Breaking with a 58-year-old policy, the ban on government employees participating in the activities of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was lifted by the Narendra Modi government on July 9, to the chagrin of many. As concerns of political neutrality within the bureaucracy rise, it is worth revisiting why such a ban had been established in the first place. 

Restrictions on government employees

The first explicit restrictions on government employees in connection with the RSS came in 1966, when the Home Ministry issued an order warning government employees that participating in events conducted either by the RSS or by the Jamaat-e-Islami would be in violation of Rule 5 (1) of the Central Civil Service (Conduct) Rules, 1964. 

The CCS Rules from 1964 categorically stated: “No Government servant shall be a member of, or be otherwise associated with, any political party or any organisation which takes part in politics nor shall he take part in, subscribe in aid of, or assist in any other manner, any political movement or activity.”

The 1964 Rules added that government employees must prevent even family members from “taking part in or assisting in any manner any movement or activity which tends directly or indirectly to be subversive of the Government as established by law.” 

The final decision on what qualifies as a political party or political activities lay with the Union government, according to the CCS Rules.  

It was in the backdrop of this official stance that questions came up on whether the RSS is a political organisation. This led to the 1966 clarification that explicitly banned government employees from taking part in activities of the RSS or the Jamaat-e-Islami. 

The ban on government employees associating with the RSS was first issued on November 30, 1966, when Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister. It was then reiterated on July 25, 1970, and again on October 28, 1980. 

The then Union government’s 1980 order was particularly strongly worded. Quoting its own 1966 order regarding the RSS and Jamaat-e-Islami, the 1980 order said, “In the context of the current situation in the country, the need to ensure secular outlook on the part of Government servants is all the more important. The need to eradicate communal feelings and communal bias cannot be overemphasised.” 

The order also added, “No notice should be taken by Government and its officers, local bodies, State-aided institutions of petitions or representations on communal basis, and no patronage whatsoever should be extended to any communal organisation.”

BJP leaders like Amit Malviya had recently claimed that this ban had been in response to the 1966 anti-cow slaughter demonstrations. Indira Gandhi banned government staff from joining the RSS because she was “shaken by the RSS-Jana Sangh clout,” he alleged. 

This anti-cow slaughter demonstration, which took place on November 7 of that year right on Parliament Street, had turned violent after speeches by then Jana Sangh Member of Parliament (MP) Swami Rameshwaranand, who had been suspended from the Lok Sabha for unruly behaviour, and other Right-wing leaders. The protesters attempted to storm the Parliament and clashed with the police. According to India Today, a total of eight persons were killed — seven protesters and one police official. Multiple government buildings were attacked with projectiles and fuel-soaked lit rags.

1970s: RSS and the Union government, an embattled relationship 

While the RSS — at least going by their own archives — did not seem to have directly protested the restrictions on government employees, they have in the same period accused the Union government on multiple occasions of “maligning” them with regard to various matters. These accusations were quite strident in 1970 with the organisation making multiple statements to this tune, such as denying their involvement in riots or denouncing the Delhi district court order banning them from public drills for two months. 

The May 1970 Bhiwandi riot resulted in the horrific mass killings of 78 people — 59 Muslims, 17 Hindus, and two persons who could not be identified. What sparked the riot in Bhiwandi, less than 40 kilometres from Mumbai, was a Shiv Jayanti Procession comprising about 10,000 people, reportedly armed with lathis, who deliberately passed by the Nizampura Jumma Mosque. The riots spread to Jalgaon and Mahad, killing another 43 people of whom 42 were Muslim.

A one-person investigation by Justice DP Madon held five organisations responsible for the riots: the All-India Majlis Tameer-E-Millat, Shiv Sena, Bhiwandi Seva Samiti, Rashtriya Utsav Mandal, and the RSS’ political arm, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh. 

The RSS denied any involvement, saying in a statement: “It is evident that all this propaganda, profuse with abuses and vituperative, but without a single specific evidence to prove any of the charges, is politically motivated and should be treated by one and all with the contempt it deserves.”

It was in this backdrop that the Union government issued the 1970 order reiterating that government employees cannot take part in the activities of the RSS or the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Total bans on the RSS

The RSS as an organisation has been banned three times, starting with just a year after India received its Independence. 

On January 30, 1948, at the Birla House in New Delhi, RSS ideologue Nathuram Godse gunned down MK Gandhi. To say the assassination shook both the nation and the Union government, would be an understatement. A furious Union government issued an extraordinary gazette notification on February 4 calling the RSS “a danger to the public peace” and declared them an “unlawful” organisation. 

Headlines in the following days reported the series of further measures the Union government took in response.

Newsclip from February 3, 1948 - The Indian Express Google News Archives

On July 11, 1949, after much back and forth between then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Home Minister Sardar Patel, and the RSS’ second-ever chief MS Golwarker over the course of a year, a notification was released removing the ban on the RSS. This happened as the RSS promised to emphasise their loyalty to the Constitution of India and to the Indian flag in their own bylaws. 

The second ban came in 1975, the year Indira Gandhi declared Emergency. This period of authoritarianism, autocracy and unchecked power, and widespread censorship needs little introduction. Many of Indira Gandhi’s opponents both on the political Left and the Right were jailed, including then RSS chief Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras, whom sangh pracharaks referred to as ‘Balasaheb’. The RSS was banned along with 22 other organisations. According to Christopher Jafferlot’s India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-77, co-authored with Pratinav Anil, many jailed RSS leaders wrote letters of reconciliation to Indira Gandhi.

Christopher Jafferlot and Pratinav Anil wrote, “It is no accident that the official history of the RSS in Emergency India, The People versus Emergency: A Saga of Struggle glosses over the Deoras letters; only a version of the first is reproduced, not in full, and almost en passant at the very end of the book. Deoras was not alone. Hans Raj Gupta, former Delhi mayor and ‘provincial RSS sanghchalak [organiser] for Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana, and Delhi’, too, wrote Mrs Gandhi a similar letter from Tihar, promising in exchange for lifting the ban the beginning of a ‘new era of cooperation’ between the Parivar and the Congress, the former assisting the latter in its ‘nation-building activities’.”

With the end of the Emergency in 1977, the ban on the RSS among other organisations was lifted. 

The third and final ban on the organisation came in 1992, in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the communal violence that followed. Four days after the demolition of the mosque (December 6), the RSS was declared an unlawful organisation on December 10 by then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao who banned the organisation under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Narasimha Rao also banned the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal, the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, and the Student Islamic Movement of India. 

However, once again the ban on the RSS was short-lived. A tribunal in New Delhi led by Justice Bahri ruled that there was no material evidence to support the Union government's accusations. The ban was lifted months later in June 1993. 

As many would recall, the days following the demolition were horrific. Communal violence and anti-Muslim pogroms spread across states. The Bombay Riots alone claimed about 900 lives. Of these, as per a Scroll report, 575 of the dead were Muslims, 275 were Hindus, and 50 were from other faiths. 

Years later, in 2009, Justice MS Liberhan submitted his one-man Commission report to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Liberhan was tasked with probing the events that led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. This report, available on the website of the Ministry of Home Affairs, traced events as far back as the RSS’ mobilisation alongwith LK Advani’s Rath Yatra of February 1990 from Somnath to Ayodhya. It held the RSS culpable in the demolition alongside other right-wing organisations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal. 

On December 6, 1992 — the date of the Babri Masjid demolition — Liberhan’s report noted how both LK Advani and Murali Manohar Joshi were present at the site in the morning, hours before the actual demolition. 

The report further added: “The evidence presented before the Commission suggests that the total numbers present within the corridors was anywhere between 1,000 to 5,000. The presence of another 75,000 to 150,000 Karsevaks was claimed at Ram Katha Kunj at a distance of 200 yards from the disputed structure. Ram Katha Kunj was an open area extending up to Ram Dewar.”

In his conclusion, Liberhanv also warned, “The problem of a politically and religiously biased civil service and police service is particularly vexatious. The civil servant or police officer who professes or practises closeness to a political or religious leader and who thereby allows it to colour his objective discharge of duties is an anathema to good governance.” 

In the wake of the Union government’s decision to remove the 1966 restriction on government employees, similar concerns have been raised by Opposition leaders, activists, civil society organisations, and regular citizens — how can the bureaucracy remain an unbiased and neutral administrative body in the face of such a decision.