It's the Left which is intolerant: RSS ideologue Manmohan Vaidya

"The so-called Left liberals are trying to monopolise the intellectual space. They are the ones who are intolerant." Making his maiden appearance on the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (ZeeJLF) stage, RSS ideologue Manmohan Vaidya took the ideological battle over the cultural space, straight to an event that has hitherto been dominated by Left-liberal opinion makers.

Vaidya, along with Dattratreya Hosabale, addressed a packed house on Friday evening at a session titled, "Of Saffron and the Sangha", a discussion on the RSS's history and ideology. Given that the inclusion of the right wing party had embroiled the festival into controversy, one had expected tensions to run high when Vaidya and Hosabale, also of the RSS, took the stage to field questions from moderator Pragya Tiwari, a media entrepreneur authoring a book on the Sangh Parivar.

The hour-long session was a surprisingly smooth affair as Vaidya and Hosabale tried to dispel the negative perceptions surrounding the social organisation and its credo.

On the concept of Hindutva, Vaidya said the word used should be 'Hinduness', which is a way of life, a perspective, a world view unique to India. Even the Supreme Court accepts that definition, he says. "Hinduness embraces different religions and the spiritual paths they advocate. In India, for thousands of years, the kings didn't persecute their subjects for their religious persuasion, because that is essence of Hinduness. India is a land of spiritual democracy," said Vaidya.

India needed to continue with the policy of SC/ST reservations to undo the historical wrongs perpetrated on that section. In response to a query on the plight of Muslims depicted in the Sachar Committee report, he said what that community needed was more education and more economic opportunities than reservations.

Sadly, this culture of tolerance and permissiveness is sadly absent among Left-liberals who want to monopolise the intellectual space, said the senior RSS ideologue. On nationalism, he said that it was a European construct born out of the concept of nation-state and the RSS believes in a common national identity.

Regarding secularism, he said that the term was hotly debated during the framing of the Constitution, and the founding fathers agreed to drop the term. Curiously, it appeared in 1976, during Emergency, and though there was no demand for its inclusion, secularism was introduced in the Constitution, taking a dig at the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

This was not the only session on Friday where ideas of India, and recent political issues were hotly debated.

In another session earlier in the day on Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb, a term used to refer to India's syncretic Hindu-Muslim culture, journalist Saeed Naqvi declared that India suffers from an uninstitutionalised apartheid, where one section of society is oblivious to what's happening with the other. Naqvi also said that it is about time India sheds its facade of secularism, and identifies as a Hindu India, adding that Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress, too, had let down Indian Muslims at different points of time.

Countering Naqvi, former diplomat and Rajya Sabha member from the Janata Dal (United) Pavan K Varma accused him of staying out of the Hindu-Muslim debate for fear of being seen as a spokesperson of the community. "You don't speak for Muslims for fear of being seen as a professional Muslim. But you write a book on their angst. You can't have best of the both worlds," said Varma, leaving many in the audience wondering how the conversation did not have one essential characteristic of Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb - courteousness .

The other end-of-the-day session on 'Gambits and Game Changers: Relooking the Indian Economy' raised tempers and some angry rhetoric as well. What was supposed to be a debate on how "it had taken crises such as the one in 1991 for India to initiate real economic reforms" in the words of moderator John Elliott, author and former journalist with The Economist, soon became one about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's demonetization drive, and its effect on the economy. "The Indian economy has consistently underperformed," said economist Surjit S Bhalla.

"The problem with us is that we are happy when someone is seen to be doing something, no matter whether what he is doing is the right thing to do," said Mihir S Sharma, columnist, to loud appreciative claps from the audience. Social activist Aruna Roy, at the other end of the spectrum, was vehement that demonetization had had a devastating effect on the poor. "For the first time, the poor people feel that they are not part of the vision of development," she said. Political parties, she felt, should reveal where they get their money from, because that was where corruption arises.

The views were divergent enough not to be resolved in the course of a 50-minute debate, but Bhalla had the last word: "The effects of demonetization, in gross terms, will be offset by the growth in agriculture."