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New Delhi: Kuppahalli Sitaramayya Sudarshan, the fifth Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), will always be remembered in the Sangh fraternity for laying ideological foundations of at least three key issues whose journey ultimately culminated decades later in the form of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) and renewed focus on the Northeast by the Narendra Modi government ever since it came to power in 2014.

On his 119th anniversary, which falls on 6 June, it is interesting to take a look at his legacy as it seems to be getting manifested in many crucial decisions of the current government at the Centre. (Although Sudarshan was born on 18 June, 1931, according to the Gregorian calendar, the RSS adheres to the Bharatiya calendar, according to which his birth anniversary falls on 6 June this year.)

It was during Sudrashans stint first as the sarkaryavah (general Secretary) from 1990 onwards and then as the sarsanghchalak from 2000-2012 that the RSS-backed Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) often hit the headlines for challenging successive governments over key economic decisions such as allowing Foreign Direct Investment in non-priority areas and succumbing to pressures of World Trade Organisation, especially on the issue of reducing subsidies for agriculture, and facing pressure from a more stringent patent regime.

Along with senior RSS pracharak Dattopant Thengadi, a co-founder of the SJM, it was Sudarshan who clearly put forward the swadeshi model of economics that favoured a self-reliant India, which is being reflected today in Modi governments ambitious plan of making India atmanirbhar.

Sudarshan was a strong opponent of the western model of economic development and favoured a self-reliant India.

He had said, The root cause of poverty and unemployment in India is this specific Western model of development as it is centralised, high energy-consuming, urban-centric, capital-intensive, promoting unemployment and destroying nature. We need to replace this model with an economy, which is decentralised and based on rural India.

Instead of walking into the trap of globalisation and foreign debt, it would be better if we promote rural development with the resources we have at our disposal. It should consume least energy and it should be less capital-intensive while creating more jobs and conserving the environment, he had stressed.

According to Devendra Swaroop, an RSS ideologue who worked very closely with Sudarshan since 1950s, When Rajju Bhayya (the fourth sarsanghchalak) handed over the charge of the sarsanghchalak to Sudarshanji because of the formers frail health, the latter himself studied swadeshi science and technology very closely in every part of the country. He used to explain them with very minute details.

Also read: Hindu Samrajya Diwas why and how RSS is reviving a forgotten chapter of history

During his tenure in the Northeast as an RSS pracharak, which began in 1977, Sudarshan played an important role in identifying several key issues such as illegal migration from Bangladesh and mass conversion of tribals into Christianity.

The current government has passed the Citizenship Amendment Act and taken up the development of Northeastern states as top priority since 2014, spelling it out openly.

The BJP, an ideological mentee of the RSS, has also become a strong force to reckon with in the Northeast as it has scored significant electoral victories there.

The bugle for the need of many of these initiatives, which are being initiated by the Modi government, was first sounded by Sudarshan who spent considerable time in the Northeast as a pracharak.

Former national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and ex-Union minister Murli Manohar Joshi puts it aptly: I was in-charge of the Northeast when Sudarshanji was working there. I was deeply impressed by his in-depth study and thought process At that time, we prepared several programmes, which were executed in future. The agitation on illegal migrants was one such issue. Sudarshanji had prepared an intellectual and emotional ground for this agitation much before it was launched.

Within the RSS also, Sudarshan was one of the first ones to flag the issue of illegal migration of Bangladeshi Muslims to Northeast, specially Assam. He considered illegal migration to be an attack from across the border. He travelled extensively to states like Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, among others, to study the issue of illegal immigration and its impact. He prepared a detailed plan to counter this influx and resolve the issue.

Ashok Singhal, another senior RSS pracharak, who passed away in 2015 and was a key figure in the Ram Temple movement, had worked and interacted closely with Sudarshan.

He remembered Sudarshan fondly in one of his articles.

As a pracharak (whole-timer) in the Northeast, first he learned Bengali and Assamese. He could deliver lectures fluently in both these languages. He studied in-depth the activities of the Church and exposed them Later, he sent a number of pracharaks from all over the country to work there in view of the gravity of the problem.

Singhal further added: He studied the tribes in the Northeast in detail He suggested ways and means to protect tribes from the influence of Christian Missionaries. Several schools and hostels for students were set up. The Bangladeshi Muslims were migrating illegally to Assam, West Bengal and Bihar in a planned way; simultaneously, the Hindus from Bangladesh, unable to protect themselves, were also migrating.

At that time, it was Sudarshanji who told the countrymen and especially the Assamese people, that while the Muslims coming from Bangladesh were illegal immigrants, the Hindus coming from there were refugees. So, the latter should be sheltered by the Hindus in the rest of India. Meanwhile, the illegal Muslim immigrants who have settled in West Bengal, Bihar and Assam should be deported back to Bangladesh. The six Northeastern states gradually understood his argument, Singhal said.

Kolkata-based senior journalist Asim Kumar Mitra, who attended the third year training camp of the RSS at Nagpur in 1959 along with Sudarshan, had the opportunity to watch him from close quarters when the latter was given the responsibility of Purvanchal region in late 1970s.

Under the Sanghs organisational structure, Purvanchal was quite a big region covering Northeast as well as Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha. Prior to him, RSS stalwarts like Rajju Bhayya and Bhaurao Deoras had been appointed at this position.

It was a region that faced many complex socio-economic issues and it was a formidable challenge to spread the RSS work there.

Mitra underlined the fact that Sudarshan played a key role in ensuring that the movement started by Asom Gana Parishad against illegal immigrants from Bangladesh did not turn against Bengali Hindus.

The Muslims in Assam tried to make it an anti-Bengali agitation but Sudarshan could not only see through this conspiracy, he also realised the long-term adverse impact of an anti-Bengali movement. This would have affected Hindus severely while skirting the real problem, he added.

Also read: Gandhi admired Hindutva icon Savarkar as lover of truth, addressed him as bhai

Born in Raipur, (now in Chhattisgarh), Sudarshan had his early studies in Raipur, Damoh and Mandla.

In 1953, Sudarshan finished his four-year degree course in telecom engineering. One of the long-lasting influences on him was of senior RSS pracharak Eknath Ranade, who was a regular visitor to his hostel during his intermediate days.

He inspired Sudarshan to take up RSS work full-time. After taking his final examination of the engineering course, he finished his four-month practical training and instead of picking up a coveted and well-paid job, chose to become an RSS pracharak. He was formally appointed as an RSS pracharak on 23 June, 1954 in Raigarh district as a tehsil pracharak looking after three tehsils Champa, Janjgir and Bilaspur.

He worked there for a little less than two years and was then appointed as the Nagar (town/city) Pracharak in-charge of Sagar in 1956. He was elevated to the post of Zila (district) Pracharak. From 1957-64, he looked after Vindhya Vibhag as a Vibhag Pracharak. He was given the responsibility of Prant Pracharak of Madhya Prant in 1964 and was based in Indore.

He played an instrumental role in the launch of daily newspaper Swadesh in which he wrote extensively. While he was the Prant Pracharak of Madhya Prant, he was also given the responsibility of Akhil Bharatiya Sharirik Pramukh (All-India in-charge of the physical activities in the RSS).

When former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared emergency in June 1975, Sudarshan was arrested and he was in Indore jail for 19 months.

After the emergency was lifted and he came out of jail, Sudarshan was made the in-charge of Purvanchal (East India). Thus, apart from Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil and English, he also developed fluency in Assamese, Bengali and Odia.

While holding the charge of Purvanchal, he was given the additional responsibility of Akhil Bharatiya Bauddhik Pramukh (All India in-charge of the intellectual activities of the RSS).

In 1990, he was given the responsibility of Sahsarkaryawah and in 2000, he donned the mantle of the RSS Sarsanghchalak.

It was Sudarshan himself who handed over the mantle to the current RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, nine years later. He passed away in Raipur on 15 September 2012.

(All the quotes used in the article have been taken from the book Hamare Sudarshan ji edited by Baldev Bhai Sharma.)

The writer is CEO of Indraprastha Vishwa Samvad Kendra, an RSS affiliate, and author of two books on the RSS.

Also read: Pro-Hindutva groups see larger conspiracy in Palghar killings, want CBI probe

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CAA, Atmanirbhar Bharat, focus on Northeast were first propagated by this former RSS chief - ThePrint

I have become increasingly cognizant of a tendency of many libertarians to conflate "libertarian" with "antigovernment." There are a variety of groups and movements in the U.S. who hate "the government" for their own reasons, but aren't by any stretch of the imagination libertarian. If you hate the U.S. government because you think is it's controlled by "Zionists" who are trying to destroy European American culture by organizing an alliance of Third World immigrants and native African Americans, you will likely support dramatic cuts in government; but you are not libertarian, because if you thought "your people" were in control, you would happily have a massive, unlibertarian federal government.

Back when Ron Paul's presidential campaign was receiving support from various racist individuals and groups, his campaign's official position was that it welcomed support from *anyone* regardless of ideology, so long as they supported limiting the federal government. That's exactly the mentality I object to.

Libertarians hopping on the "defunding the police" bandwagon once again reminds me of the crucial but neglected distinction between being libertarian (or classical liberal) and being antigovernment. Protection of life, safety, and property is a legitimate function of government. Even Robert Nozick was fine with funding the "night watchman" of the night watchman state.

There are plenty of police reforms that could be enacted from a libertarian perspective that would improve matters. Qualified immunity reform is libertarian. Holding police accountable for misbehavior is libertarian. Reducing the power of police unions is libertarian. Getting rid of overtime and pension abuse is libertarian. Banning no-knock raids is libertarian. Reducing bloated police department bureaucracies is libertarian.

Broader reforms that would reduce the need for police and reduce police/civilian encounters are also libertarian. Getting rid of victimless crimes, especially the drug war, and certain categories of criminal business regulation that should be handled civilly is libertarian. Getting rid of taxes that lead to black markets that in turn lead to police/civilian encounters is libertarian. Abolishing laws that allow local governments to put people in jail for failure to pay civil fines is libertarian. Separating forensic science services from prosecutors' offices is libertarian. Holding prosecutors accountable for misconduct is libertarian. Finding alternatives to prison for certain categories of offenders is libertarian.

By contrast, "defunding the police," if that just means willy-nilly cuts, is not libertarian. This is true especially given that police departments will inevitably follow the "Washington Monument" strategy, in which bureaucracies respond to budget cuts by cutting what is most painful to the voting public. What is very likely to suffer is the legitimate function of the state in preserving people's lives, safety, and property from criminals, while not reforming the system at all nor doing anything about abusive police officers.

If defunding the police means getting rid of the police entirely, without any remote prospect of alternative means of protecting lives, safety, and property suddenly arising in its place (and in the current legal environment, the anarcho-capitalist dream of private protection services replacing police is impossible, even if it were somehow practical), is both crudely antigovernment and stupid.

Read more:
Is Defunding the Police Libertarian? Reason.com - Reason

With Republican and Democratic voters rallying around their partys respective presidential candidates ahead of the November election, the chancesofa victoryfor the Libertarian Party lookbleak. While the Libertarian Party may not be successful this fall, writeOlivier LewisandJeffrey Michels, former Republican JustinAmashsrecent short-lived candidacy for the party may point to alonger termrealignmentfor Republican voterswho seekless government involvement in their lives.

After a12-hour-longnominatingconventionon May 22-23,the first held in cyberspace, the Libertarian Partyselectedpsychology lecturerDrJo Jorgensenasitscandidate for President of the United States.Followinganights rest, thedelegatesreturned totheir computers to selectself-proclaimed anarchistSpike Cohen astheirVice-Presidentialcandidate. The delegatesstamina wasimpressive, especiallyconsidering the fact thattheir ticket has virtually no chance of winning the presidential elections in November.

Theobstaclesare even greaterinthis extraordinary election year.Some of this is inherent to the race itself.Agrowingnumberof Republican voters have a favourable view of President Donald Trump, and avast majorityof Democrats have a favourable opinion of former Vice-President Joe Biden. Unlike in 2016, this yearsthird-party candidateswill receive few protest votes; the Republican and Democratic candidates are simply too appealing to their respective party faithful.

MeanwhiletheCOVID-19pandemic hasfurthercomplicated the prospects for third parties.With many states under lockdown and social distancing customary throughout the country,third partiesare unable tocollectthe signatures necessarytoget their candidates names on state ballots the Libertarian Party stoppedpetitioningon March 7th.These partieswill needtoturn to the courts, in the hope of liftingsignature requirements. The Green and Libertarian parties didsowithsuccessin Illinois.

Themanysocial consequencesof the health crisis willmostlikelylimitsupport for third party campaigns. Due toCOVID-19,theUS population is, to a historic extent,politicallypolarized,prone to saving,jobless,andhungry.As a result,theelectoratelacksthepatienceand resourcesto back outsidercampaignswith little prospectfor success.These are likely the circumstances that the ex-Republican congressman from Michigan, Rep. JustinAmash,had in mindwhen heannounced on Twitteron May 16ththat he wasfoldinghis exploratory committee to seek the Libertarian Partys presidential nomination.

While the immediateclimatemay be harsh foranoutside challenge to the current bipartisanconstellation, this mayslowlychange.As wewrote earlier this month,Amashsshort-livedcandidacyrevealsasmallbut meaningful riftwithin the Republican Party, whosesupport of President Trump has often overruled itscommitment to libertarian ideals. Questions surrounding the role of government inpublic andprivate life canlead tosignificantconflict amidst Republicans, especially as the party decideswhether to follow the course Trump laid out during his presidency.

The COVID-19 pandemicis likely toexacerbate thisriftin the longer term.Crisis measures undertaken bygovernmentsworldwidehavereinforced and accelerated ashift away from libertarian values:the trend is towards lessmigrationand freetrade,and morecapital controls,state aidandpublic debt.In the US, wecan already seeolddebatesre-emergeregarding threats topersonallibertiesandexcessive government intervention, and this, most of all, inconservativeAmericanmedia. Michael Dougherty of theNational Reviewsummarises this as a debate betweennational autonomy and individual autonomy.Jack Butler,also writing for theReview,boils it downto blue-collar versus white-collar.Can these tensions be reconciled within the Republican Party?A historic pandemic has led to a historic recession,which has led to a historical governmental response. It is only logical that the political repercussions will be historictoo,though they may take an election cycleto be felt.

Please read our comments policy before commenting.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.

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About the authors

Olivier Lewis College of EuropeOlivier has been a Research Fellow at the College of Europe,Natolincampus, since August 2019. Olivier is currently writing his first book,Security Cooperation between Western States, to be published with Routledge. He is also working on shorter publications related to counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and Brexit.

Jeffrey Michels College of EuropeJeffrey Michels is a Parliamentary Assistant at the European Parliament and an Academic Assistant forthe European Interdisciplinary Studies Department at the College of Europe.

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Justin Amash's presidential bid shows that some Republicans' future may be with the Libertarian Party. - USAPP American Politics and Policy (blog)

When coronavirus crept across the world in early February, talk of how different nations were dealing with the virus came to resemble the Olympics for state capacity. Which country had the authority, the supplies and the expertise to crush the curve? A balance sheet of national progress marked out a bleak race to the horizon, enumerated in case numbers and death figures.

Although the focus over recent months has remained on leaders in crisis mode and the central agencies delivering forecasts and quarantine measures, local authorities have also played a prominent role during the pandemic. Chinese mayors, US governors and Indian chief ministers have coordinated local responses, taking responsibility for populations and even locking horns with national politicians.

Most people would read the pandemic as a sign that populations and nation states should band together, and for the people at the head of the rope to pull even harder, to use the metaphor favoured by the French president, Emmanuel Macron. But there are others who see matters quite differently. They spy opportunity in the crisis, and wager that we might be able to ride the wave of the pandemic into a new tomorrow, where the virus shatters the global map and undermines the power of democratic nation states.

The US is ground zero for this type of thinking. Across the country, regions have broken up into compacts, with states competing against each other for life-saving ventilators and PPE. The atmosphere is one of competitive federalism, where states are reconfigured as economic units bidding in a marketplace. Washingtons state governor, Jay Inslee, accused Trump of fomenting domestic rebellion for his calls to liberate individual states; governor Gavin Newsom termed California a nation-state. One Maryland governor confessed to keeping Covid-19 tests in an undisclosed location under armed guard, in part to prevent their seizure by central state authorities.

Although North Americas economy is gradually reopening, the virus is still rampaging through its population. What will economic recovery look like in the midst of a pandemic? The presidents economic advisers have some ideas. In an analysis released at the end of April, Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, two of Trumps closest economic confidants and authors of the book on Trumponomics, predicted that blue Democratic states would be slower than red states to recover, because of what they saw as their pre-existing excess of regulations and taxes.

Their analysis divided the US map into laggard anti-growth states and momentum pro-growth states. The former have minimum wages, pro-union laws and state income tax; the latter are free of such regulations. In the established mode of disaster capitalism, Laffer and Moores analysis appears to see the pandemic as a way to compel anti-growth states to adopt ever lower tax rates in order to attract mobile capital and labour. It suggests those who resist will not be bailed out by redistribution from the central government, but left to languish in a deserved economic depression. The effect is reminiscent of social Darwinism, applied as a philosophy of government.

The most articulate cheerleader for this kind of post-pandemic libertarianism is Balaji Srinivasan, the electrical engineer and former general partner at Silicon Valley venture capital fund Andreesen Horowitz. Since the pandemic began, Srinivasan has foretold a redivision of the world map into green zones that have controlled and contained the virus and red zones, which have not.

We are entering this fractal environment, Srinivasan recently told a virtual summit organised by the Startup Societies Foundation, in which the virus breaks centralised states. The virus does not stop at the border, so nor will this process of fragmentation. As regions seal themselves off to prevent contagion, you can drill down to the state, or even the town or county level, Srinivasan observed, noting that any state without the virus under control will face defection in an intensified contest for talent and capital. After the pandemic has passed, nations are going to turn into effectively vendors and entrepreneurs and relatively mobile people will be applicants, he predicted.

Its easy to imagine how a particular breed of investor could see this pandemic as an opportunity that will accelerate existing trends. The loose attachments that investors feel towards this or that nation will grow even looser as capital becomes more mobile, and a sorting process will separate the productive few nations from the malingering many. States that dont fall in line with the demands of this investor class will be starved by the voluntary expatriation of the wealthy, with their assets and abilities in tow.

If you assume this is merely a pessimistic vision, youd be wrong. In fact it accords with a long-cultivated ideology that Srinivasan shares with a group of like-minded venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, who subscribe to variations of the radical libertarian philosophy known as anarcho-capitalism. The idea at its root is that a wealthy class of investors and entrepreneurs should be free to exit nation states and form new communities whose members can choose which rules (and tax laws) theyre governed by as if those rules were products on a store shelf.

For like-minded libertarians, the colour-coded zones used in public health to control the virus are the blueprint for a new political economy. Since Srinivasan began discussing the framework, colour-coded zones have been rolled out to control the virus in Malaysia, Indonesia, Northern Italy and France; the strategy was also considered as a model for biocontainment in the White House in early April. As of early May, India has divided its 1.3 billion people into a patchwork of green, yellow and red zones, with different freedoms and restrictions based on each.

The red-green zone schema has already informed the strategies of global investors. In April, Henley & Partners, the global citizenship broker, released its annual ranking of national passports for mobile investors, and predicted that coronavirus would spark a dramatic shift in global mobility. Its chief source forecast that as the curtain lifts, people will seek to move from poorly governed and ill-prepared red zones to green zones, or places with better medical care. In early May, it reported a 42% increase in applications for new nationalities, compared with the previous year.

Nobody can tell what the world will look like after the pandemic. But what we can be sure of is that some investors appear to be already placing their bets on a vision of the future where the wealthy are freed from tax constraints. As nations are divided into different zones according to their respective stages of viral and economic recovery, the well-off could follow Elon Musks recent threat to relocate from California to Texas, voting with their feet for locations that elude redistributive taxation. In our post-pandemic future, the flight to safety, away from contagious red zones, could be a flight from the nation state as we know it.

Quinn Slobodian is an associate professor of history at Wellesley College, US

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How the libertarian right plans to profit from the pandemic - The Guardian

I am saddened to report that the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, one of the most important libertarian blogs on the internet is closing down, as of today. Matt Zwolinski, one of the regular contributors, announced the decision in this post:

Back in 2011, a group of academic philosophers started a blog called "Bleeding Heart Libertarians." The idea behind that blog was simple, but also somewhat vague in terms of its specifics: that you could be a libertarian who favored free markets and limited governments, and still care about the kind of things people on the left refer to as "social justice" relieving poverty, racial and sexual equality, immigrant rights, LBGTQ rights, and so on. Hence, the slogan of the blog, "free markets and social justice."

Reconciling free markets and social justice seemed like an especially worthwhile project to undertake in 2011. Academic political philosophy was largely dominated by followers of John Rawls, for whom a commitment to social justice (of a particular sort) was paramount. And libertarianism remained a fringe and unfamiliar view within the academy for most academic philosophers, it was a view that was born and died in 1974 with the publication of Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But a critical mass of scholars were working out new ways of thinking about libertarian ideas; and many of us who were excited by the work of scholars like David Schmidtz, Gerald Gaus, and John Tomasi thought that there was a different style of libertarian thought beginning to crystallize. And we didn't only want to publicize that; we wanted to encourage it, to help build and develop the research program associated with it.

Moreover, if we sought to open mainstream Rawlsian political philosophy and theory to the influence of market-friendly classical liberalism, we also wanted to wanted to steer classical liberal scholarship toward taking egalitarian liberal ideas much more seriously than it often had.

Things have changed quite a bit in the last nine years, both in the realm of academic philosophy and that of real-world politics. Rawlsianism and its particular interpretation of social justice have receded in prominence. The variety of libertarian and classical liberal views within the academy has become better known, even by those who reject those views. And that variety is now a more firmly established fact among libertarian scholars and students themselves

I like to think that this blog, or at least the people who write for it, have played some role in at least the second of those two developments. We set out with the aim of articulating a new and distinct vision of libertarianism. And while there are certainly a great number of important details of that vision that have yet to be worked out I think we have succeeded. The project of establishing the intellectual space for bleeding-heart libertarian ideas has also more or less succeeded, giving way to the various different intellectual projects people are going to pursue in that space.

In other words, we've said what we needed to say.

I can understand Zwolinski's reasoning. But I wish he and his co-bloggers would reconsider. The world needs the BHL blog today at least as much as it did back in 2011. The brand of liberalism that combines free markets with cosmopolitanism, rejection of ethnic nationalism, and concern for the poor and disadvantaged has never been more necessary than in this difficult time, when liberty is besieged on both the right and left. Whatever may be the situation in the specialized arena of academic political philosophy, the forces of nationalism and socialism are gaining group in the broader intellectual and political world.

Fortunately, many of the BHL contributors will remain active in the public arena in other ways. Zwolinski lists some of the venues in which they will continue to write in his post linked above.

In the meantime, it's hard to deny that the BHL participants have had a big impact on political thought since they began the blog in 2011. While I am not a BHL-er as such, my own recent book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom is very much in their tradition of combining free markets and cosmopolitanism. It is no accident that it is an outgrowth of an article I wrote for a volume edited by BHL-er Jacob Levy.

I have also been much influenced by the works of other BHL contributors, such as Jason Brennan's books on political ignorance, and the ethics of voting, and Fernando Teson's writings on democratic deliberation and international justice. Brennan's book In Defense of Openness (coauthored with Bas van der Vossen) is one of the best political philosophy books on the morality of international trade and migration.

There are, of course, a number of issues on which I differ with some of the BHL contributors. But, even when we do disagree, I always learn much from what they have to say. Hopefully, they will continue to contribute to debates over politics and political theory elsewhere.

Read more:
Farewell to the "Bleeding Heart Libertarians" Blog - Reason