At a ceremony in India’s southern state Kerala, Indian prime minister, a Rashtriya Swayem Sevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps) member, has decided to rename the government-run National Centre for Complex Disease in Cancer and Viral Infection in Kerala after late RSS ideologue M S Golwalkar (Modi govt. renames Kerala’s Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology after late RSS ideologue Golwalkar, National Herald India December 6, 2020).
The Congress leader Sashi Tharoor (former candidate for UN secretary general’s post called the decision “scandalous”. He questioned:`What is MSG’s contribution to science other than promoting the disease of communalism?” Modi remained adamant though Kerala chief minister also opposed the decision in a letter, released to the press also.
When Modi eulogized another RSS ideologue, Dayal, Tharoor debunked him during the Jaipur literature festival in January this year. He said, “We are living in a country where on the one hand the Prime Minister says the Constitution is his holy book and on the other hand, he extols as a hero and instructs his Ministers to study the works, writings, and teachings of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, who explicitly rejects the Constitution. “The only thing that had stood in its [BJP’s] way is a two-third majority in the Rajya Sabha”. BJP’s official ideology is “Integral humanism”, coined by Deendayal Upadhyaya in 1965.
Read more: Where is secular India headed?
The RSS stands committed to Hindutva, a term coined by VD Savarkar.
Upadhyaya sugar-coated the term Hindutva as Bharteeyata. The adamant Tharoor promised to retract his statement if the BJP officially abandon the Hindu-Rashtra (nation) ideal (propounded by Savarkar and Golwalkar, Upadhyaya and their ilk. The Hindu Rashtra concept was first formulated by Savarkar in 1923 in the essay titled “Hindutva”. It was officially adopted through a resolution by the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937. So, RSS’s two-nation theory resolution was contrived even before the Muslim League’s resolution of Lahore in 1939.
Upadhyaya presented his `theory of Muslim purification’ at the BJP National Council meeting in Kozhikode in 2015. India’s founding father, `Mahatma’ Gandhi, himself was shot dead by an RSS fanatic, Nathuram Godse, in 1948 for his perceived soft corner for Muslims. Vallabhai Patel banned the RSS. To appease the state, as well as to continue their operations, the RSS decided to drop the words ‘Hindu Rashtra’ or the Hindu Land, from their official manifesto. The party was reinstated.
Golwakar considered Christians and Muslims as `threats’
Golwalkar is the most important ideologue of RSS/Hindutva. In a work that expressed admiration for Nazi Germany’s purge of Jews, Golwalkar wrote in 1939, “… the foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen’s rights.” (MS Golwalkar, We Or Our Nationhood Defined, Bharat Prakashan, 1939, 104-105).
Read more: Here is everything you need to know about Hindu beliefs on cow dung, urine
Golwalkar made it clear that in the RSS view, Hindu majoritarian identity politics is the only acceptable nationalism, and any politics of asserting an identity separate from the Hindu identity is ‘anti-national’ and ‘divisive.’ He wrote: “Let us remember that this oneness is ingrained in our blood from our very birth because we are all born as Hindus.” (Bunch of Thoughts, p. 255).
M.S. Golwalkar referred to Christians and Muslims as “internal threats”. He praised Nazi Germany as an example of “race pride” from which India could learn. Satish Misra, a political analyst at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi says, [Indian prime minister] “Modi is the most loved child of the RSS.”
Cities and monuments being renamed after Hindu icons
During the recent municipal elections, Uttar Pradesh Hindu-monk chief minister Jogi Adityanath, and other BJP stalwarts vowed to rename Hyderabad as ‘Bhagyanagar’. Earlier Yogi Adityanath had renamed Allahabad city as Prayagraj and under-construction Agra Mogul museum after Maratha warrior Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
Neerja Chowdhury, a political commentator and columnist reported: ‘The party advocates that to be a true Indian one has to be a Hindu. It describes other religious minorities, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, as part of India, because their faiths originated there. They believe that even India’s Muslims are actually Hindu because their Hindu ancestors were forced to convert to Islam’.
The RSS draws inspiration from terrorists acts and organisations, the world over. Speaking at the Houston City Council against the city’s participation in the “Howdy Modi” pep rally, Pieter Friedrich expounded the RSS’s nexus with worldwide terrorism’.
The anti-conversion laws in states, ban on cow slaughter, annexation of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir State, and now combined civil code on the anvil are the RSS’s demands. The RSS wants to convert non-Hindu to Hinduism under its homecoming (ghar wasp) policy. C.P. Bhishikar’s biography of Hedgewar, Keshav Sanghnirmata tells how tbe RSS founder equated Muslims to “yavana” snakes. RSS spurns Indian Constitution and believes India is a place for Hindu nation (Rashtra) to live exclusively in.
Hypocrisy
The RSS chief has been delivering speeches throughout India to cover up RSS’s genocidal role in India. He is busy re-imaging RSS in media as a `cultural, not a `genocidal movement’.
Sunil Ambekar, secretary of the RSS’s student wing (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) launched the book ‘The RSS: Roadmaps for the 21st Century’.
The RSS’s genocidal role is a caricature of the Indian constitution, visualizing a `sovereign socialist secular democratic republic’ and its article prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. Marginalized communities, religious minorities, particularly Muslims, a vocal and vibrant civil society and critics of government policies have been under increasing pressure for a long time.
Read more: Op-Ed: Demolition of Babri Mosque is an act of Hindu revenge
The Hindu civil and military leadership is nostalgic about ancient India’s prosperity during the Maurya and the Gupta periods achieved through total-war tactics (Major General Rajendra Nath, Military Leadership in India: Vedic Period to Indo-Pak Wars). Indian army is wedded to a keynote of Krishna’s strategy: `End justifies the means. The truth may often have to be sacrificed in pursuit of victory (Karma Parva)’. Brihaspati and Kautilya (Arthashastra) stress koota yuddha (no-holds-barred war or maya yuddha (war by deception) against the non-Hindu.
Worldwide furor ignored
Maria Arena, the Chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, the Chair of the European Parliament’s human rights panel, reminded India that “Marginalized communities, religious minorities, particularly Muslims, a vocal and vibrant civil society and critics of government policies have been under increasing pressure for a long time.
Widespread protests over the proposed citizenship verification process and the discriminatory citizenship law amendments have resulted in arbitrary detentions and an unnecessary loss of life. Journalists and other peaceful critics continue to be arrested under draconian counter-terrorism and sedition laws, while human rights defenders are unceasingly and severely targeted by the authorities,” Arena noted. She also expressed concern over Amnesty International India being forced to halt its work in the country “due to government reprisals”.
RSS’s nexus with world-wide terror
The RSS draws inspiration from terrorists acts and organisations, the world over. Speaking at the Houston City Council against the city’s participation in the “Howdy Modi” pep rally, Pieter Friedrich expounded the RSS’s nexus with worldwide terrorism’.
The RSS is a fascist paramilitary founded in 1925 — the same year that Hitler published Mein Kampf. The RSS developed with inspiration from the Nazis. And it produced Narendra Modi. In 2002, Modi presided as soldiers of the RSS massacred 2,000 Muslims. They gang-raped women, hacked people to death, burned people alive. Leaders of the pogrom later confessed on camera that Modi sanctioned their violence.
Read more: BJP-RSS’ ‘koota yuddha’ on Muslims and misinformed Islamophobia
For this reason, Modi was banned from entering the USA for over 10 years.
Today, under Modi’s iron-fisted regime, Christians, Dalits, Muslims, Sikhs, and every Hindu who disagrees with the hate, violence, and supremacy of the RSS lives in fear of their lives. what then if you raise your voice in support of the oppressor? Rather than “Howdy, Modi,” the City of Houston ought to be saying, “Adios, Modi.”
Hindutva caricatures India’s secular Constitution
India is a secular republic. The preamble to the Indian Constitution states, ‘THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN, SOCIALIST, SECULAR, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens: JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity, and to promote among them all, FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
The everyday life in India is a calumny of the golden words of Indian Constitution. How does the Indian government reconcile with constitutionally defined secularism, liberty of expression and faith, and so on.
Long trek to Hindutva Rashtra (nation)
Neerja Chowdhury, a political commentator and columnist reported: ‘The party advocates that to be a true Indian one has to be a Hindu. It describes other religious minorities, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, as part of India, because their faiths originated there. They believe that even India’s Muslims are actually Hindu because their Hindu ancestors were forced to convert to Islam’.
The RSS publicly supported Gujarat chief minister and BJP leader, Narendra Modi’s 11-phase Hindu Pride Parade in July 2002
To conceal their true belief, the RSS advocates (pracharak) pose as ‘a pacifist organization’. The media portrays Muslim munch (wing) distributing the RSS posters.
While the world slumbered, India kept strangulating minorities. Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister, like so many other Bharatiya Janata Party stalwarts, makes no bones about having been a member of the RSS.
Ubiquitous influence
The RSS has ubiquitous influence in all states and Union territories. Without its consent, no-one can get a party ticket or contest elections.
The RSS is a conglomerate of disguised terrorists. Indian media dare not focus its violent activities, but it is sometimes exposed by viral images of violence by its workers.
Images show the RSS members participating in Delhi riots, lynching suspected beef eaters, or Muslim prayer goers. The RSS militants get identified while chanting religious slogans. Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, was an RSS member. It was the RSS that had spearheaded the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992.
Read more: ‘Kattar Hindu Ekta’: Persecution of Muslims has defaced ugly face of secular India
The ruling BJP has a symbiotic relationship with RSS as is obvious from Babri Masjid demolition. The RSS publicly supported Gujarat chief minister and BJP leader, Narendra Modi’s 11-phase Hindu Pride Parade in July 2002.
Besides, the RSS leaders had nexus with Nathsi leaders. Now they are hobnobbing with extremist elements in Israel. Will the world take notice?
Mr. Amjed Jaaved holds degrees in economics, business administration, and law and his articles have been published in the leading dailies and magazines at home and abroad (Nepal. Bangladesh, et. al.). He is author of seven e-books including Terrorism, Jihad, Nukes and other Issues in Focus. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Global Village Space’s editorial policy.