On 10 March 2020, a magazine produced an excerpt from Milind Soman’s forthcoming autobiography. In the excerpt, he ‘writes about how being part of the RSS shakha at young age was like being in a ‘desi Scouts’ movement.‘
All hell broke loose on liberal social media. I was, obviously, intrigued, since I was seeing most of my normally sane friends go ballistic for what seemed to be a rather flimsy reason to someone who had first- (by having attended a couple) and second-hand (by observing them around me regularly) experience of what goes on in your garden variety RSS shakha.
So, today, I think I will see if I can make some sense of this total silly season behaviour of my liberal friends. And in the process, if I am called names (Later edit: Oh, was I called names! Everything from a genocide apologist to a secret khaki chaddi to a neo-Nazi!), so be it. This kind of outraging for outraging’s sake and starting every day looking for something to piss one off is ridiculous, and frankly, a rather immature way to live. What are we? 5? (Later edit: Apparently, even he had quite a laugh at it while dismissing it without too many words. Classy.)
The truth is that Milind Soman wrote nothing sensational, nothing extraordinarily unusual, and nothing that isn’t already known. He isn’t, for those who care, defending the RSS or the toxic ideology of its founders and descendants. He is simply describing his childhood honestly as an innocent child who saw it all from the eyes of a kid. By the way, for those who have been to RSS shakhas (at least in the 1980s and 90s), what he says is 100% true.
That does NOT mean there is no sinister side to the organisation or that some members, inspired by the founders’ ideology have proven to be evil, horrible, humans. It just means that to a kid, it looked like any other forced physical “classes” that regular Savarna Marathi people in Pune-Mumbai-Nagpur in those days were hell-bent on sending their kids to, so as to improve their “moral and physical fibre”. What he says neither makes his parents nor him monsters. If he were to come out that today, as of 2020, he still believes it is like India’s Boy Scout movement (itself having quite horrible origins, btw), I’d be appalled. But he isn’t saying that. He is just describing how he remembers his childhood from 40+ years ago.
By the way, even today, those who think that every Sunday, the RSS gets kids together and fills their innocent heads with hate and fear, you are naive. They don’t operate that way. For kids, they are still a group of adults who do and make them do literally exactly what Milind describes.
P.S: I don’t know Milind. I have never met him. I don’t care what you think of him. I only care that you, my friends, liberals, secularists, social justice warriors, and empathetic humans are wasting your time attacking a strawman. The RSS shakha for kids (or even adults) is not like what you are led to believe. If it were, that idea would be easy to counter and kill. It is far more sinister, evil, and underhand. I am frankly surprised at your naivety.
P.P.S: His description reads like how an African child would describe the local missionary school when the Europeans first went to that continent. To that kid, it was always fun and games, food, discipline, some hymns in some crazy sounding language, and playtime with friends under adult supervision. The Church did not go in there and start teaching kids to hate their parent’s beliefs and trust only the Holy Trinity. They did social work, they ran schools, they offered a better life, they created a community, and slowly, they seeped in their poison. The colonisation of the minds didn’t happen the same way as the physical colonisation of the land, with coercion and arms. It happened surreptitiously and insidiously. Anyone describing their childhood at the local evangelical Sunday school in Africa in that century would only think of it as good, harmless fun. It is how it was meant to be. That is literally how it’s designed. And by the way, the RSS has modelled their system on it. So, it’s no surprise it looked like that to a kid, who then described it in his memoir. I see nothing wrong except hair-trigger cancellation experts who would be cancelled themselves had even a fraction of their own lives publicly scrutinised in this manner. This is purely an overreaction.
P.P.P.S: Nuance and context matters, friends. And even crimes have gradations. Someone saying, “As a kid, my time in RSS shakhas seemed quite harmless, neither fun nor disgusting; simply boring, like any other child,” is different from saying, “The RSS is the greatest social organisation in the world with no hidden xenophobic agenda,” is different from actually making an effigy of Gandhi and shooting into it on camera, is different from being the person who supplies guns to kill peaceful civilians in cold blood just because they happen to disagree with your ideology, is different from literally being Nathuram and shooting Gandhi. Today’s cancel cultural csars cannot see the difference, and if & when they care to, they claim there is none. They insist that all these are the same exact degree of evil as per today’s woke generation thought leaders. That is not just stupid and irrational, but I would go so far as to say that line of thinking is sinister and raises red flags for me. I’d question the motive of a leader who tells you to cancel someone because they cannot see (or want you to see) any difference between the various statements made above.
