SAFM 9 (2) pp.

173–182 Intellect Limited 2019

Studies in South Asian Film & Media

Volume 9 Number 2
© 2019 Intellect Ltd Interview. English language. doi: 10.1386/safm.9.2.173_7

Leela Khanna
New York University

Interview with Lalit Vachani

Abstract Keywords
This interview with filmmaker Lalit Vachani explores the unique relationship Hindu nationalism
between filmmaker and radical political subject. Vachani has made two documentary documentary
films on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). His first film, The Boy in the RSS
Branch (1993) was filmed mere months before the December 1992 Babri Masjid Lalit Vachani
demolition. The documentary captures the unassuming ways local RSS shakha representation
(branch) members recruit young boys in Nagpur into their right-wing milieu. Eight media
years later, Vachani’s film, The Men in the Tree (2002) revisits the same RSS
members and presents their narratives of the demolition and how the Sangh has
shaped their lives. This interview asks Vachani to reflect on the constantly chang-
ing power dynamics that a filmmaker must negotiate with his interlocutors. As the
politics of representation are now changing with far right political groups actively
producing their own media content, Vachani is invited to reflect on his past films
alongside the present concerns of the growing visibility of Hindu right politics.

Leela Khanna: How did you get involved with making The Boy in the Branch,
and filming the RSS? What was the political backdrop in India at the time?
Lalit Vachani: In December 1990, I was working with journalist Lindsey
Hillsum on a BBC radio programme on the Ramjanambhoomi movement,
L. K. Advani’s Rath Yatra and the violence that had occurred in its wake.
Over the course of this research I witnessed my first RSS shakha in Aligarh.
Subsequently, we travelled to Delhi where we met and interviewed K. S.
Sudarshan, who was then sah sarkaryavah – Joint General secretary of the
RSS. He seemed disappointed that we were just two people working on a

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Leela Khanna

Figure 1: 1992 filming of Boy in the Branch. Copyright ©1993 (Lalit Vachani).

radio programme who hadn’t come with a TV crew. Later when I broached the
idea of making a documentary on the RSS shakha, Sudarshan thought it was
a very good idea.
I think that the media landscape and the political climate at the time greatly
contributed to my getting access to the RSS. There was a centrist, secular
government in power in India. The only television channel, the state-run
Doordarshan, was unlikely to provide any media coverage to the RSS, and my
film probably seemed like a strategic opportunity for it to gain some publicity.
The international audience for my film (it was a documentary for Channel 4,
UK) was probably also a part of its calculation. The Sangh was mobilizing
around the building of the Ram Mandir in those days and was raising funds
for the project. It clearly hoped that my film would reach the NRI population
in the UK and elsewhere, and help it in its fundraising efforts.
I also think that another factor that helped me get access was my
proposal in which I committed to make the film using only RSS sources,
without employing narration or using my voice. This was my main crea-
tive and also political challenge: I would go into RSS territory, use its
sources and make a film that documented the activities of its most impor-
tant institution, the shakha. But the film would also stand alone as an anti-
RSS text. The idea that we had was to juxtapose text and image – use the
RSS’ own words in inter-titles to tell a story – like the viciously communal
diatribes of their chief ideologue Golwalkar – and to let the RSS narrate its
own critique, as it were.

LK: What made you go back to continue your work filming the RSS? What ques-
tions were left unanswered for you?
LV: The Boy in the Branch was a commissioned 26-minute film, and part of
a Channel 4 TV programme called For the Glory of Ram, which also included
two other documentaries that looked at aspects of Hindu fundamentalism by

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 Interview with Lalit Vachani

Figure 2: RSS Street March. Copyright ©1993 (Lalit Vachani).

filmmakers Anand Patwardhan and Dev Benegal. When the Babri mosque
demolition happened, I tried to lobby for a longer film, but it was not possible
for Channel 4 to accede to my request as they had three films to accommodate
in a one-hour TV slot. The film was shot on 16mm, which is not a medium of
immediacy. It is a time-consuming and expensive format. Therefore, it was not
possible to extend the length of the film or prolong the shooting or editing
days in light of the broadcast deadline.
There were many interesting aspects of research that we had unearthed,
which begged for a larger project – for instance, the circulation of various
myths about Gandhi in the RSS shakha, and how the everyday worlds of the
shakha kept alive an intensity of hatred for Gandhi, Nehru, and other national
figures.
As time passed, I kept thinking about the characters in my film: what
were Sandeep, Sripad, Lalit and Purushottam doing at the time of the demo-
lition and were they involved in the movement in any way? I also wondered
about my main character Kali, quite literally, the ‘boy’ in the branch, who
was 9 years old when we filmed him. What had he grown up to be? Nine
years later, I was able to explore some of these issues in making The Men in
the Tree.

LK: Did members of the RSS or the men you filmed watch The Boy in the Branch,
and share their reactions to the film with you?
LV: Yes. I had sent the main characters, and also the RSS Headquarters in
Nagpur and Delhi VHS copies of the film. Before we began the second film my
characters naturally had a lot to say about the earlier one.
Broadly, they were very critical of the portrayal and framing of the RSS and
my selection of text from Golwalkar’s writings. Most notably they were criti-
cal of a quotation I used from We, or our Nationhood Defined (1939) in which
Golwalkar lauds Germany’s purging of the Jews as an expression of the highest

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Leela Khanna

form of race pride and ‘a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit
by’ (1939: 89).
In response, the men gave many justifications: Well, Golwalkar was not
really the Sarsangchalak (chief) at the time, so these were his personal opinions and
not the Sangh’s or, The book was actually not written by Golwalkar but by another
swayamsevak (volunteer).
Interestingly, there is a much more sinister quotation that I used from
the very same text in which Golwalkar rails against the ‘foreign races’ in
Hindusthan who ‘must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must
learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion […] or, they may stay in
the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing […]’
(1939: 105). My volunteers did not discuss this quote, and it seemed to me
that this rant of Golwalkar’s that effectively threatened Indian minorities and
called for the curtailing of citizens’ rights of Indian Muslims and Christians
was not much of an issue, or even a problem for the RSS.
But there were also major parts of the film with which they did not have
a problem (e.g. the shakha scenes). They also did not have a problem with the
way that they were represented, and seemed to like the images of themselves
in the film – which is probably the reason why I got access to make my second
film, The Men in the Tree.

LK: You’ve mentioned in your writing (Vachani 2017) that there was quite a bit
of surveillance by the RSS when you were filming The Boy in the Branch, but not
when filming The Men in the Tree. What was the form of this surveillance?
LV: By ‘surveillance’, I don’t mean that we were necessarily being followed.
Rather, the RSS had such an extensive and efficient network that they always
seemed to know where we were. When I and Shuddha (Shuddhabrata
Sengupta, who was the researcher on the film) sometimes wanted to shake
off our minders, or when we tried to visit an RSS shakha or a location unan-
nounced, RSS people there already knew that we were coming or seemed to
be expecting us. It was quite unnerving at times. And do remember, this was
the pre-mobile phone era!
During the shoot, the ‘surveillance’ was more natural and took the form
of a scrutiny of the kinds of research questions we were asking the boys, so
that an appropriate response could be given for camera. On occasion, shakha
stories would suddenly transform, or be modified during filming so that the
RSS might look better, or project a favourable self-image. I was able to verify
this with Sandeep and Sripad nine or ten years later.
Interestingly, the point person in charge of training the boys or counselling
them in terms of responding strategically to our film team was none other than
Mohan Bhagwat, the present-day RSS Sarsangchalak (Chief). Bhagwat was the
All India Sharirik Pramukh (Chief of Physical training) of the RSS in 1992.

LK: Why do you think these constraints of surveillance were not present in your
later film?
LV: Quite simply, because the way access was garnered was different. The Boy
in the Branch was made with the ‘official’ permission of the RSS. Every char-
acter in the film that we selected, every location had to be vetted and agreed
upon by the Sangh. Later, they wanted to sit in on the rough cut, i.e., they
actually wanted to make the film with me! I flatly refused.

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 Interview with Lalit Vachani

In contrast, The Men in the Tree was made possible only because my
characters from the earlier film gave me personal access. We were filming
under the radar, and I don’t think that the RSS was even aware that the
film was being made. I was not subject to the same system of filmmaking
constraints or commitments as in the earlier film. For example, I was free
to talk to ex-RSS volunteers who shared their experiences of being in the
Sangh with me, and their testimony about their years in the RSS forms the
political core of the film. Equally, the ‘boys in the branch’ (now eight years
older, and much more confident) were very open, and forthcoming in their
response to us.

LK: What I find particularly remarkable about The Men in the Tree is how openly
the men speak to you about both their own personal involvement in the destruction
of the Babri Masjid and how they admit that the demolition was a highly organized
event. How did you perceive their candidness in talking about RSS’ involvement in
the demolition?
LV: I was also very surprised at how candid they were. I think that they
were just so proud of their achievement in participating in the Babri mosque
demolition that they couldn’t wait to tell me about it. Remember, officially
the RSS completely denied any complicity in the demolition. There was an
ongoing Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry, and judicial summons to
RSS leaders by the inquiry commissioned by the Indian government known
as the Liberhan Commission, which was in the midst of its investigations.
There was always the fear that a new government might come to power and
press criminal charges against the RSS–BJP leaders and also members of the
organization.
But Sripad, Sandeep and Purushottam were so eager to share their stories
of mosque demolition that they seemed to forget the official line of the Sangh.
I believe that this definitely had to do with a certain freedom that came with
not being monitored by senior RSS leaders.

LK: The men in your films speak very passionately about the Hindu right project.
Were there moments during your conversations where you felt as if they were pros-
elytizing to you?
LV: During filming for The Boy in the Branch, there was a lot of pressure to
conform, attend shakha, salute the saffron flag – in other words, to become a
bit like the people we filmed. I suppose this was a natural way for the RSS to
try to neutralize us and also, to reduce their own anxieties about us. This kind
of proselytization of our film crew was often attempted by more senior RSS
swayamsevaks (volunteers).
We steadfastly refused to do this. My argument was that I can’t make
an objective film on the RSS if I am, say, supposed to salute the saffron flag
while in the process of filming. I must maintain a distance. And secondly, we
explained that our film team comes from a non-RSS, secular Hindu tradition,
and that we would not be adopting RSS rituals.
With our main characters, they were very young at the time and I think
they were genuinely impressed and influenced by some members of our
team – I think that we came across as cosmopolitan, ‘big city’ folk, the likes of
whom they had not met before.
So the banter of proselytization was actually more from our side –

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Leela Khanna

Sandeepji, theatre karna hai to Sangh chodna padega!

(Sanjeepji, if you want to do theatre you will
have to quit the Sangh!)

Lalit-ji, FTII join karoge to RSS knicker nahin pahen sakoge!

(Lalit-ji, if you join FTII then you won’t
be able to wear RSS knickers!)

Later, when I went to Nagpur to film The Men in the Tree, Sandeep would
sometimes say: ‘Come over to our side, we’ll win your allegiance as well’. But
he was not serious. He knew I wasn’t about to join the RSS. And I knew that
the Sangh meant the whole world to these men, and so there was no question
of them leaving it.

LK: How did you negotiate establishing your own position as a filmmaker with very
different political sensibilities, while also maintaining a relationship of trust with
them?
LV: I was always very clear that I was going to try and critique the organiza-
tion and its ideology – which I find reprehensible – but I tried not to misrepre-
sent my characters, belittle them, or make fun of them. And as happens in the
making of most documentary films, you forge bonds with some of the people
you film.
I recognize that this is a fine balancing act – to maintain a political critique
of the organization while trying to represent individuals with a degree of fair-
ness. I am not sure that it works in every scene in my films, but that is what I
aspire to do.

LK: Have you seen or spoken to these men more recently?

LV: Yes. I went back after about fourteen years to meet them in 2016. A few
have broken away, but many of them are still very involved with the RSS
project and now have shakha-going children, whom they were happy to have
me film, so it all came full circle in a sense.

LK: The Men in the Tree has a pointed critique of the tactics and ideology of the
Sangh, especially in comparison to The Boy in the Branch. Did the men in your
film watch the second documentary and share their reactions with you?
LV: Yes, they had watched the film. I also took along DVDs of The Men in the
Tree for the people in the film, just in case.
Their reactions were very interesting. Again, they did not seem to
have a problem with the way they were represented. My characters talked
about some of the scenes in which they gave the RSS point of view force-
fully, or spoke of some dialogue for the camera that they were particularly
proud of.
But as you point out, The Men in the Tree is also an overtly critical film on
the RSS as a political organization. My main characters were defensive or even
evasive about this aspect – they did not seem to want to talk about the contro-
versial bits, or the parts where the Sangh did not look good.
I thought they might argue with me, or debate some of these issues as
they had done after watching The Boy in the Branch. But they did not on this
occasion. I was surprised.

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 Interview with Lalit Vachani

Figure 3: Filming Sandeep, one of Vachani’s main interlocutors at Vijaydashami.

Copyright ©1993 (Lalit Vachani).

I have come to realize that the way filmed subjects respond to their own
images or their representation is quite complex, transient and it also changes
over time. We perhaps don’t give enough importance to the subject’s pleasure
at being filmed or of having been ‘selected’ for a film project. Or the fact that
these representations over time become important snapshots in that charac-
ters’ personal story of growth. This can sometimes transcend the ideology of a
text, or the broader context of reception of the film.

LK: In both of your films you capture the daily function of an average Sangh
shakha, and how it integrates itself into the ordinary, everyday lives of its members.
It’s another side of the RSS that many people in the secular left hadn’t seen before,
especially during and right after the Babri mosque demolition. How have audiences
reacted to your films’ representation of the RSS and the men you filmed?
LV: The audience reactions have been quite diverse, and interestingly, I think
that they have also changed over time. When I filmed The Boy in the Branch in
1992, there was limited academic or journalistic work on the RSS, and scant
research on its national network of shakhas. There was little understanding of
the role of RSS shakhas, how they indoctrinate young Hindu boys, how they
take RSS ideology to newer areas or how they provide a sense of community
and belonging for the new recruits to the RSS fold.
In many parts of The Boy in the Branch, the focus is on what I call the
‘benign’ face of the RSS. For me personally, this benign face of the Sangh (with
its community oriented, social welfare impetus deployed with a clear, ideolog-
ical Hindutva thrust) is much more frightening than the malevolent or violent
visage of the Sangh Parivaar (RSS family).
But while the majority of my audiences understood the film for what it
was trying to show, several people were disturbed by these gentle, banal and
ordinary images of RSS men.

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Leela Khanna

Figure 4: Filming Sripad, another interlocuter. Copyright © 2016 (Lalit Vachani).

This reading of the film was also exacerbated by the particularly neurotic
time in which The Boy in the Branch was made and screened. The Babri Masjid
had just been destroyed, secular people like me were distraught and searching
for answers. My film just happened to be one of the first on Hindu fundamen-
talism to be made at the time, and I think that its subject matter clashed with
some contemporary expectations. Perhaps, the film was just too subtle for a
particular cross-section of my audience.
But over the years, perceptions have changed and I think audiences today
see that film in terms of what it was trying to document at the time. Today,
there’s also much more work that’s been done on Hindutva and its growth, and
I think most audiences of such documentaries recognize that, along with the
malevolent or menacing side of the RSS, there is that benign, seemingly inno-
cent face of the Sangh. I believe that these are two different sides of the same
coin, and coexist as complementary forces crucial to the growth of Hindutva.
In contrast, the reactions to The Men in the Tree have been much more
uniform, and more along expected lines. While not necessarily an easier film
to make, it is definitely an easier film to read in the manner in which it posi-
tions its audience. Its ideological messaging is quite unambiguous. While
using the same stock of images, there is explicatory narration that is critical of
the RSS, and interviews with ex-RSS volunteers whose testimony of days lived
in the Sangh directly indict the RSS.

LK: You have also made films on other political, activist groups such as the CPI-M
affiliated Jana Natya Manch (Natak Jari Hai, 2005) and political parties, like the
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) (An Ordinary Election, 2015). Are the challenges you
have faced working with a right-wing group like the RSS similar to the challenges of
filming other political movements?
LV: There are similarities in that all these groups or political organizations will
necessarily want to project their best side and a certain amount of PR or self-

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 Interview with Lalit Vachani

promotion or propaganda will happen in each case. This is natural, and comes
with the terrain.
But filming the RSS was also qualitatively very different. The degree to
which the RSS tried to control the recording of information, or trained its
volunteers to say particular things for the camera was very different from my
other political documentaries. It led me to conclude that the RSS is a very, very
clever organization and quite media-savvy.
At the other end of the spectrum was the AAP, whom I filmed in 2013 and
2014. My experience with AAP in Delhi was that they were disarmingly trans-
parent, open and trusting, sometimes naively so.
In terms of filming individuals, I didn’t feel there was any great difference
in my approach. There was a realization that it can be a challenge to film with,
or be with people with whom one has significant ideological differences, as
happened in the case of my RSS films.

LK: What sort of challenges do you think filmmakers or scholars attempting to

study the RSS in the current moment may face?
LV: Obviously, there is the problem of access, which is huge. But this
can work both ways: at one level, access becomes difficult because the
RSS-BJP has a fully developed media cell that can monitor who approaches
it, and because information is so freely available and verifiable on the
Internet.
But equally, there is so much Sangh work happening all over the country
that the RSS is leaving many more traces of its activity. Spaces to document
Sangh work are also opening up all the time, because of the sheer scale of its
activity. The challenge is to be able to research and access some of these spaces.
Another major constraint today could be that the RSS is commissioning its
own productions or projects that are made by its own people. You can now
find several RSS funded documentaries on the Internet. So why would the
RSS entertain or provide access to filmmakers or scholars who might be criti-
cal of them?

LK: Given the polarized nature of politics in India at the present moment and with
the general election coming up in 2019, what kind of questions should filmmakers
interested in the Hindu right be asking through their work?
LV: There has been an incredible transformation in Indian secular and public
life since Modi and the RSS came to power in 2014. There is ongoing, large-
scale infiltration and takeover of institutions, along with the persistence of
fake news and polarizing communal propaganda, attacks on minorities and
Dalits, the crushing of student dissent and of free speech.
Most of the time it is very difficult to even keep pace with these changes,
especially as they are never covered accurately, let alone critiqued by a syco-
phantic and supine mainstream news media. Therefore and all the more, there
is an urgent need to document, to use this documentation as evidence, and to
critique this transformation and this fascist takeover of secular, democratic space.
This is particularly important as the Hindu nationalist project seeks a
complete erasure of alternative forms of public memory, history writing, criti-
cal thought, story-telling, performance and art. Never has the need to preserve
these alternative practices and spaces been stronger, or there been a greater
need to document the many acts of everyday resistance against this onslaught
of Hindutva politics.

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Leela Khanna

References
Golwalkar, M. S. (1939), We or Our Nationhood Defined, Nagpur: Bharat
Publications.
Vachani, L. (1993), The Boy in the Branch, India: Wide Eye Film.
—— (2002), The Men in the Tree, India: Wide Eye Film.
—— (2017), ‘The Babri Masjid demolition was impossible without RSS foot-
soldiers like these’, The Wire, 8 December, https://thewire.in/communa-
lism/rss-sangh-parivar-babri-masjid. Accessed 1 June 2018.

Suggested citation
Khanna, L. (2019 [2017]), ‘Interview with Lalit Vachani’, Studies in South Asian
Film & Media, 9:2, pp. 173–82, doi: 10.1386/safm.9.2.173_1

Contributor details
Leela Khanna is a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at New
York University. She is also training to be a documentary filmmaker through
the graduate certificate programme in culture and media at NYU’s Tisch
School of the Arts. She holds a master’s degree in South Asian studies from
Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree from Bard College. Her doctoral
project studies women’s participation in contemporary political movements
in India, specifically focusing on right-wing, Hindu nationalist organizations.
E-mail: [email protected]
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4896-0185

Leela Khanna has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

182   Studies in South Asian Film & Media

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content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the
copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email
articles for individual use.