Nimitha’s Reviews > RSS: The Long and the Short of It > Status Update

"Everything is a puppet show. If a new puppet dances better to a given tune than the current one, and shows more colour, dazzle, devotion and cunning, it enters the stage wearing a mask of strength or astuteness. It becomes the leader. The puppet that played the leader earlier is flung aside(remember L.K. Advani). "

The qualifications for an utsava murti are the ability to put up a show and the canniness to give an emotional colour to things that spin out of control, and create a commotion, and thus take attention away from the problem."

The author has hit the bullseye here!

"PM Modi,who won a majority for the BJP, is projected as a strong leader. But he's only an utsava murti, a replica of the temple deity taken out during a procession. The real deity sits in Nagpur, inside the RSS shrine. The utsava murti dazzles everyone across the length and breadth of the country. It's hailed everywhere. (TBC)

"Starting with the Adivasis, and including the Brahmins, the multitude of castes forming the humane majority of Hindu society must act now(against fanaticism)"
The problem with this "humane" Hindu society is that its division along caste lines is too deep to fight against any common enemy. RSS, in this case is spawned out of the same social structure that holds this hindu society. Author is too optimistic imo.

"Golwalkar rules out allowing swayamsevaks any discretion. Choices, he says, don't exist for them. This is distressing because the RSS pulls young children into its organisational fold. It doesn't make humans out of them; instead it creates inhuman robots called swayamsevaks."

Not sure about RSS casting a spell on even the liberal Hindu communities in India. As Ambedkar had said Hinduism basically promotes graded inequality. As long as someone else is the lowest in the social order(as are Muslims now in India), Hindus will gladly forget their sufferings. That's why majority of RSS's foot soldiers are from the long-suffering lower caste Hindus.

"The main reason for the RSS's hatred of Islam and Christianity is that they refuse to dissolve into the chaturvarna order"

A bit of simplification here I think. Muslims and Christians of Indian subcontinent don't completely distance themselves from caste system (Eg, uppercaste Christians -Knanaya and Syrian- of Kerala).

Fascism everywhere seeks enemies and makes wild claims of racial purity. RSS is no exception.

"The very fact that Germany or Italy has so wonderfully recovered and grown so powerful as never before at the touch of Nazi or Fascist magical wand is enough to prove that those political 'isms' were the most congenial tonics their health demanded."
~ "Veer" Savarkar

"Falsehood is their (RSS's) family deity"

"RSS seems to believe that Dalits and women are immature, lacking in intelligence and individuality, and incapable of making their own decisions.