India has never fully escaped the influence of extreme Hindu nationalist thought. This ideology lingered in the background until the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took power as the single major political party. Even when the BJP could not claim significant political clout, its foundational forefather, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), continued its activities in the background, including the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of secular India. The RSS has been so emboldened that it is responsible for nearly all communal street violence. The fact that civil servants are no longer restricted from being part of this ‘Hindu India’ project highlights how this extreme thought is being mainstreamed.
Civil bureaucracy is the core of a state’s administrative machinery. Imagine if bureaucrats are allowed to have political associations. Not only does this contradict the general conduct of bureaucracies around the world, but it also creates a divide within the bureaucracy and politicizes it. Revoking a 58-year-old rule suggests the extent to which the BJP protects and projects the RSS’s core ambitions. Next, the government might advocate for erasing the word “secular” from the constitution.
This is a dangerous trend, to say the least. Under the BJP’s cover, the RSS crushes and kills dissent, targets minorities, amplifies pandits, destroys mosques, and erects mandirs. Once bureaucrats openly endorse and chant RSS’s slogans, desecrations and demolitions will no longer face bureaucratic hurdles. The change in the rule has initially been opposed by the opposition. We have yet to see how far the opposition will resist this from happening.
The BJP has lost its majority advantage in the Lok Sabha after the elections, but it remains to be seen if the opposition can give the government a tough fight against alterations in laws that favor Hindu nationalists. India’s rightward slide has been too steep and stiff under two, and now three, consecutive terms of the BJP. If the new rule applies, the Indian bureaucracy will be poisoned beyond repair.
