dribbling of Dhanraj Pillay? It might be grossly gumptious to do so, but the Parivar seems in need of being reminded of a saying in their much-hated language of Macaulay that 'All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.'

Another English saying worth a recall here is that 'Rome was not built in a day.' Ironical as it may sound, FDI, modern technology and managerial ability alone can speed up construction of a second Rome when harnessed to native skills and native ingenuity that Indians have so ably demonstrated in the USA and elsewhere. Anger is certainly not going to help -- whatever the reason for it and whatever you call it, gussa or whatever.

Arvind Lavakare