Revisiting ‘The Fundamentalist Project’ to understand western perspective on RSS
Updated: March 8, 2025 11:44
Three decades after it ended, ‘The Fundamentalism Project’ is back in the news. For those who are unaware about this project, it has been one of the most significant works that influenced the intellectuals in the western world studying the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Before we talk about how this debate on ‘The Fundamentalism Project’ has been rekindled in context of the RSS, let us have a brief look at what exactly was this project and how the RSS figured in this.
From 1987 to 1995, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences undertook this project. According to the Academy this was a major comparative study of anti-modernist, anti-secular militant religious movements on five continents and within seven world religious traditions.
The project engaged with hundreds of scholars across the globe. Under this project, 10 international conferences were convened and thousands of hours were put into fieldwork to examine the nature of fundamentalist movements, their institutions, and their relation to governmental policies.
This initiative resulted in five encyclopaedic scholarly volumes, published as a series; In the second volume titled ‘Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements’ (Edited by Martin Emil Marty and Robert Scott Appleby), there were two interesting essays: ‘The Function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: To Define the Hindu Nation’ by Ainslie T Embree and ‘Hindu Nationalism and the Discourse of Modernity: The Vishva Hindu Parishad ’ by Peter van der Veer. It may be recalled that Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is an RSS inspired organisation that was established with the aim of keeping the Hindu diaspora connected to their cultural roots through successive generations.
This project had come under scathing criticism from several scholars as it had tried to club Hindu Dharma with Abrahamic religions. The two key persons who were driving this project Martin Emil Marty and Robert Scott Appleby were ‘committed’ Christian scholars. Appleby wrote his PhD thesis on ‘American Catholic Modernism at the Turn of the Century American’. Marty was a Lutheran religious scholar.
S. Gurumurthy, an authority on the history and ideology of the RSS, has recently come out with a volume (Golwalkar: The Modern Rishi with Millennial Vision) on the second Sarsanghchalak (Chief Mentor) of the RSS where he talks extensively about this project. This book which takes on the Golwalkar baiters was released earlier this week and is likely to initiate a debate on the western framework about the RSS.
Interestingly, despite attempts to brand the RSS as a militant or reactionary Hindu organisation, the authors who dealt with this issue had not only to concede that there was no ‘reactionary’ aspect in the RSS’ ideological framework or its concept of Hindutva.
Gurumurthy, in fact, makes an argument in the beginning of the book that has the potential to add to both the domestic and international debate on the RSS and its ideology that has often been influenced by biased opinions, misinformation and an ideological slant against the Sangh, especially in the western academia.
Gurumurthy says, “The Fundamentalism Project in the US agrees with Guruji (the second Sarsanghchalak of the RSS i.e. MS Golwalkar) decades later. The first quote, which contains Guruji’s thoughts but not in his words, is what the editors of the five-volume Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences involving an international group of scholars had approvingly allowed.”
Analysing Embree’s essay, Gurumurthy says, “The author has independently evaluated the ideological premises of the RSS – read Guruji’s thoughts – and accepted his thoughts almost in the very words Guruji had uttered them. When the Fundamentalism Project says that “to use such terms as “militant Hinduism”, “Hindu fundamentalism”, “religious revivalism”, or “reactionary Hinduism” to describe the ideology of the (RSS) movement, although these terms may seem inappropriate category for the study of Hindu religious phenomena” it is only repeating what Guruji had said decades earlier.”
Comic bracketing of RSS as “fundamentalist-like” organisation
Gurumurthy talks about how the scholars and editors of the Project struggled to club the RSS with Abrahamic fundamentalist movements (“Fundamentalism Comprehended” Vol 5 p414-15) and term it as ‘comic’.
There are, according to the Project scholars (Ibid p 409-414), five tests to call a movement fundamentalist. The first is “Reactivity”, which is mobilisation against secular forces in modern world; the second, “Selectivity”, citing the fundamentals to create siege mentality; the third, “Dualism”, that is strong feelings against drifters from one’s own religion than against the other religions; the fourth, “Inerrancy”, that is the belief that one’s religious text contains no error; and five, “Millennialism”, the expectation of a messiah which assures ultimate victory. In the five tests, while invariably others are rated “high” first, second, third and fourth, RSS is rated “low” in first, second and fifth; the fourth test, inerrancy, is completely absent in RSS. Only in dualism, strong feelings against those who drift away from Hinduism – namely conversions – RSS is rated “high”. The RSS is against conversion, but it does not use violence against the converts, which is what dualism means. So, this rating is totally wrong, says Gurumurthy.
“Thus, in the tabulation of the different fundamentalist and fundamentalist like organisations (Vol 5 p414), the RSS is nowhere near being fundamentalist or fundamentalist like. But still both Hinduism and RSS are bracketed with fundamentalism throughout the five volumes, by smuggling in the term “fundamentalist like” into the discourse. ‘The Fundamentalism Project’ which flips, flips and flips on Hinduism and RSS, is not an honest intellectual exercise,” adds Gurumurthy.
In a nutshell despite making a desperate effort to target Hindus and RSS in this project, Gurumurthy is of the opinion that the substance of the discourse on the five volumes on Hinduism and RSS clearly rule out the application of fundamentalism and revivalism to Hinduism or RSS.
