Transparency Theatre

For a politician whose own party seems perpetually engulfed in controversy, Congressman Priyank Kharge has developed a curious fascination with lecturing others on accountability.

His familiar target is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In an open letter, Karnataka’s Home Minister demanded that the RSS register itself, disclose its finances, reveal details of its office-bearers and submit itself to greater public scrutiny.

The RSS is not a shadowy organisation operating from hidden bunkers. It has spent nearly a century functioning in public view. Its daily shakhas are conducted in open grounds. Its publications, office-bearers and activities are hardly state secrets. Governments of every political complexion have dealt with it. The organisation has been banned, investigated, scrutinised and debated more extensively than perhaps any voluntary organisation in modern India.

Kharge’s sudden enthusiasm for transparency invites an uncomfortable question: where has this zeal been when it comes to the performance of his own party which rules Karnataka? Karnataka today is hardly a model of administrative rectitude. Questions have been raised about governance, public spending and political patronage. Public confidence has been eroded by recurring scandals and factional warfare within the ruling party.

Kharge has chosen to manufacture a confrontation with a national ideological adversary and hope the spectacle distracts from more immediate failures. The Congress is hardly a political organisation with a spotless record on transparency. From decades of allegations involving party-linked trusts and opaque funding structures to a long history of corruption scandals that have scarred public life, the Congress has rarely been regarded as a model of institutional accountability.

The RSS, by contrast, has survived for a century not because of state patronage or dynastic inheritance but because millions of volunteers have sustained it through voluntary participation.

That is perhaps the real source of Congress’ discomfort. The RSS represents something the grand old party increasingly struggles to achieve: organisational coherence, ideological conviction and a committed grassroots cadre. While Congress leaders spend their days navigating factional feuds, leadership crises and electoral decline, the Sangh continues to expand its footprint across the country.

Kharge’s letter therefore appears less like a demand for transparency than an expression of political frustration. Unable to explain his party’s diminishing relevance and confronted by a rival ecosystem that has steadily grown in strength, he has chosen the familiar Congress reflex of attacking the RSS.

The contrast is striking. One organisation is celebrating a hundred years of uninterrupted social mobilisation. The other is struggling to explain why it has repeatedly lost the confidence of voters across large parts of India.

Kharge’s letter was intended to put the RSS on the defensive. Instead, it has highlighted the insecurity and contradictions of the Congress itself. For a party burdened by its own unresolved questions of leadership, accountability and credibility, the sermon on transparency rings distinctly hollow.