Book review: Andersen-Damle book helps RSS perpetuate convenient myths // Shridhar Damle: Modi Gave Idea For RSS Book; Promotions Deliberately Focused On White-Skinned Andersen
Instead of offering objective analysis, Andersen-Damle book helps RSS perpetuate myths
By Dhirendra K Jha
Every organisation needs a little make-believe sometimes, but the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, it would appear, simply cannot do without it. With its contentious past and dubious present, the RSS has always found it difficult to capture the imagination of India’s Hindu majority. Which is perhaps why it has found it necessary to create and perpetuate myths in its quest for legitimacy. One would expect research by serious scholars to explode such myths. But the book under review, The RSS: A View to the Inside, by Walter K Andersen and Shridhar D Damle, disappoints on this score. This should, however, not be such a surprise for those familiar with the 1987 book by the same authors, The Brotherhood In Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh And Hindu Revivalism. In fact, one could go so far as to say that for the RSS, the new book is as important a milestone in its elaborate public relations campaign and outreach programme as the earlier one was.
This raises a question: Have the authors played into the hands of the RSS? Although Andersen and Damle purport to offer readers a solid analysis of the RSS’s growth and expansion during the last three decades, their new book falls short of exploring several aspects of the episodes it has based its conclusions on. Far from questioning the organisation’s many problematic assertions and examining them threadbare, the authors actually present them as conclusions arrived at after thorough research and objective analysis. In many cases, they provide no source for their material, or use dubious sources.
Take the Ayodhya dispute. It has undoubtedly played a crucial role in the growth and expansion of the RSS and its affiliates, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, since the late 1980s. But the fact is that the RSS took it up as a cause only in 1984, when it was made the central plank for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. But the critical turning point of the dispute – the planting of an idol of an infant Ram in the Babri Masjid on the night between December 22 and 23, 1949 – was the handiwork of the Hindu Mahasabha. The RSS had distanced itself from this organisation by then because of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948 by Nathuram Godse, in an effort to totally dissociate itself from him. It was this conversion of the mosque into a temple that led to the legal battle which is now being fought in the Supreme Court... read more:
https://scroll.in/article/890987/instead-of-offering-objective-analysis-andersen-damle-book-helps-rss-perpetuate-convenient-myths
Shridhar Damle: Modi Gave Idea For RSS Book; Promotions Deliberately Focused On White-Skinned Andersen
By Dhirendra K Jha
Every organisation needs a little make-believe sometimes, but the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, it would appear, simply cannot do without it. With its contentious past and dubious present, the RSS has always found it difficult to capture the imagination of India’s Hindu majority. Which is perhaps why it has found it necessary to create and perpetuate myths in its quest for legitimacy. One would expect research by serious scholars to explode such myths. But the book under review, The RSS: A View to the Inside, by Walter K Andersen and Shridhar D Damle, disappoints on this score. This should, however, not be such a surprise for those familiar with the 1987 book by the same authors, The Brotherhood In Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh And Hindu Revivalism. In fact, one could go so far as to say that for the RSS, the new book is as important a milestone in its elaborate public relations campaign and outreach programme as the earlier one was.
This raises a question: Have the authors played into the hands of the RSS? Although Andersen and Damle purport to offer readers a solid analysis of the RSS’s growth and expansion during the last three decades, their new book falls short of exploring several aspects of the episodes it has based its conclusions on. Far from questioning the organisation’s many problematic assertions and examining them threadbare, the authors actually present them as conclusions arrived at after thorough research and objective analysis. In many cases, they provide no source for their material, or use dubious sources.
Take the Ayodhya dispute. It has undoubtedly played a crucial role in the growth and expansion of the RSS and its affiliates, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, since the late 1980s. But the fact is that the RSS took it up as a cause only in 1984, when it was made the central plank for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. But the critical turning point of the dispute – the planting of an idol of an infant Ram in the Babri Masjid on the night between December 22 and 23, 1949 – was the handiwork of the Hindu Mahasabha. The RSS had distanced itself from this organisation by then because of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948 by Nathuram Godse, in an effort to totally dissociate itself from him. It was this conversion of the mosque into a temple that led to the legal battle which is now being fought in the Supreme Court... read more:
https://scroll.in/article/890987/instead-of-offering-objective-analysis-andersen-damle-book-helps-rss-perpetuate-convenient-myths
Shridhar Damle: Modi Gave Idea For RSS Book; Promotions Deliberately Focused On White-Skinned Andersen
A recent book on the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which is receiving significant media attention
these days, was borne out of a desire expressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi
soon after he ascended to the post in 2014. This revelation comes from Shridhar
D Damle, the sanghchalak of the Chicago branch of the RSS’s
overseas equivalent, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, who has co-authored the book—The
RSS: A View to the Inside—with the American academic Walter K Andersen. The
book was published last month.
“The idea for this
book on the RSS came from Narendra Modi,” said Damle in a recorded conversation
just before he left India for the US, on 2 September. He lives in Chicago. “It was Narendra Modi
who expressed the desire for this book,” Damle said. In September 2014, four
months after becoming the Prime Minister, Modi visited New York, where he
addressed a massive crowd of Indian-American supporters in a packed Madison
Square Garden. Thousands of his supporters, chanting “Modi, Modi, Modi” and
“Bharat Mata ki Jai,” were seen lining up excitedly outside the iconic venue to
listen to his speech. “I was present there,” Damle said.
Following the speech,
the Indian embassy invited Andersen for a discussion with Modi. “During the
discussion, Narendra Modi enquired about me and said why don’t you guys write
something? So Andersen called me. Then we decided about the format for this
book.” That Modi used his
first US visit as prime minister to put Andersen and Damle, who had already
written a much debated book on the RSS during late 1980s, on the task of
writing another book—focusing primarily on the political aspect of the Sangh
Parivar in last three decades—was hitherto unknown.
According to Damle,
once the book’s format was finalised, the two authors began their research.
“Thereafter, I came to India five times,” Damle said. He added that part of the
research was conducted by Andersen, a professor in Johns Hopkins University,
has worked in the past as the chief analyst for the South Asia and the Near
East in the US State Department’s South Asia division.
Anyone who has
read View to the Inside—I reviewed the title for the news website Scroll—will
have found it to be extremely sympathetic to Modi and the RSS, helping the
organisation perpetuate convenient myths instead of offering an objective
analysis of the Sangh Parivar… read more:
http://www.caravanmagazine.in/culture/literature/shridhar-damle-modi-gave-idea-for-rss-book-promotions-deliberately-focused-on-white-skinned-andersen
