Diabolical designs of RSS

Pankaj Sharma


2 November 2015, New Delhi

The manipulation of opinions of bureaucracy is a crucial element.

The colour of Indian bureaucracy is changing fast. I would not be surprised if the country has a vast majority of totally conditioned civil servants in a decade’s time. Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) has now expedited vigorously its plan that has meticulously been implemented for last 18 years to occupy the space in higher bureaucracy.

The number of officers in Indian Administrative Service (IAS) with some affiliation with RSS has already reached an alarming level. Similar is the situation in Indian Police Service (IPS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS), and in other services such as Indian Revenue Service, Indian Railway Service, and Indian Forest Service. As per an estimate, around one-fourth of the candidates selected by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in last few decades had turned to coaching centers run by RSS affiliates.

Presently, there are 6154 IAS, 4730 IPS, and 1750 IFS officers serving at different positions across the country and abroad. In addition to this, there are around ten thousand other civil servants who belong to central services. A sizable number of them were tutored in some way by the institutions linked to RSS over all these years. Only early this year, 1122 candidates were selected for country’s top jobs by the UPSC. Out of 7,76,565 candidates who applied for the civil services exam, as many as 3,23,949 candidates appeared in the preliminary exam and 14,959 candidates qualified for the mains exam. In the personality test, 3003 candidates were shortlisted. Out of the finally selected candidates, 517 are from the unreserved category, 326 are OBC, 187 are SC, and 92 are from the ST category. RSS insiders say that approximately 450 of these selected candidates are  products of “Samkalp”—the coaching institute affiliated to the hardcore right wing organisation.

“Samkalp” is one of around half a dozen coaching outfits run by RSS across the country that train candidates for different examinations conducted by the UPSC and state service commissions to fill the government vacancies. “Samkalp” began its journey in 1986 from Delhi and started coaching for Civil Service exams in 1997. It now runs three centers in Delhi.The institute operates its branches in several cities. Prominent among them are Raipur and Bhilai in Chattisgarh; Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh; Jaipur in Rajasthan; Ranchi in Jharkhand; Guwahati in Assam; Coimbatore in Tamilnadu; Kapurthala and Ludhiana in Punjab; Haridwar in Uttrakhand; Kanpur, Roorkee, and Agra in Uttar Pradesh; and Chandigarh. The center at Agra has been opened only last week as a part of expansion of Samkalp. The institute is also active in Mathura, Meerut, Kurukshetra, Bhiwani, Nainital, Gohana, and Pathankot. You will see more and more branches of this coaching institute in Bihar, Haryana, Maharashtra, and Gujarat. A special plan for North-Eastern states and southern part of our country is also on the cards. 

These coaching centers enroll aspirants for a very nominal fee and provide them the facilities such as Interview Guidance Program, Counseling, Mock Interview, Library, and even accommodation. If one goes through the names of the patrons of “Samkalp” it becomes clear that the brains behind the operation have a definite purpose of filling the bureaucracy with the persons with a particular ideology. The list include former Governor of Jammu and Kashmir and ex-Cabinet Minister from the previous NDA government, Jag Mohan, former IFS officer Arvind R Dev, former IAS officers, Jagdish Chander Jaitely, R. Ramakrishnan, and S.R. Sharma, former Governor NN Jha, former Lt. Governors Vijay Kapoor and IP Gupta, retired Lt. General Kapil Nanda, social workers Madan Das and Bhuwan Mohan, and Surya Roshani’s Industry’s owner Jai Prakash Agrawal.

AR Kohli, former Mizoram governor and BJP leader was also actively associated with Samkalp as one of its mentors in the beginning. Once he very proudly announced that “in 1997 when we began coaching for the Civil Services, 84 of our students appeared for the final interviews and 59 made it”. He, then, also took pride in declaring that “a decade later, with the efforts of Samkalp, the bureaucracy would change for the better.” The list of advisors of Samkalp is also full with former army-men, ambassadors, and senior bureaucrats having a particular ideology. Right wing educationist Dina Nath Batra is one of them. Writer Narendra Kohli, BJP’s economic cell member Jagdish Shettygar, and senior RSS leaders like Madan Das Devi and M G Vaidya have also served as mentors of Samkalp.

It was 8-9 years back when one of the important coordinators working for Samkalp mentioned to me that for the exams in 2007, as many as 825 out of 1,875 examinees called for the final interviews enrolled themselves at Samkalp for mock interview sessions, and when the final results came out, 295 of them had made it to the Civil Services. I also recall the mindset of many activists of Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthee Parishad (ABVP), who were successful in cracking Civil Service Exams, as they told me about their dreams which they wanted to implement during their tenure as civil servants.

Samkalp, therefore to me, is involved in something which will felicitate our youth to toe a line while working for the state that is not in tune with the basic values and principles on which the foundation of our plural democracy is made. Official website of this RSS offshoot says, “Samkalp is directly in contact with the generation that is now ready to take the reins of the country. The candidates who come to Samkalp for guidance and assistance belong to the age group which is preparing to step in as Civil Servants. Civil Servants are a diverse category. It encompasses Foreign Service, Administrative Service, Police Service, Audit and Accounts Service, and many others and in due course some of them attain by training and experience extensive expertise in economics, education, environment, banking, commerce, international affairs, communication, etc.” It further adds, “When a young person joins the Civil Service his goal should be to serve the motherland and worship Bharat Mata.”

The manipulation of opinions of bureaucracy is an important element. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism are very cleaver. They want that minds be molded, tastes formed, and ideas suggested. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, these forces work on to dominate us. They want the uniform mental processes and social patterns. It is dangerous to ignore the diabolical designs of RSS to pull the wires in the direction of controlling the mind of bureaucracy.