Revisiting ‘The Fundamentalist Project’ to understand western bias against RSS  

This initiative resulted in five encyclopaedic scholarly volumes, published as a series; In the second volume titled ‘Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements’ (Edited by Martin Emil Marty and Robert Scott Appleby), there were two interesting essays: ‘The Function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: To Define the Hindu Nation’ by Ainslie T Embree and ‘Hindu Nationalism and the Discourse of Modernity: The Vishva Hindu Parishad ’ by Peter van der Veer. It may be recalled that Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is an RSS inspired organisation that was established with the aim of keeping the Hindu diaspora connected to their cultural roots through successive generations.

This project had come under scathing criticism from several scholars as it tried to club Hindu Dharma with Abrahamic religions. The two key persons driving this project, Martin Emil Marty and Robert Scott Appleby, were ‘committed’ Christian scholars. Appleby wrote his PhD thesis on ‘American Catholic Modernism at the Turn of the Century in America’. Marty was a Lutheran religious scholar.

S Gurumurthy, an authority on the history and ideology of the RSS, has recently come out with a volume (Golwalkar: The Modern Rishi with Millennial Vision) on the second Sarsanghchalak (Chief Mentor) of the RSS, where he talks extensively about this project. This book, which takes on the Golwalkar critics, was released earlier this week and is likely to initiate a debate on the Western framework about the RSS.

Interestingly, despite attempts to brand the RSS as a militant or reactionary Hindu organisation, the authors who dealt with this issue had not only to concede that there was no ‘reactionary’ aspect in the RSS’ ideological framework or its concept of Hindutva.

Gurumurthy, in fact, makes an argument in the beginning of the book that has the potential to add to both the domestic and international debate on the RSS and its ideology, which has often been influenced by biased opinions, misinformation, and an ideological slant against the Sangh, especially in Western academia.

Gurumurthy says, “The Fundamentalism Project in the US agrees with Guruji (the second Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, i.e. MS Golwalkar) decades later. The first quote, which contains Guruji's thoughts but not in his words, is what the editors of the five-volume Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, involving an international group of scholars, had approvingly allowed.”

Analysing Embree’s essay, Gurumurthy says, “The author has independently evaluated the ideological premises of the RSS – read Guruji's thoughts – and accepted his thoughts almost in the very words Guruji had uttered them. When the Fundamentalism Project says that ‘to use such terms as “militant Hinduism”, “Hindu fundamentalism”, “religious revivalism”, or “reactionary Hinduism” to describe the ideology of the (RSS) movement, although these terms may seem inappropriate categories for the study of Hindu religious phenomena,’ it is only repeating what Guruji had said decades earlier.”

Comic Bracketing of RSS as a “Fundamentalist-like” Organisation

Gurumurthy talks about how the scholars and editors of the project struggled to club the RSS with Abrahamic fundamentalist movements (‘Fundamentalism Comprehended’, Vol 5, p. 414-15) and termed it “comic”.

There are, according to the project scholars (ibid, p. 409-414), five tests to call a movement fundamentalist. The first is “Reactivity”, which is mobilisation against secular forces in the modern world; the second, “Selectivity”, citing the fundamentals to create a siege mentality; the third, “Dualism”, which is strong feelings against drifters from one’s own religion rather than against those of other religions; the fourth, “Inerrancy”, which is the belief that one’s religious text contains no error; and the fifth, “Millennialism”, the expectation of a messiah who assures ultimate victory.

In the five tests, while others are rated “high” in the first, second, third, and fourth categories, the RSS is rated “low” in the first, second, and fifth. The fourth test, inerrancy, is completely absent in the RSS. Only in dualism, where there are strong feelings against those who drift away from Hinduism – namely conversions – does the RSS rate “high”. The RSS is against conversion but does not use violence against the converts, which is what dualism means. So, this rating is totally wrong, says Gurumurthy.

“Thus, in the tabulation of the different fundamentalist and fundamentalist-like organisations (Vol 5, p. 414), the RSS is nowhere near being fundamentalist or fundamentalist-like. But still, both Hinduism and the RSS are bracketed with fundamentalism throughout the five volumes, by smuggling in the term ‘fundamentalist-like’ into the discourse. The Fundamentalism Project, which flips, flips, and flips on Hinduism and RSS, is not an honest intellectual exercise,” adds Gurumurthy.

In a nutshell, despite making a desperate effort to target Hindus and the RSS in this project, Gurumurthy is of the opinion that the substance of the discourse in the five volumes on Hinduism and the RSS clearly rules out the application of fundamentalism and revivalism to Hinduism or the RSS.