Swadeshi Pitch

BOMBAY, November 4, 1995: The expert committee appointed by Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi formally commences the process of "renegotiating" the Dabhol power project with the US-based Enron Corporation.

Calcutta, November 4, 1995: The RSS-backed Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM) begins a two-day national convention. On the anvil is a strategy to raise to a crescendo the SJM’s campaign against the encroachment on India’s sovereignty by transnationals.

Delegates from the Sangh parivar’s various wings are adamant that not only do Enron and the like need to be stopped, but the open-door policy vis-a-vis foreign investment has to also be rejected in favour of an indigenous model of economic development.

That both these developments took place on November 4 is nothing more than a coincidence. But it is also a symptom of what is, in short, "the great tussle" between the RSS and the BJP on the swadeshi question. And as the BJP tries to escape being saddled with a policy that leaves its state governments hamstrung, the RSS seems to have decided to tighten the screws.

"We have now reached a stage where we realise that even the BJP’s 1991 economic manifesto—which welcomes foreign investment in high-tech areas while opposing it completely in the consumer goods sector—is not good enough," says an RSS veteran who attended the Calcutta convention. "We want a debate in the BJP on the very issue of whether an essentially western model of development, whatever the modifications, is what India needs."

And if a debate doesn’t happen on its own, the RSS will make it happen. For starters, it has told the SJM to prepare a white paper on the swadeshi model of development. Work on the draft has gathered momentum. "We have sought suggestions from various NGOs, environmentalists and others—people who have supported our campaign despite major differences on other issues," says Govindacharya, the SJM’S main ideologue along with Sangh veteran Dattopant Thengari.

The clincher is the fact that the paper is likely to be "circulated for discussion" by February-March next year, just as the countdown to the general elections begins. The timing seems deliberate—it will force the BJP to take an unequivocal stand on the debate in its poll campaign.

The battle is on more than one front. Govindacharya has been holding extensive proselytising sessions with small-scale industrialists and traders all over India. Other meetings have been held by the Laghu Udyog Bharati, an RSS front of small-scale businessmen, which have been addressed by Sangh veterans such as K.C. Sundershan.

Officially, these are brushed off as "discussions held at the request of traders and industrialists who had certain queries about the movement". But the attempt, clearly, is to create a pro-swadeshi climate among sections of the BJP vote-bank and thus force the BJP to accord the issue the visibility it deserves in its poll campaign.

"We are telling these people that they should join forces with us to keep the transnationals out," says one of the leaders who addressed the meetings. "Our long-term goal is to try and ensure that India adopts a system of development that’s in harmony with its socio-cultural fabric. We tell them that once the pro-gramme of mindless liber-alisation is rolled back, we’ll sort out the problems between ourselves." The other front in this battle of attrition is Parliament, where a swadeshi lobby has been created. Its core comprises BJP MPs who have been won over to the RSS logic—Virendra Singh (Mirzapur), Satnarain Jethia (Ujjain), Balraj Passi (Nainital) and Ram Vapse (Thane). An RSS office-bearer says they consider even socialists like George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar part of the team.

The plight of the Andhra Pradesh weavers and east coast fishermen and the question of abattoirs—all linked by the SJM to the liberalisation programme—are issues the BJP can ignore only at its peril. And so, L.K. Advani, A.B. Vajpayee and M.M. Joshi are seen participating in the SJM’S protest rallies. The RSS, however, is not satisfied and has decided to up the ante and see how much further the BJP is ready to go along with it. Hence, the plan to step up the agitation with a padaya-tra from Sevagram to the Al-Kabeer headquarters, a boat yatra to highlight the plight of fishermen and a 20-point programme for weavers.

But, perhaps, the most visible sign of the RSS resentment with the Maharashtra government’s decision to renegotiate the Dabhol project is the SJM plan to hold a series of seminars and rallies across India on the question of foreign investment in the power sector—a question that clearly takes off from the still-unfolding Enron drama.

What really seems to rankle the RSS is the BJP’s belief that a poll can’t be fought and won on economic issues. "Our point is that swadeshi isn’t only an economic issue. The SJM has succeeded in making it an emotive issue with socio-cultural connotations. The BJP seems either unwilling or unable to take it up the way it should. It has become incapable of thinking in the long term of what’s good for India," said a furious SJM member at a private meeting in Calcutta.

But BJP strategists are unlikely to go back to the drawing-board at this juncture and the SJM think-tank seems reconciled to this. But, says a leading light of the swadeshi movement, "the idea is to put enough pressure on them and simultaneously work very hard at giving the campaign a profile that the BJP just cannot ignore. It is, after all, a battle to decide how Indians will live their lives."