Siddharth Varadarajan 
Since the National Democratic Alliance government is led by someone who is from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and spent his formative political life there before ‘migrating’ to the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1985, it is hardly surprising that it has lifted the official ban on civil servants joining or taking part in RSS activities.
What is surprising and even shocking is the Madhya Pradesh high court judgment which not only supports the lifting of the ban but also “laments the fact that it took almost five decades for the Central Government to realise its mistake (sic); to acknowledge that an internationally renowned organisation like RSS was wrongly placed amongst the banned organisations of the country and that its removal therefrom is quintessential.”
On July 9, 2024, an office memorandum was issued by the Department of Personnel and Training – which reports to Prime Minister Narendra Modi — saying that “it has been decided to remove the mention” of the RSS from earlier government orders issued in 1966, 1970 and 1980 which had held Union government employees who joined or otherwise associated themselves with the activities of the RSS and Jamaat-e-Islami liable to disciplinary action.
No reason or rationale was given but the context of this order was evidently a PIL filed by a retired civil servant in the Madhya Pradesh High Court alleging that the official ban stood in the way of his working with the RSS. Even though the ban applied only to those in service and could not possibly have affected a retired person’s freedom of association, the court decided to entertain his petition and issued notice to the Union government. This then became the government’s alibi to remove the RSS from its earlier orders.
As amended, the official ban on government employees is now confined to the Jamaat-e-Islami.
The basis for the original ban was Rule 5 of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964, which prohibits government servants from associating with political parties or organisations involved in politics.
Also read: Allowing Govt Employees to Join RSS is a Political Attempt to Normalise Sangh’s Majoritarian Agenda
Now let us consider the merits of the 1966 order, which the court now says was a “mistake” as far as its reference to the RSS is concerned.
The Jamaat-e-Islami Hind is an organisation of Muslim Indians, formed in 1948. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is an organisation of Hindu Indians founded in 1925. Both of these organisations may claim to be cultural, religious and nationalist but they have a broad political agenda—which is why they have spawned political parties and regularly comment and intervene in public and political matters.
Both of these organisations have also fostered non-political organisations that do all kinds of religious, cultural, pedagogical, charity and relief work. But because both parent bodies are involved in politics, the Union of India in the 1960s took the view that Rule 5 of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964 must apply to the RSS and JeI.
One of the questions the high court raises in order to impugn the 1966 ban is what the “material” and the “compelling survey/ study” was “that constrained the Central Government to include RSS in the list of banned organisations, which the Central Government employees were restrained from joining. Whether actually the said material existed or it was merely issued on the mere ipse dixit of the erstwhile government of the day simply to crush an organisation … opposed to its ideology.”
The court’s question makes one wonder whether the learned judges understand what Rule 5 is all about. Government servants are meant to be apolitical and unbiased in their work and dealings with the public, which is why they are not allowed to join or work with organisations that are political. Just as there is no need for any research or data to reach the conclusion that civil servants may not associate themselves with the Congress or BJP or Communist Party, the same is true for the RSS and Jamaal, which are also political organisations.
Of course, the question of “material” and “data” would certainly be relevant if the Union of India wishes to ban the RSS. It would then need enough data and evidence to convince the relevant UAPA tribunal about the validity of its decision. But in order to tell civil servants that Rule 5 applies to the RSS, the only condition the government needs to satisfy itself about is the political nature of the organisation. And the political activities of the RSS are so undeniable that the court itself had to acknowledge this when it noted that “the majority of the activities of RSS today are not at all related to the political sphere.” (Emphasis added)
If if the ‘minority of the activities’ undertaken are political, there can surely be no dispute about the fact that the RSS – as a parent body – is patently political. It does not matter whether it has created over a hundred other ‘non-political’ bodies to extend its influence in various fields and sectors. The essence of the RSS is political and it would be rank dishonesty to deny that. Laughably, the court mentions the Saraswati Shishu Mandir as an example of the kind of ‘non-political’ activity civil servants should be allowed to associated themselves with. This despite the fact that the link between the RSS’s pedagogical interventions and its political agenda is well established. As a small example, consider the following list of questions and answers from as RSS schools’ primer:
Q: Which Mughal invader destroyed the Ram temple in 1582?
A: BaburQ: From 1582 till 1992, how many devotees of Ram sacrificed their lives to liberate the temple?
A: 350,000.Q: When did the program of collecting bricks for the Ram Mandir begin?
A: September 30, 1989.Q: When did the Karsevaks fly the saffron flag on Ramjanmabhoomi?
A: October 30, 1990.
Two further observations are in order.
The court misreads the 1980 circular, which noted in abstract – without a reference to the RSS and Jamaal – that:
“In the context of the current situation in the country, the need to ensure a secular outlook on the part of government servants is all the more important. The need to eradicate communal feelings and communal bias cannot be over-emphasised. “No notice should be taken by government and its officers, local bodies, State-aided institutions of petitions or representations on communal basis, and no patronage whatsoever should be extended to any communal organisation.”
Despite the general nature of these instructions which make no reference to the RSS but to “petitions and representations on communal basis” and says there should be “no patronage [of] any communal organisation”, the court asks on “what study or basis” were “the activities of RSS organisation as a whole… treated in the decades of 1960s and 70s as communal or anti-secular; what was the empirical report, statistical survey or material, that led the then government of the day to arrive at an objective satisfaction that involvement of Central Government employees with the RSS & host of its activities (social, political, health, disaster management support, religious and educational) would precipitate communal feelings and communal bias in the whole community.”
Second, while noting that the original government order banning government employees from joining the RSS had no evidence to back up the ban, the court makes no demand on the Union government to provide evidence to back up the continuing ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami in the same 1966 order. Instead, it only declares that if a future government wants to restore the ban on the RSS, it will have to provide material to justify the decision. Remember, the petitioner before the court was not the RSS but an ordinary citizen who had challenged the validity of the 1966 ban. Clearly, what is sauce for the (Hindutva) goose is not so for the (Islamist) gander.
To conclude, the court’s judgment is poorly reasoned and seriously flawed. It is also dangerous, because the unwarranted praise it has showered on the RSS will serve in coming days as an advertisement for a political organisation whose members, supporters and myriad outfits are at the forefront of efforts to turn India from a constitutional republic to a ‘Hindu rashtra’.
Last month, a judge of the Calcutta HC, Chitta Ranjan Dash, promptly joined the RSS upon retirement. Judges are not civil servants and we would like to believe they hold themselves to a very high standard of independence. But if the wider logic of the Madhya Pradesh HC judgment is accepted, perhaps judges driven by the same urge as Dash need not wait till they retire.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.