Admin | On 10, Jan 2021

RSS infiltrates the farmer protests in India

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) affiliate, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh(BKS) claims to support the farmer protests but with reservations. The BKS is an Indian farmers’ organization which is a member of the Sangh Parivar and was founded by Dattopant Thengadi in 1978. The RSS which is the ideological and paramilitary wing of the Bharata Janata Party has been embroiled in human rights violations against the minorities of India such as Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. The BKS being a part of the BJP/RSS fabric puts them in a position where they can never dishonour Narendra Modi’s policies in India.

Mahesh Choudhary, the organisation secretary for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh of the BKS proclaimed that they support some of the issues being raised by the farmers in India but disagree with repealing all the 3 farm bills.

“We are not supporting the ‘Bharat bandh’ but we don’t endorse the three laws in toto..We want some improvements in the Acts. We wrote to the Centre in August and recommended facilitating procurement at minimum support price (MSP) following suggestions from villages. The Centre has already given an assurance that this would be looked into…the BKS strongly favours the “ek bazaar, ek desh” provision in the Acts as well as several other measures which will benefit farmers immensely.

Ek bazaar, means “one language one identity” and it is a code word for Hindutva assimilation which classes all non-Hindus as foreigners in India. The BKS who are part of the RSS were chanting these slogans during the protests which are discriminatory and an affront to ethnic diversity in India. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom released a scathing report on religious freedom and the impact of Hindutva enforced by national groups such as the RSS.

“Conditions for religious minorities have deteriorated over the last decade due to a multifaceted campaign by Hin-du-nationalist groups like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sang (RSS), Sangh Parivar, and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) to alienate non-Hindus or lower-caste Hindus.”

On 14^th December, the BKS, despite the conflicting statements they have been making public pertaining to the farm bills, protested on two highways in Madhya Pradesh in support of the minimum support price (MSP) mechanism. What BKS want is an additional Act to the 3 farm laws to have the MSP in place, where farmers are guaranteed set-prices of certain farm produce.

This position is in stark contrast to what over 30 farmer unions have been protesting against since the outbreak of protests in India. The farmer unions of India want all 3 farm bills to be repealed, while the BKS says they support some of the issues being raised by the farmers, but want to maintain the laws. BKS’s stance is confusing as some of their officials are claiming that they support the farmers while others are publicly denouncing the farmer protests.

An organizing secretary of the BKS, Dinesh Kulkarni claims that the violence perpetrated towards the farmers by the Modi state machinery could have been avoided. Kulkarni claims that the farmers are being misled by certain individuals and that is why the violence onslaught against the farmers was carried out to stop the protests:

“This protest has become a political game and it is the farmer who is caught in the middle. The kind of atrocities that the farmers have faced should have been avoided and rather the government should go after those who are provoking and misleading the farmers.”

Kulkarni, instead of blaming the state agencies for meting out disproportionate violence against peaceful protests, as a right enshrined in the democratic constitution of India, is calling out for the lynching of the leadership of the farmer protests. The farmers have been extremely peaceful and yet some of the leadership of the BKS, wants the leaders of the farmer unions to be stopped.

Other leaders of the BKS want to assert their role into the protests but at the same time they still are accusing the farmer movements as violent. The BKS secretary general Badri Narayan Choudhary claims that their organization was the first to hold protests and demonstrations, and also wrote letters in protest to the agriculture minister and Modi. Choudhary proclaimed that they support the farmers but do not support the leadership of the protests because they may turn violent.

“We support the farmers but not the Bharat Bandh. BKS, in the past 40 years, has never participated in a violent movement..We don’t believe in damaging government property or causing inconvenience to people. We fear that these types of movements can always take a violent form… Bad elements can always enter these protests. That is why we were not part of the protest.”

It is clear that the BKS is being duplicitous by saying that they support the farmers while on the other hand they support the 3 farms bills which the very same farmers want repealed.

Arvin Valmuci of Organization for Minorities in India has watched the developments of the BKS with concern:

“The Hindutva ideology that draws the BJP, RSS and BKS together, cannot separate one entity from the other. They are all working for Modi’s policies no matter what they portray in public. You can even connect the dots with the BKS’s rhetoric that they publicly want to be seen as if they support the farmers, yet they are in agreement with Modi’s policies to deregulate the farmer markets. The BKS has been deployed by the RSS to sow seeds of confusion within the protests by demanding that a fourth Act to maintain the MSP should be added on the 3 farm bills. Essentially, this changes nothing because the farmers would still have to enter into exploitative contracts with private firms. Farmers in India are in unimaginable debts and even if the Act was put in place, it would leave room for corporations to take advantage of vulnerable farmers. The BJP and RSS are using the old trick in politics of divide and conquer. They have seen that the farmers have global support and the only option that they have is to sever the leadership of the protests. However, what is concerning is that the BKS is urging the government to pluck out the leadership of the peaceful protests. These are sentiments that the leadership of the BKS are repeating time and again. These are that hallmarks of how RSS operate”

BKS is part of the Modi machinery and they have been deliberately deployed to ferment different viewpoints to the contested farmer issues. They are working covertly to soften the protests by trying to entice the farmers that the MSP will not be expunged to guarantee them security for their crop sales. They know that the MSP issue is one of the major contentious issues the farmers have taken up with the government of India. Their aim is to entice the protesting farmers to stop their vigils outside of New Delhi so the BJP can maintain the 3 farm bills. All the claims being made by the leadership that the farmer protests are violent can be easily discredited, but they are trying to construct an image that there is lawlessness involved with the aim of legitimizing the use of state violence against the sitting protesters outside the gates of New Delhi. The hypocrisy is that the BKS is worried about government property being damaged, but members of the Sangh Parivaar such as Sadhvi Pragya and Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit bombed a train and used violence to create a mahabharata. Mahabharata is the global colonization to create one bazaar.