Holy man/statues/

nuclear blast

Starts:01.00.00.00

Roy: "I am become death -- shatterer of worlds" The words uttered by Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the world's first atomic bomb in 1945. It's a passage from the Bhagavadgita, one of the holy Scriptures of Hinduism.

00.15

Now the defenders of the Hindu faith have unleashed their own "shatterer of worlds".

00.33

Prime Minister at microphone

00.48

Super:

ATAL VAJPAYEE

Prime Minister

Prime Minister: Today at 1545 hours, India conducted three underground nuclear in the Pokran Range.

00.51

Group of test supporters

Supporter:  Our country's leader is the leader of the world! Long live Vajpayee!

01.04

Prime Minister waves at crowd

Roy:  In power for only two months, Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee has unveiled a patriotic fervour of his ruling B.J.P. party. But away from this hand-picked multi-ethnic rent-a-crowd, is another more powerful force, a secretive Hindu fundamentalist movement called the RSS. An organisation whose founders...

01.14

Group of supporters

...openly admired Hitler. A group that counts the Prime Minister as a life-long member, who champions its ideology of strident nationalism.

01.39

Supporter:  He will take over one by one!

01.51

Roy:  It's an ideology that is now driving India towards the brink of the nuclear arms race.

01.54

FX:  Firecrackers

02.03

Map India

Kids with sticks

Roy:  It's forty degrees, school holiday in Delhi. But this is no fun in the sun affair -- this is the RSS.

02.15

RSS Members

The RSS or the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh is a national volunteer organisation devoted to building a new India, a Hindu India.

02.27

Prime Minister Vajpayee is a graduate of RSS camps. He describes them as the soul of his B.J.P. party. With an RSS man now running the country, there is a spring in the step of the new recruits.

02.45

Sudarshan interview

Sudarshan: Unless the whole country becomes strong and united, and acquires an important place in the committee of the nations in the world, our work will continuously go on.

03.00

Sudarshan walks along verandah

Roy: By an reckoning, K.S. Sudarshan, General Secretary of the RSS, is now one of the most powerful figures in India.

03.18

Sudarshan interview

Sudarshan: The RSS won't get to inculcate the spirit of oneness of this country this country is one, this culture is one, the people are one. So in order to inculcate this idea and all India perspective as also a dedication to the country and discipline, these are the basic traits that are needed for the renaissance of the new country. The RSS was started with this purpose to unite the Hindu society, to make them patriotic and disciplined.

03.27

RSS Members marching

Leader:  Step by step we go forward! Squad:  Do whatever's good for the country!

04.06

Roy: With its martial theme, the RSS has been described as a cross between the Boy Scouts and the Hitler Youth.

04.18

Leader:  Never hesitate to do anything for your religion!

Squad:  Do good things for your country.

04.24

These recruits are not rabblerousers from the slums. They are the sons of Hindu India's educated middle class -- Muslims and the poor need not apply.

04.33

Leader:  The blood of Ram and Sham is flowing in your veins!

04.44

The indoctrination process starts early. Like their fascist forbearers in 1930s Europe, summer camp is the ideological training ground, turning today's students into tomorrow's political storm troopers.

04.52

Leader:  Step by step we'll topple the heads from the bodies of our enemies!

05.05

Shahabuddin interview

Super:

SYED SHAHABUDDIN

Editor "Muslim India"

Shahabuddin: They affect the minds of the children, they catch them young in two ways. Those who go through their schools, but obviously only a fraction of Indian children would go to their schools. But what is more important is that they build up these militant gangs, they are storm troopers, they are brown shirts if I may call them. Through their daily drills which they hold in public places, and according to the latest statements they have got more than 100,000 such shakas or branches working everyday.

05.09

Sudarshan  interview

Super: 

K. D. SUDARSHAN

Joint Secretary, RSS

Sudarshan: It's completely voluntary, and it is completely voluntary how you can compare it to either Hitler or Mussolini or something of the sort. It has become the fashion to call such a thing as fascist and all those things. It's not at all, because we cannot enforce anybody to come to the RSS or to come to our camps.

05.42

Young men in quadrangle

Instructor:  Oh Hindu awake! You've got a noose around your neck! Oh Hindu awake! You've got a noose around your neck!

06.03

Roy: Those that do come are taught to chant the mantra of oppression. Of a millennium of Muslim and British domination that subjugated the Hindu people.

06.15

Teacher singing

Teacher [then class repeats]:  You have lost everything but you never gave up hope! Some invaders came -- they demolished your temples...

06.26

Shahabuddin interview

Shahabuddin:  So over the years when somebody grows up in this militant culture and is given a dose of pseudo intellectuality, given a certain version of India's history which a) emphasises the glories of the Hindu times and it talks about a thousand years of slavery under the British and the Muslims, then it moulds their minds which is basically anti, negative. It doesn't accept everyone is equal in India, therefore it is not democratic.

06.44

Roy: What about the criticism that there is an element of brainwashing in these camps?

07.15

Shahabuddin:  Not at all. As a matter of fact if you call the instilling of patriotism and discipline among the youths as brainwashing, then I think every country in this world is doing this thing to their children.

07.19

Drill instructor with recruits

Roy:  Muslim tombs form the backdrop for what is euphemistically called self-defence classes.

07.40

The RSS has a long tradition of street fighting stretching back to its foundation in the 1920s as an anti-Muslim defence group.  Today, in public at least the group, is vague about the enemy. After all, the RSS now claims all Indians are Hindu.

07.49

Sudarshan

Sudarshan: We believe that India is a Hindu nation and when we say it is a Hindu nation we take the word Hindu to have a nationalist connection.

08.09

Roy: What about the 120 - 140 million Muslims?

08.20

Sudarshan: They are Hindus because Hindu does not mean one particular way of worship. Some believe in God some do not believe in God also. All of them have got their place in the Hindu society, in this Hindu nation.

08.23

RSS National Jamboree

08.40

Roy: The RSS National Jamboree, an event strangely reminiscent of rallies in 1930s Germany.

08.53

For the shock troops of the RSS these are the glory days. But the Prime Minister Vajpayee, this man, Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani is one of India's most powerful politicians.

09.07

Jamboree listening to Advani

Advani:  If China and Pakistan come to know that India has missile, has defence armaments -- the atom bomb -- then no one will case the evil eye at India.

09.18

Roy: Both Prime Minister Vajpayee and Home Minister Advani are swayemsevaks, dedicated RSS members, imposing role models for this vast army that aims to dominate the political, religious and military stratas of India.

09.31

Advani interview

Super:

LAL KRISHNA ADVANI

Home Minister

Advani: The RSS is an organisation which I regard as a unique organisation. Its principal contribution to the country is inculcation of feelings of patriotism, selflessness and discipline in the youth. I was 14 years when I joined the RSS.

09.49

Roy: And you a proud member of the RSS?

10.22

Advani: Yes, I am a proud member of the RSS

10.23

BJP Rally

Roy: With the B.J.P. now eclipsing the Congress Party as the dominant force in Indian politics, there are claims of a hidden agenda. That now that is it power, the B.J.P. party will be revealed as nothing more than a front for the RSS.

10.27

Shahabuddin interview

Shahabuddin : My first comment is not that the RSS is not backing this government, the RSS is running this government. It's not just remote control, it's day to day guidance and direction.

10.43

Sudarshan interview

Sudarshan: We do not say that we control it -- we do not control it. Many of the times we get some feedback from the different areas and because we are actually in the know of the things that are happening, we just pass on this information to the political party to take its own decision.

10.56

Roy: So you are in a position now. You have the Home Minister, the Prime Minister, and a few cabinet ministers, all of them who are swayemsevaks

11.18

Sudarshan: Yes, The Home Minister is swayemsevak (RSS veteran), the Prime Minister is swayemsevak, and our Human Resource and Development... and there are so many other ministers also.

11.25

Vanaik interview

Super: 

ACHIN VANAIK

Author

Vanaik:  On the part of the RSS they keep on saying that we are basically only a cultural organisation. It must be the strangest cultural organisation in the world if you ask me. Because have you heard of any cultural organisation in the world who carries out political campaigns, that lends its cadres to political parties like the B.J.P? That was what happened of course during the whole campaign about the destruction of the mosque at Ayodha.

11.39

Riot at Ayodha

Roy: In 1992 a Hindu mob tore down the Babri Mosque at Ayodha, claiming the site was sacred to the Hindu faith. That incident sparked riots all over India. When the smoke cleared, 3,000 people were dead.

12.09

Both the BJP and the RSS were implicated. Before the final assault Lal Krishna Advani, then an opposition figure was in the vanguard of the Hindu nationalists rallying in Ayodha

12.25

Now as Home Minster he is facing charges of inciting the mob to riot.

12.40

Advani interview

Advani: It was a kind of a setback, it had nothing to do with either the BJP or the RSS. It was done by some people, I do not know who did it, it was an unfortunate incident, it should not have taken place.

12.45

Roy: You are now facing charges on that incident, will you resign?

13.00

Advani: I have nothing to say about that.

13.05

Vanaik interview

Vanaik: The only independent documentation of that affair was produced in fact by what is called a Citizens' Tribunal. A public citizens' tribunal that was set up which had three retired judges, two former Supreme Court judges and one Calcutta High Court judge as the adjudicators. And it didn't have any legal force but it had moral force and this produced a documentation in which it put the finger firmly on the RSS BJP combine for a calculated conspiracy to destroy the Babri Mosque.

13.09

Transit camp

Indian music

13.44

Roy:  One of the areas worst hit by rioting was Bombay, entire communities were razed. Six years on the Muslims survivors still live in cramped transit camps. The horror of what occurred and what may be repeated is palpable.

14.01

Muslim woman 1

Woman:   Tragedy came to our house. Two of our men are gone. Those who were simple people were trapped.

14.17

Muslim woman 2

Woman 2:   We were going to the police begging -- "Save us!" They said only one thing -- "It is good for you to die -- that will mean one less Muslim."

14.26

Bombay squalor

Roy: Even before the Ayodha riots the RSS never really enjoyed support here. The Bombay squalor is a world away from the well-heeled recruiting grounds of the RSS. This is a nation where nothing is forgotten and little is forgiven. The poor still remember the role of the RSS in the death their champion, Mahatma Gandhi, the father of what was supposed to be new racially tolerant India.

14.42

Roy to camera

Super: 

EDMOND ROY

Since its formation in 1925, the reputation of the RSS has been under constant attack. But it was here in this park on January 30, 1948 that the RSS suffered its most severe setback.  It was along these sandstone steps that India's most revered leader Mahatma Gandhi took his final walk.  It was here on his way to afternoon prayers that he was gunned down by a crazed Hindu fanatic.  His assassin, a man with close links to the RSS.

15.12

Vanaik interview

Vanaik: You know that Mahatma Gandhi's own words about the RSS? Mahatma Gandhi called the RSS, he said the RSS is a totalitarian organisation with a communal outlook. If Mahatma Gandhi was alive today he would be horrified by what is being done.

15.42

Shahabuddin interview

Super:

SYED SHAHABUDDIN

Editor "Muslim India"

Shahabuddin:  Now if you tried to bring about a Hindu India, an India in which one country, one religion, one language, one culture. It would create too many tensions in the name of language or in the name of religion, or in the name of race. And that is why it frightens me as an Indian that this narrow minded fascistic approach, anti-democratic, illiberal approach, can lead India to disaster.

15.59

Nuclear tests

Roy: for the BJP and the RSS exploding five nuclear bombs under the sands of the Pokran test range is something to celebrate, even spiritualise.

16.37

Vanaik interview

Super:

ACHIN VANAIK

Author

Vanaik: It's frightening, taking the sands and going around different parts of the country and projecting this as an embodiment of their commitment to the greatness of mother India. You know like taking holy water, taking sands of Pokran, sands, they'll do it. They're talking already -- the BJP has already said that it is going to build a temple there, a temple dedicated to Shakti, the Goddess of Power.

16.51

RSS Rally

17.20

Roy: Appeasing the Goddess of Power looks set to trigger a dangerous nuclear arms race with Pakistan, which is now prepared to test its own bomb. For the RSS India is now marching towards the glorious future. But soon there may be many apprehensive glances to make sure that the sun is not the only thing glowing on the horizon.

17.26

Ends: 17.56