‘Nobody knows what I know’: how a loyal RSS member abandoned Hindu nationalism
Former RSS insider Partho Banerjee describes his decades-long journey from being groomed for leadership in India's Hindu nationalist organization to becoming a fierce critic who wrote an exposé from within. His account reveals the RSS's recruitment tactics, indoctrination methods, and transformation from a fringe group to the ideological force behind India's ruling BJP party.
Summary
This Guardian Long Read follows Partho Banerjee, a former high-ranking member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India's Hindu nationalist organization, who wrote a rare insider's critique titled 'In the Belly of the Beast.' Banerjee was raised in the RSS by his father Jitendra, who sacrificed his academic career and financial stability for the organization's cause, leading the family into poverty while working as a secretary for the RSS's political wing in the 1950s. Despite his mother's Congress party sympathies and distaste for the RSS, Partho joined at age six and was quickly identified as leadership material, rising to become a regional education officer and joint secretary of the student wing by his teens. The account details the RSS's sophisticated recruitment and indoctrination methods, where Banerjee would carefully study potential recruits' family situations before gradually introducing RSS ideology, avoiding political topics initially while building trust and community bonds. He describes how the organization targets less educated, vulnerable youth who lack critical thinking skills, with an estimated 90-95% of members being 'practically brainless idiots' who follow orders without question. The daily shakha meetings combined physical exercise with Hindu cultural education, excluding Western influences and promoting traditional gender roles while fostering anti-Muslim sentiment. Banerjee's transformation began in the late 1970s through exposure to his mother's secular influence, reading Rabindranath Tagore's poetry, watching films by directors like Satyajit Ray, and conversations with leftist friends. He left the RSS in 1981, moved to the United States for his PhD, and was shocked to learn about the 1992 Babri Mosque demolition, realizing the organization was implementing the Hindu nationalist vision he'd been taught. His subsequent book exposed the RSS's inner workings, leading to estrangement from his father and the organization. Banerjee argues that the RSS's strength lies in creating a vast network of unquestioning followers who cannot think critically, while mainstream media avoids discussing the organization's fascist history and connections to figures like Hitler and Mussolini. He contends that under Modi's leadership, the RSS-BJP has created conditions resembling Aldous Huxley's vision of totalitarianism, where people live in a prison whose walls they cannot see.
About this episode
As a young man, Partha Banerjee was on course to become a senior member of the RSS, the organisation that has pushed Indian politics towards extreme religious nationalism. Then, after decades within its ranks, he quit. Why? By Rahul Bhatia. Help support our independent journalism at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/longreadpod">theguardian.com/longreadpod</a>
Key Insights
- Banerjee argues that the RSS deliberately targets less educated, vulnerable youth because they lack the critical thinking skills to question the organization's ideology, with 90-95% of members being unable to think independently and simply following orders without question.
- The organization's recruitment strategy involves careful study of potential members' family situations, building genuine trust and community bonds before gradually introducing political ideology, making families feel the RSS will provide guidance and keep children away from harmful influences.
- Banerjee claims that RSS members, while personally honest and saint-like in their dedication, practice a 'pure hatred' that results from sincerely following the organization's Islamophobic and supremacist doctrines, making their bigotry more dangerous because it's genuinely believed.
- The former insider reveals that the RSS operates through a vast synchronized network where thousands of local shakhas perform identical rituals simultaneously, creating a sense of participation in a larger movement while maintaining strict hierarchical control and unquestioning obedience.
- Banerjee contends that mainstream Indian media deliberately avoids discussing the RSS's fascist history and connections to figures like Hitler and Mussolini because it would create uncomfortable conflicts with the ruling BJP, allowing the organization to operate without public scrutiny of its true nature and goals.
Topics
Transcript
This is The Guardian. Wherever you get your podcasts. The Guardian. On its front was the full title. In the Belly of the Beast. The Hindu Supremacist RSS and the BJP of India. An Insider's View. I read the first page. And then the next. Slowly, with rising giddiness. Not long after, I was beside a Sikh gentleman at his photocopying machine. What pages? he asked. Everything, I said. In the long hour that followed, I wondered if the book's presence on these shelves was an oversight. This was the closest that any writer had come to describing the organisation from within. That night, I swallowed its contents whole, scanned a copy for myself to store in several places for…
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