Revisiting ‘The Fundamentalist Project’: Western Bias Against RSS:

The news is blaring about the Fundamentalism Project after three decades of silence. This project has served as a guiding pillar of Artificial Intelligence fundamentally disturbing the research on Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the Western world.

We will discuss how the debate on the fundamentalism project in relation to the RSS has emerged; first, let’s take a step back to revisit the scope of this project and the role of RSS within it.

From 1987 to 1995, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences run this project. As stated by the Academy, this was The project undertook a major, cross-cultural, comparative analysis of anti-modernist, militant religious, and anti-secular movements spanning five continents and seven world religions.

The project sought and engaged with hundreds of scholars internationally. This led to the convening of ten international conferences aimed at the analysis of these movements’ institutions and their policies in relation to multiple governments, which captured thousands of hours of fieldwork.

As a part of this project, five volumes of encyclopedic scholarly work were published. The second volume entitled “Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements”, Character Essays, “The Function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: To Define the Hindu Nation” by Ainslie T. Embree and “Hindu Nationalism and The Discourse of Modernity: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad” by Peter Van der Veer both of which are very interesting. Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is an American non-profit corporation that primarily aims at uniting the Hindu people through various identity politics. VHP is said to draw inspiration from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which is known to promote Hindu nationalism.

Several scholars critiques the project as an attempt to define Hinduism as an off shoot of Abrahamic religions. The main drivers and principal named above are described as “committed” christian scholars. Appleby for example wrote his PhD thesis on “American Catholic Modernism at the Turn Century in America.” And Marty was sold to Lutheran religion already when he started to study.

S Gurumurthy, who wrote extensively on the history and ideology of the RSS, recently published a book on the second Sarsanghchalak of RSS, Golwalkar, named Golwalkar: The Modern Rishi with Millenial Vision. In the book, he critically analyzes the project undertaken by the critics of his subject. This book was inaugurated a few days back, and I suspect it will become the starting point of a discourse within the Western paradigm concerning RSS.

Fascinatingly, the very same authors who tried framing the RSS as an extremist or reactionary Hindu organization were forced to concede that there is no ‘reactionary’ element within the RSS’s ideological structure, or its notion of Hindutva.

Gurumurthy has, however, made a very bold claim at the start of the book, and I think that claim can further complicate the already perplexing domestic and international discourses on the Sangh, which operates predominantly on propogated falsehoods and slanderous information especially from Western sources.

Gurumurthy says, “The US Fundamentalism Project, with its American and International team of scholars, was in agreement with Guruji (the second Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, i.e. MS Golwalkar) decades later. The first quote, which has the editors’ reinterpretation of Guruji’s ideas, is what the editors of the five volume series had ethosically permitted’ having been exposed to his ideas.”

In analyzing Embree’s essay, Gurumurthy says, “The synthesis of the nationalist and the ideological basis of the RSS, accepted the thoughts of Guruji and pronouced them as he astonishingly had given them. The Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts And Sciences has the audacity to declare that “to label the ideology of the (RSS) movement as militant Hinduism, Hindu fundamentalism, religious revivalism, or reactionary Hinduism [...] even if these expressions appear anachronistic for comprehending the religious phenomena of Hindus, shall not serve as the floor for the study of Hinduism.” Repeating, these sentiments, is simply regurgitating what Guruji had uttered many years back.”

Gurumurthy describes the interplay of the editors of the project trying to fix the image of the RSS with that of the fundamentalist movements of the religion of the book (‘Fundamentalism Comprehended’, Vol 5, p. 414-15), for him, this whole process of classification was so “comic.”

It is claimed, according to project’s scholars, that there are five tests to classify a group as fundamentalist (Ibid, p. 409-414). The first test is called “Reactivity”, meaning using mobilization against secular forces in the modern world, secondly, “Selectivity” that cites the fundamentals for the establishment of a siege mentality, whilst the third is “Dualism” that is strong feelings against drifters from one’s religion instead of the other religions. The fourth being “Inerrancy” is holding the belief that one’s religious text has no errors, and the fifth is “Millenialism” which is waiting for a messiah who will guarantee the unquestionable triumph.

In the five tests it is rather integers who get the most points, the RSS being rated rather lower in the first, second and fifth. While others are rated to have “high” in all those first, second, third, and fourth categories, the RSS is marked low. In the test of Inerrancy, it is completely absent in the RSS. It would seem that the RSS is marked high in dualism, where there are strong feelings against those who drift away from Hinduism which includes conversions. So that mark is totally wrong, Gurumurthy claims.

So, the RSV is nowhere close to being described as lacking to the extent of the liberalist, and fundamentalist like organisations list (Vol 5, p. 414), However, Hinduism as a religion and the RSS simultaneously being encapsulated within ‘Fundamentalism’ in the five volumes is done through potent smuggling, which is unwaveringly dishonest.” restates Gurumurthy. In essence, even in the attempt to target RSS and Hindus in this project, Gurumurthy seems to hold the belief that the rest of the discourse on Hinduism and RSS in the five volumes depose fundamentalism and revivalism being ascribed to Hinduism and or RSS.