Differentiate a political party from a pressure group. Explain the role of R.S.S. and Bajrang Dal-units of Sangh-Parivar as pressure-groups in the Indian political system. (1999)
A pressure group is an organised body that seeks to influence public policy without seeking public office. In Gabriel Almond‘s terms, groups perform interest articulation and parties interest aggregation. The Sangh Parivar tests this boundary more severely than any other Indian formation.
Party and pressure group: the criteria
| Criterion | Political party | Pressure group |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Capture office and govern | Influence whoever governs |
| Scope | Programme across all of policy | Sectional or single-issue |
| Accountability | To voters at elections | To members, if at all |
| Function (Almond) | Aggregates demands | Articulates demands |
| Methods | Elections, legislation, manifestos | Lobbying, litigation, agitation, media |
| Responsibility | Bears the cost of governing | Can demand what it need not implement |
The decisive test is the goal, not size or method. A party must reconcile the farmer’s demand for higher prices with the consumer’s for cheap food; a group need not. In India the line blurs: Rajni Kothari called the Congress-era opposition “parties of pressure”, many groups are party fronts, and the Aam Aadmi Party grew out of an agitation.
The RSS: an ideological and cadre pressure group
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, founded in 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, calls itself a cultural organisation and contests no election. It works through three channels:
- Cadre: from 1951 it deputed pracharaks to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh as organising secretaries (sangathan mantris). Deendayal Upadhyaya built the party on this spine, and the BJP retains the post. Walter Andersen and Shridhar Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron (1987), show that its influence runs through personnel and ideology, not lobbying.
- Agenda: the Ram temple, Article 370 and a uniform civil code were Sangh demands first.
- Affiliates: the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and the Swadeshi Jagran Manch press labour and economic policy, sometimes against a BJP government.
Christophe Jaffrelot (The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1996) sees this division of labour as the Parivar’s innovation.
The state has repeatedly drawn the line. The RSS was banned in 1948 after Mohandas K. Gandhi‘s assassination, during the Emergency (1975–77), and in December 1992 after the Babri Masjid demolition; a statutory tribunal set the last ban aside in 1993. In July 2024 the Centre withdrew the 1966 bar on government servants joining RSS activities, and critics feared for civil-service neutrality.
The Bajrang Dal: street mobilisation
The Bajrang Dal (1984), youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (1964), works through numbers and direct action, not access to ministers.
- Ayodhya: it supplied kar sevaks. The Liberhan Commission (2009) found the 1992 demolition planned; a special CBI court nonetheless acquitted all 32 accused in 2020.
- Cow protection: its patrols are criticised as vigilantism. In Tehseen Poonawalla (2018) the Supreme Court condemned lynching as “mobocracy”. Jaffrelot finds the Dal less disciplined than the RSS, and its actions linked to communal riots.
A category problem
Formally, both are pressure groups. But the RSS selects and disciplines a ruling party’s personnel without facing voters. Supporters stress voluntarism and relief work; critics see unaccountable majoritarian influence.
Conclusion
The distinction holds in theory but blurs in the Sangh Parivar. The RSS acts as an ideological and cadre pressure group, the Bajrang Dal as a street pressure group. Both shape a governing party’s agenda from outside it.