Chhattisgarh Order Revives Old Question: Can Secular Constitution Work In Hands Of RSS-Ridden Bureaucracy?

The founding fathers were clear that civil servants should not be permitted to join political organisations such as the RSS.

The Chhattisgarh government’s notification this week allowing state employees to join the controversial Hindutva organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has revived two questions. First, will communalised officials be able to uphold the Constitution in its letter and spirit? And second, should the RSS still be treated as just another cultural organisation that lacks political overtones?


The proposition that a politically neutral bureaucracy is imperative for the successful working of the Constitution is beyond debate. The founding fathers of the Constitution emphasised unequivocally that subverting the bureaucracy would tantamount to subversion of the Constitution. 

Thus, while introducing the draft Constitution in the Constituent Assembly on November 4, 1948, Dr BR Ambedkar, chairman of the drafting committee, said, “The form of the administration must be appropriate and in the same sense as the form of the Constitution.”

Similarly, on April 27, 1948, Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, in a letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, said, “The [civil] service must be above party and we should ensure that political considerations, either in its recruitment or in its discipline and control, are reduced to the minimum, if not eliminated altogether.” 

Later on October 10, 1949, he told the Constituent Assembly: “If you do not adopt this course [of ensuring safeguards for civil servants], then do not follow the present Constitution. Put in a Congress Constitution or some other Constitution or put in the RSS Constitution – whatever you like – but not this Constitution. This Constitution is meant to be worked by a ring of service which will keep the country intact.”

It was keeping with this spirit of the Constitution that civil servants were strictly prohibited – through Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964 – from associating themselves with political organisations and activities. In 1966, the Union government clarified that it had always held the RSS and the Jamaat-e-Islami as political organisations and “participation in them by government servants would attract provisions of sub-rule (1) or Rule 5 of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964”.

On several occasions thereafter, the Centre reiterated that the need for government servants to maintain political neutrality. In 1969, for example, the Centre clarified that the above-mentioned restrictions were essential to ensure that the government servants not only maintained political neutrality, but were seen to be doing so and that they must not associated themselves in any manner with an organisation that could be perceived to have a political aspect. 

In 1980, the government reiterated, “In the context of the current situation in the country, the need to ensure secular outlook on the part of the government servants is all the more important. The need to eradicate communal feelings and communal bias cannot be overemphasised.”

It is because of this that the Chhattisgarh government’s latest order amounts to a clear attempt to subvert the very spirit of the Constitution. The RSS is the parent organisation of Bharatiya Janata Party. Not only is the RSS deeply involved politics, it is, in fact, driven by the belief that one particular community has the exclusive right to determine the terms of national identity that privilege it over others.

The desire to control political power in order to turn India into a Hindu Rashtra has always been the core concern of the RSS. It is true that Article 4 of the RSS constitution, adopted in 1949, states, “The Sangh, as such, has no politics and is devoted purely to cultural work.” But the activities of the RSS have always been in alignment with with its political objectives.

Though the BJP leaders insist that the consultation with the RSS is a norm rather than the parent body giving directives, the fact is that in every crucial matter – be it determining the office-bearers of the party or finalising its list of candidates for elections or in any other key issues – the word of the Nagpur, the RSS headquarters, is considered final. What is even more, the RSS leaders miss no opportunity to express their views on political issues.

It is not surprising that on February 8, 2000, veteran BJP leader and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh said, “I have spent a greater part of my life in this organisation [the RSS] and I can say that right from the distribution of election tickets in BJP to selecting cabinet ministers, it is only the RSS which calls the shots." What else is political activity?

The Chhattisgarh government’s order has once again pointed to the dire need for an analysis of the true nature of the RSS. It must be determined whether the Sangh is working in accordance with its 1949 constitution – the document that became the basis for lifting the ban that had been imposed on it following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse the previous year.