From the land of the Kama Sutra, India has been talking for months about the Sanjay Joshi sex scandal.
The khaki-white chastity of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh came under threat today with Sanjay Joshi, a senior functionary, getting sucked into a sex scandal.
An interesting way to put it.
Joshi, on deputation to the BJP where he is a general secretary, resigned from the party as well as the Sangh after the emergence of a CD purportedly showing him having sex with a woman.
Pracharaks — and Joshi is one — cannot marry, let alone have sex outside matrimony. But they can always seek the Sangh’s permission and start a family, as L.K. Advani, for instance, has done, though they have to surrender the title of pracharak.
A collection of celibate men, the Sangh was left red-faced by the scandal.
Possibly not the only reddened body part of the quasi-fascist Indian organization that lies behind the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Meanwhile, intimations of larger sex scandal:
An RSS pracharak’s sex life is not a subject of mass obsession or even interest. It is not going to win or lose the BJP too many votes. Even so, that a Sangh code — pracharaks voluntarily commit themselves to celibacy — has probably been breached is an issue that will exercise and anguish insiders.
What has not helped is that, over the past week, Sangh and party circles have been swirling with rumours of other such tapes, allegedly featuring other functionaries. In the end, the rumours may turn out to be only rumours and completely untrue. This may be just a one-off deviation.
Yet the fact that these stories have currency at all, that they are being circulated in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and intrigue cannot help morale. Individuals make mistakes, and can be punished or forgiven. What is more difficult to deal with is the idea that ‘honey traps’ may have been used as instruments of factional politics, perhaps blackmail too — even if in only one state.
This week, George W. Bush travels to India: coincidence? You be the judge.
Posted by "Richie Tenenbaum." (RT is a pseudonym of a slightly-well-known blogger not trying to hide his other name from anyone other than Google, who is guest-supplementing at DR.)
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