Current Events

Modi & The RSS Hindu-On-Hindu Violence

ADITYA MENON

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that October 2 would be celebrated as Swachh Bharat Diwas (Clean-Up India Day), we all said that finally the BJP is giving Mohandas his due.

Today, BJP MP from Unnao, Sakshi Maharaj said that Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse -- both were Hindu -- was as much of a patriot as Gandhi. A BJP MP has glorified the terrorist who assassinated India’s 'Father of the Nation' as a patriot.

According to some, this may even amount to sedition.

But far from taking action against Maharaj, Prime Minister Modi, BJP President Amit Shah or Home Minister Rajnath Singh have remained completely silent.

The only response the BJP could come up with was an insipid statement from minister of state for parliamentary affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, one of the BJP's few token Muslims, whose job has been reduced to issuing clarifications on the hate comments made by his pro-Hindutva colleagues.

"Mahatma Gandhi’s killer, whosoever it may be, we are against it,” Naqvi said, not even caring to name Godse as Gandhi's killer.

Even though Maharaj has retracted his statement, one can only imagine the fire and brimstone the BJP leaders would have hurled had someone like Akbaruddin Owaisi or Azam Khan made a remark praising Osama bin Laden. But let's leave the hypocrisy part aside.

Modi is known to be a strict disciplinarian and supposedly maintains a tight control over his ministers and parliamentarians. So the fact that Sakshi Maharaj has gotten way with such a statement could mean only two things.

First, Modi actually agrees with him that Godse was a patriot, which makes the prime minister a supporter of Gandhi's assassins. Or second, he has no control over his ministers and MPs, which makes him precisely what the BJP called his predecessor Dr Manmohan Singh: a "lame duck" prime minister.

Perhaps the answer lies in the long rope he has given the hate-mongers in his party.

In September, Maharaj said that madrassas teach youth to be terrorists.

"Madrassas teach students only about Quran and turn them into terrorists and jihadis," he had said. Less than a week after he made these remarks, the National Commission for Minorities had complained to home minister Rajnath Singh about Maharaj's hate speech as well as the love jihad related hate comments made by Yogi Adityanath, but no action was taken.

Obviously emboldened by the encouragement given to them by their party and the government, BJP's hate-mongers are having a free run.

In fact, judging by the ministerial berth given to Giriraj Singh or the Muzaffarnagar riot-accused Sanjeev Baliyan and the increasing importance of the likes of Maharaj, Adityanath and Niranjan Jyoti, it is evident that rabble-rousers are rewarded in the BJP. The benefits of making controversial statements is such that even a sensible leader like Sushma Swaraj was compelled to say that the Bhagavad Gita should be made the national book.

Every leader who wants to rise up in the BJP has drawn one lesson from Modi's meteoric rise: hate pays.

But Maharaj's statement is in a different league. By showcasing Godse as a nationalist, Maharaj was taking forward an old RSS project of whitewashing Godse's name and wiping off the taint of Gandhi's assassination from itself.

This is not the first time Godse has been glorified by the Sangh parivar.

In October this year, the Malayalam edition of RSS mouthpiece Kesari had published an article which stated that Godse was much better than Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and that he should have assassinated Nehru instead of Gandhi.

The author of the piece was B Gopalakrishnan, the BJP candidate from the Chalakudy Lok Sabha constituency. Had Gopalakrishnan won, he would surely have given Maharaj company in defending Godse and perhaps the two could even have compiled a list of alternative targets for him.

If hostility to the RSS were a criteria for Gopalakrishnan and Maharaj's list, the name that would figure right on top will be that of Vallabhbhai Patel. More than any other leader, Patel knew of the threat the RSS posed. In his letters to MS Golwalkar and Shyama Prasad Mookerjee after Gandhiji's assassination, Patel wrote "All their (RSS) leaders' speeches were full of communal poison. As a final result of the poison ... an atmosphere was created in which such a ghastly tragedy (Gandhi's assassination) became possible ... RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji's death."

Patel, whom Modi is trying to appropriate as a national icon, was instrumental in banning the RSS after Gandhi's assassination. Justifying the ban, Patel had said, "the ban on the RSS was imposed because undesirable and even dangerous activities have been carried on by members of the Sangh. It has been found that in several parts of the country individual members of the RSS have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity, and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition. They have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect firearms, to create disaffection against the government and suborn the police and the military".

Contrary to what the RSS and BJP claim, Godse's brother Gopal Godse has admitted that Nathuram was an active member of the RSS when he assassinated Gandhi.

According to Gopal Godse, "All the brothers were in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You can say we grew up in the RSS rather than in our home. It was like a family to us. Nathuram had become a baudhik karyavah [intellectual worker] in the RSS. He has said in his statement that he left the RSS. He said it because Golwalkar and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.”

No matter how many Clean-Up India events Modi organises on Gandhi's birthday, he cannot wipe off the Godse taint from the RSS.

And given the free run the RSS and BJP's hate-mongers are getting under his watch, we can only fear for many more massacres in the country.


[Courtesy: Daily O. Edited for sikhchic.com]
December 16, 2014

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