Author: John Stackhouse
Publication: Globe and Mail, Canada.
Date: February 3, 2001
In the depths of crisis, India's
stoic men in khaki emerge, their discipline as famous as their uniforms,
their reputation as sure, they believe, as their nation's.
Men like Narendra Sonaniskar, a
hero to thousands this week, but maybe a fascist terror to millions more
next week.
The mechanical engineer is part
of the most efficient, responsive and dreaded voluntary force in India,
which saved hundreds of lives and comforted thousands more after last week's
earthquake.
"We are not here for any award.
We are not expecting any appreciation," Mr. Sonaniskar said.
In almost every Indian disaster,
members of the Hindu group known as RSS (Rashtriya Sheyamsevak Sangh, or
national service corps) are first on the scene.
Dressed in distinctive khaki shorts,
white shirts and black caps, they are the ones who haul mangled corpses
from wrecked trains, organize mass cremations and usher children to safety.
They are also the group accused
of killing Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, slaughtering thousands of Muslims in
the early 1990s and waging secret campaigns to destroy India as a secular
nation.
"We just want to help people," said
Kamlesh Chauhan, a Grade 12 student who has been in the RSS youth corps
for three years.
He sat at the side of an Ahmedabad
street this week collecting rupees from people as they passed by the spot
where 35 teenagers were crushed to death in the quake. He knew many of
the dead, and hoped the $300 or so he raised will help survivors.
Older than independent India, the
RSS has become, for many, the nation's social backbone. Because it has
no formal organization, no one knows how many members there are, but it
runs in the millions.
Each member belongs to a local group,
or cell, that meets every morning for one hour to parade and exercise in
their uniforms, raise a flag and recite Hindu prayers, all in an effort
to develop the body and mind.
"We believe in nationality. We believe
in humanity," said Asutosh Dave, 32, an Ahmedabad engineer whose father
and grandfather were RSS members. "Nationality: work for the country. Humanity:
work for the world."
Part of the movement's tradition
is to respond quickly to any local crisis, like the midair crash of a Saudi
Arabian Airlines jumbo jet and Kazakhstani cargo plane outside New Delhi
in 1996 that killed 349 people.
RSS members removed most of the
dead bodies, all of them Muslim, from the Saudi wreckage, carried them
to a makeshift morgue they had built and helped grieving relatives identify
them.
The movement also serves as the
ideological spine of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which wants to
curtail minority rights and promote Hindu values in schools.
Nowhere is the RSS stronger than
in Gujarat, the western state where the earthquake struck, killing at least
15,000, and where anti-Muslim riots have been among the worst in India.
It's also where, ironically, Gandhi launched many of his own campaigns
to make India an independent, but secular, nation.
In Ahmedabad in 1993, when hundreds
of Muslims were killed by rampaging mobs of Hindu zealots, Mr. Sonaniskar
stayed inside, he said. He said he saw no reason to rush to stop the riots
the way he had rushed to help earthquake victims, which he has done all
week for 15 to 18 hours a day.
"No one came to attack me, so why
should I say stop?" he said of the riots. "If someone comes to attack me,
I would say stop."
In almost every community hit by
the Jan. 26 quake, RSS members could be seen removing dead bodies. In Ahmedabad,
Mr. Sonaniskar's cell was holding its daily shakha when the tremors started.
Within 20 minutes of the disaster, they had heard about the collapsed school
and rushed 40 volunteers to the scene, where they cordoned off the wreckage
to prevent frantic parents from causing more harm.
As everyone waited for the fire
department to arrive - -- it came four hours later -- the untrained RSS
crew launched their own rescue. Under the guidance of an engineering student,
Jitendra Barot, who said he studied drafting and knew how buildings were
made, the team began to remove pieces of the crumbled school with their
hands and iron bars.
When they heard voices inside the
rubble, they chose a small Grade 9 student from their team and had him
crawl through an opening to where survivors might be trapped. He reached
one, and told the other boy to stay calm while the men above removed debris.
By day's end, the RSS crew had freed
four students, removed 39 bodies and set up a large tent for anxious parents
awaiting news of their children.
"The RSS is the most disciplined
organization," said Nimish Pandya, medical director of the hospital where
the school victims were taken. "They work wonderfully."
Mr. Dave said the RSS expects its
members to respond to any crisis by following three steps: Inform government,
"stop misbehaviour" and "try to do whatever is possible, help whoever we
can."
He said the RSS is open to people
of all faiths, but when asked why no Muslims are in his group, he said
local Muslim leaders prevented them from joining.
"Some Muslims came and gave us money.
They were hesitant, so I said basically Allah, God, Krishna are the same
god. Our main god is our country, and basically we are here to serve our
country."
