RSS affiliate opens first office in Kashmir
A narrow lane branches off the highway and winds its way towards Barsoo, a secluded village in Awantipora in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district. At its entrance stands a single-storey building, fitted with security cameras and fronted by steel railings, as police personnel stand guard. There is no signboard or flag, only a small signboard that reads “office”.
This is the divisional office of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the RSS-affiliated trade union. It is the RSS’ first affiliate to have opened its office publicly in Kashmir.
For years, the RSS and its affiliates have maintained a low profile in the Valley, working discreetly, especially in border areas, where the Sewa Bharti run and fund schools besides undertaking projects to renovate ancient temples.
The opening of the BMS office, however, marks a shift from a discreet presence to a visible public footprint.
“This is the first experience of a Sangathan office in Kashmir. It is time to work openly and not discreetly. The situation in Kashmir has changed and we are coming forward now,” says 36-year-old Sameer Kuchay, the BMS’s Kashmir in-charge.
The BMS claims to have 20 affiliated labour unions in Kashmir. While most remain marginal players, the affiliations give the BMS a foothold in the Valley, where the BJP and its ideological mentor RSS continue to face resistance.
Kuchay knows this from personal experience. A resident of Barsoo, he joined the Sangh in 2016, when Kashmir was witnessing a resurgence of militancy with Burhan Wani at its centre.
“I have seen it at home,” he says. “There were days when even my relatives wouldn’t touch the glass from which I drank water. They would use a cloth to pick it up. For them, I was a Sanghi. I remember posting a video of myself hoisting the Tricolour on Facebook. I received 1,384 comments. Of those, 1,382 were abuses.”
For Kuchay, Kashmir has come a long way since. And, on Monday, the BMS’s first office in the Valley was opened in his village, Barsoo. But he is reluctant to attach any element of bravado to the development. “We have a strong presence in the four districts of south Kashmir,” he says. “We chose Awantipora as our divisional office because it is accessible to both south Kashmir and Srinagar.”
Kuchay seeks to maintain a distance from the BJP in the Valley, much as BJP leaders appear keen to distance themselves from his organisation. BJP leaders say they are unaware of any BMS office in the Valley, while the BMS insists it is not anyone’s “puppet”.
“We are not the puppets of the BJP or any other party. We have nothing to do with politics and nothing to do with religion. There is a feeling that we are anti-Muslim. There is nothing like that. We have nothing to do with religion,” says Kuchay.
He hopes this message will help the organisation reach out to people in the Valley. “I try to convince people. I tell them, ‘If you feel the RSS is bad, come and join us and see for yourself,’” he says. “We are far from politics.”
While the RSS has little or no presence in Kashmir, over the last many years, especially after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, the organisation has been trying to have a footprint in the Valley.
The Sangh previously had some presence among Kashmiri Pandits but halted its activities in 1990 after the community left the Valley following the onset of militancy.
The Sangh’s critics, however, call the development a “state-sponsored project”. “The administrative machinery pushing a certain organisation is not surprising,” says CPI(M) leader and Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) chief M Y Tarigami. “But the fact is that everybody knows what RSS stands for. They have been openly talking about divisive politics and against minorities. People do understand and realise what it stands for. In any case, there is no space being provided in the Valley for any trade union activism.”
