Banning the RSS is no cure for India’s political malaise

 When a man like Justice N. Santosh Hegde — former Supreme Court judge and former Lokayukta speaks on a politically loaded subject, the people listen. His recent remarks opposing any ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have once again thrust the issue of ideological freedom and state overreach into the centre of public discourse. At a time when political tempers are running high, his words on the issue of RSS ban are both inconvenient and necessary.

Justice Hegde’s argument is straightforward: you cannot outlaw an organisation merely because you disagree with its ideology. The RSS, he points out, has the same constitutional right to exist as any other lawful body. Unless there is proven evidence that it engages in or incites violence, a ban would be not only undemocratic but also counterproductive. This is not a defence of the RSS per se, but a defence of the principle that the Indian Constitution enshrines — the right to association and belief.

Calls for banning the RSS often arise from political frustration rather than legal necessity. Critics of the Sangh view it as the ideological engine behind the ruling BJP, accusing it of spreading majoritarianism and intolerance. Yet, using the blunt instrument of a ban to counter ideology is an admission of intellectual defeat. In a democracy, the answer to bad ideas is not censorship but better ideas. The state’s job is to prosecute violence, not police thought.

Justice Hegde’s reminder carries special weight because India has tried this before — twice. The RSS was banned after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 and again during the Emergency in 1975. Both times, the bans collapsed under their own contradictions. Suppression created sympathy, not reform. It is a lesson we seem reluctant to learn.

Moreover, bans are dangerously selective. If the RSS is to be proscribed for ideological extremism, should not similar standards apply to radical outfits across the spectrum — religious or political? The selective invocation of “public order” to silence one side corrodes the very foundation of equality before law.

Justice Hegde’s intervention is thus a call for maturity — to confront divisive ideas through debate, not prohibition. Democracies grow by accommodating difference, not erasing it. Banning the RSS might satisfy partisan emotions, but it will do nothing to heal India’s political malaise. The cure lies in dialogue, accountability, and a deeper faith in the Constitution — not in bans born of fear.