Walter Andersen, one of the foremost scholars on India’s right wing, cowrote with Shridhar Damle The Brotherhood in Saffron way back in 1987. Three decades later, they are ready with their new book The RSS: A View to the Inside, which explains the workings and evolution of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh . RSS, they say, has grown into one of the world’s largest non-government associations, with an estimated 1.5-2 million regular participants in its nearly 57,000 daily shakhas, as of 2016. If it was a banned outfit following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, now it is influencing policy and its political affiliate, BJP , is ruling the country. At a Gurgaon hotel, Andersen, who is a senior adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, talks to Charmy Harikrishnan about the new Hindutva, how significant was RSS’s involvement in the 2014 general elections, and the big challenges it faces — from the clash between Hinduism and Hindutva to the mutual distrust between RSS and Muslims. Edited excerpts:There are many differences. One is that RSS has grown a lot in these 30 years. The other thing is that RSS is much more diverse than it used to be. It is much more rounded, with affiliated organisations that penetrate almost all parts of Indian society. India’s largest labour union, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), is an RSS affiliate. India’s largest student group, ABVP, is an affiliate. It has an affiliate that addresses the Hindu community — Vishwa Hindu Parishad. There are 36 organisations that are full affiliates and at least a hundred more that are waiting to become an affiliate. Since these affiliates represent different interests, it also means there are more conflicting opinions. For example, foreign direct investment: the government is in favour of it, but not everyone in the Sangh Parivar is happy about it — BMS, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and particularly Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM). RSS has now become the grand mediator of disputes — it is one of its major functions. It didn’t exist 30 years ago. Then, RSS’s main function was ‘character-building’ at the shakha. And the assumption was that they would build a person to become an activist in pursuit of a nationalist goal of a stronger India. They still have not abandoned it but they have gone beyond it by approaching different sections of the population.It was early in the 2014 campaign. I said I was sorry I couldn’t speak in Hindi. He spoke in English. I asked him what does Hindutva mean? It is a controversial and also somewhat ambiguous topic. He said Hindutva has an economic component — that jobs, prosperity are part of it. He didn’t quite say let’s make India great again but he in effect talked about what is necessary to build a strong India — people at the bottom have to come up and that can only happen if there is economic growth.One of the political imperatives for Modi is that he has to create jobs. He knows that. RSS knows that.Ten-fifteen years ago, RSS would have issued diatribes against FDI — and did. The previous sarsangchalak KS Sudarshan was very much against it. That is no longer the case. The present leadership sees what the government is trying to do. In 2013, sarsangchalak Mohan Bhagwat issued a statement in which he said RSS is against all ‘isms’. That is interesting because it meant even the ism of autarchy, looking inward, was something that needed to be reflected on. However, there is a still a strong strain in RSS that believes the country has to be careful about how it uses FDI.Prime minister AB Vajpayee had a different sarsangchalak, Sudarshan, who was less diplomatic and a bit more hardline, whereas Bhagwat gets along well with Modi and is very diplomatic in the way he expresses his disagreements. There is also more of a coordination so that they can work out issues behind the scenes. If they can’t, they take a very RSS way of decisionmaking —if you can’t reach a consensus, put the issue aside, and then return to it when you can. So they have been able to by and large avoid the problems that existed in the Vajpayee government.They are the same age. Modi was a pracharak. I have asked one about the other, and they have expressed very positive signs. They know they need each other and there are lines that they cannot be crossed. At the time of the 2015 Bihar elections, Bhagwat said that perhaps we needed to review the quota system. Because it created such a storm, he had to backtrack immediately. Since then, they have been extremely cautious in approaching that issue.The issue of immigration is wracking worldwide. It is a major issue in India, particularly in Assam. The home minister said there is an opportunity to revise the rolls. They are hoping the issue will die down. It may not, though.It has changed a lot. His successor, Deoras, was more pragmatic. One of the issues RSS faced was caste hierarchy, which got in the way of Hindu unity. Deoras made an iconic statement: ‘If untouchability is not a sin, then there’s no sin in the world.’ He even suggested that if some of the sacred scriptures seem to support untouchability, they should be thrown out. He opened RSS to non-Hindus. RSS even has a Muslim contact group called the Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM). They used it during the Bihar assembly polls as one of the mechanisms to approach Muslims.Within the RSS, there is a debate on whether it will be a good thing. There are people whom we met in the RSS who say, ‘No, Muslims are never going to support us in any significant way. Why are we wasting our time? Let us convert them to Hinduism’. But that is not the leadership position. The leadership position is that they need to make an effort. They continuously refer to Indonesia. The Indonesian culture rests on a very Hindu basis. The national epics are Indonesian variants of the Ramayana. I took a visiting RSS dignitary to the Indonesian embassy in Washington, DC. There is a huge statue of Saraswati. He said: ‘This is what we like the Indian Muslims to do. Have a culture sympathetic to the great epics.’On certain issues, RSS is stepping back. It is not pushing as hard as it has. In some areas it is making compromises. In the Northeast, where beef-eating is common, RSS has not sought to impose any kind of beef ban. They have taken a similarly pragmatic line in West Bengal and Kerala. In other areas — Gujarat Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra — where people are more prone to oppose beef-eating, RSS has taken a tougher stance.RSS is more ideologically flexible than it had been in the past. But one has to distinguish RSS from BJP. RSS is not BJP: it’s very adamant about that. There is, in fact, considerable suspicion within RSS about BJP — that people are often too power-hungry, too egotistical whereas RSS tries to build character of individuals. RSS looks at the long range while BJP looks at the short range of electoral politics. One of the problems in analysing BJP and RSS is that a lot of people tend to conflate the two as if they were the same. They are not.The issue of intolerance is there. The RSS family of organisations, including BJP, has become something similar to what Congress was — there is the right, the centre and the left. On the right, there are people who carry out these actions that are embarrassing to the leadership in both RSS and BJP. A significant part of the population agrees with that. The PM has also identified much of this as thievery masquerading as religion. But this is an issue on which the Sangh Parivar has to come to a tolerant position. Otherwise there would be problems. Some in the RSS have argued that we have to convince Muslims to stop eating beef in a friendly way. Others have said we need legislation on this, not violence. But legislation may in fact induce violence. This is a dilemma they face.I have no first-hand knowledge of that. And the people I have spoken to near the top argue that violence should be prohibited. Some people have criticised the PM in being a little late in coming out. My view is that he is probably walking a fine line because a large part of the population in his support group are adamantly against the consumption of beef.It has already done that. It, in effect, ousted VHP’s former head Pravin Togadia. They very quietly worked to get him out. The RSS people I spoke to said Togadia was taking rash steps that damaged RSS. That’s a no-no. Protection of the organisation is a criterion that RSS judges all actions by.He asked people in effect to take law in their hands for the protection of the cow. The Bajrang Dal , its youth group, was threatening violent action against the BJP government in Goa for allowing the consumption of beef. RSS people said Togadia went too far. RSS is an evolutionary group, it is not revolutionary. Togadia was taking steps that were embarrassing for RSS and got in the way of its efforts to look more moderate and acceptable to people.No, they won’t. The question on that is, When? They have conveniently said at some point. Now it is in the courts. This is not the only issue on the backburner — building temples in Kashi and Mathura is almost forgotten. On ghar wapsi, they are against publicising it and causing them embarrassment. Which is why Rajeshwar Singh, a pracharak who was in charge of it, was (briefly) thrown out in 2014.Yes. There’s a ghar wapsi programme run by VHP, and another managed by RSS. One thing they haven’t figured out is: when you convert, which caste do you convert the person to?It is one of the three big challenges that RSS faces. One is Hindutva versus Hinduism. Hindutva’s core value is the unity of Hindus. But Hindus’ hierarchical caste system stands in the way of that. The second is rural versus urban. RSS hasn’t figured out how to reconcile the interests of the urban middle class with the poor farmers in the villages. The third challenge is how to handle the minorities in the country. It has organisations like MRM but these haven’t been able to make a huge imprint on Muslims who remain suspicious of RSS and BJP.They fear that there may be restrictions on them one way or the other.RSS is still heavily Brahminical, more Brahmin than Kshatriya and Bania. This is heavily anecdotal, though. RSS, being officially anti-caste, makes it very difficult to find out who is who. Even in the names of pracharaks, you don’t know because they often drop their caste name.Both BJP and RSS are suspicious of politics based on caste identity because they see that as a way of undermining the unity they seek. So they try to advance commonalities in their training systems. In the shakhas, they try to eliminate the idea of hierarchy — by not using caste names and having people perform various functions that break down notions of purity-pollution — one day, you clean the drains and the next day you serve food. BJP got support from the Dalits in 2014 but surveys show it is declining.The economy. The question is whether Modi has been producing enough jobs for the aspirational class. And they are not just in the cities but also in the villages.It can be a challenge. In Bihar, BJP didn’t do nearly as well as it hoped to. If the opposition unites, it can be formidable. But they represent different interests. And there are a number of crown princes —who is going to be the king or the queen?In 2014, RSS feared there will be restrictions on its activities. There’s less of that fear now. RSS will still be involved in the campaign for BJP in 2019, but not to the extent it did in 2014. They don’t need to go all out, too. Amit Shah has made a major effort to build a cadre of workers from the booth level up.RSS has always been suspicious of the state because they had to face restrictions placed on them by the state. Meanwhile, it also needs the state now, especially after it has moved towards work-related affiliates like BMS and BKS.No, it is not. There may be treason in the organisation but not apostasy. Many RSS ideologues like Savarkar are atheists. Many BJP and RSS leaders are agnostics. I recall visiting BMS leaders at their homes and offices and seeing no signs of Hinduism around me. What they mean by Hindutva is not religious but nationalist. The core element of Hindutva is patriotism. Two groups that support anti-national rhetoric are secessionists and those who take an ideological position that nationalism is a dangerous construct.They have come to define it more or less as national culture. That’s the view in the highest level. That doesn’t mean there isn’t intolerance vis-à-vis non-Hindus.Many people in RSS still have the view that religion is an organised form of culture and show affinity to ‘religions that have roots in India’.