RSS associates are linked to terror attacks, asserts Home Secretary
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde's party distanced itself today from his remarks on "saffron terrorism" but the government backed him, claiming that associates of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh or RSS are linked to a series of recent terror attacks in India. "We have names of at least 10 persons involved in Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid and Dargah Sharif blasts who were associated with RSS," Home Secretary RK Singh said. And Foreign Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said that the Home Minister's allegations were "based on facts." Mr Khurshid added, "Religion should not be associated with terror, it is terror that we are fighting and those are the facts available... We should not be distracted by a phrase, the determination is what that matters
The BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, are demanding an apology for remarks on Sunday by the Home Minister, who declared that both groups promote terror at their camps. The fragile relationship between the government and the opposition is poised vertiginously as a result. The BJP has already warned that the controversy will affect its interaction with the government in parliament, where Mr Shinde is Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha. In an attempt to alleviate the tension, Janardhan Dwivedi, the spokesperson for the Congress, said today, "terror has no religion."(Read)
The BJP has said Mr Shinde has played into the hands of Pakistan and terror groups there which refuse to accept responsibility for strikes in India. Yesterday, Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, validated that concern. He said that Mr Shinde's comments on saffron terrorism expose India's "propaganda" in seeking to blame Pakistan for its problems.
The BJP has been asking for an apology from the Prime Minister and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The party has also asked for Mr Shinde to be sacked. Right-wing extremist groups are being investigated for possible involvement in two terror attacks in the communally-sensitive town of Malegaon in Maharashtra in 2006 and 2008 and bomb blasts in 2007 on the Samjhauta Express, a train headed from Delhi to Pakistan, in which nearly 70 people were killed.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/rss-associates-are-linked-to-terror-attacks-asserts-home-secretary-320827?home_1358860150&pfrom=home-otherstories
AICC Resolution on private armies dtdNovember 16, 1947:
The All India Congress Committee has noted with regret that there is a growing desire on the part of some organizations to build up private armies. Any such development is dangerous for the safety of the State and for the growth of corporate life in the nation. The State alone should have its defence forces or police or home guards. The activities of the Muslim National Guards, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Akali Volunteers and such other organizations represent an endeavour to bring into being private armies, (and) must be regarded as a menace to the hard-won freedom of the country.. (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, online; vol 97, p 480).
Extract from a note I contributed to an FB thread on the debate about adding prefixes to the word 'terrorism': The issue of fascist criminality ought not to be confused and conflated with its particular theological provenance, (nor colours such as saffron and green) quite simply because every religious tradition has produced theological justifications for virtuous murder and /or supported murderous regimes and activities, even the much vaunted Buddhists. Nor can fascist regimes be reduced to this or that religious culture, because after all there were also devout Catholic and Protestants who resisted fascism, as indeed there are Hindus who resist Hindutva and Muslims who resist jehadi terrorism. It is a simple truth that there are good and bad in all communities.
India South Asia , and the
communalisation of the Pak polity was inevitable with Liaqat’s Objectives
Resolution under which sovereignty was declared to belong to Allah. Even Pakistan Pakistan India Pakistan
See also:
Madhu Limaye's (senior socialist leader) observations on the RSS (Ravivar 1979)
Text of GoI notification of Feb 4, 1948, banning the RSS after Gandhi's assassination
A Hard Rain Falling (on private armies and political violence in India)
Armies of the Pure: The Question of Indian Fascism
The BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, are demanding an apology for remarks on Sunday by the Home Minister, who declared that both groups promote terror at their camps. The fragile relationship between the government and the opposition is poised vertiginously as a result. The BJP has already warned that the controversy will affect its interaction with the government in parliament, where Mr Shinde is Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha. In an attempt to alleviate the tension, Janardhan Dwivedi, the spokesperson for the Congress, said today, "terror has no religion."(Read)
The BJP has said Mr Shinde has played into the hands of Pakistan and terror groups there which refuse to accept responsibility for strikes in India. Yesterday, Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, validated that concern. He said that Mr Shinde's comments on saffron terrorism expose India's "propaganda" in seeking to blame Pakistan for its problems.
The BJP has been asking for an apology from the Prime Minister and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The party has also asked for Mr Shinde to be sacked. Right-wing extremist groups are being investigated for possible involvement in two terror attacks in the communally-sensitive town of Malegaon in Maharashtra in 2006 and 2008 and bomb blasts in 2007 on the Samjhauta Express, a train headed from Delhi to Pakistan, in which nearly 70 people were killed.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/rss-associates-are-linked-to-terror-attacks-asserts-home-secretary-320827?home_1358860150&pfrom=home-otherstories
AICC Resolution on private armies dtd
The All India Congress Committee has noted with regret that there is a growing desire on the part of some organizations to build up private armies. Any such development is dangerous for the safety of the State and for the growth of corporate life in the nation. The State alone should have its defence forces or police or home guards. The activities of the Muslim National Guards, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Akali Volunteers and such other organizations represent an endeavour to bring into being private armies, (and) must be regarded as a menace to the hard-won freedom of the country.. (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, online; vol 97, p 480).
Extract from a note I contributed to an FB thread on the debate about adding prefixes to the word 'terrorism': The issue of fascist criminality ought not to be confused and conflated with its particular theological provenance, (nor colours such as saffron and green) quite simply because every religious tradition has produced theological justifications for virtuous murder and /or supported murderous regimes and activities, even the much vaunted Buddhists. Nor can fascist regimes be reduced to this or that religious culture, because after all there were also devout Catholic and Protestants who resisted fascism, as indeed there are Hindus who resist Hindutva and Muslims who resist jehadi terrorism. It is a simple truth that there are good and bad in all communities.
Maybe it’s not a question of religion at
all, or only apparently so. This is why I’ve always argued that for us Indians,
communalism is not Hindu + Muslim + Sikh fanaticisms as in an arithmetical
total, but a single, generic phenomenon with several faces and appearances.
When it comes to their attitudes to women, to a celebration of military glory,
to a view of history as one long contest of victory or defeat, they are all the
same – its just the colour of the flag that changes. Fascism is a project to
militarise society and keep us in a state of permanent outrage and permanent
mobilisation. War is not meant to be won, but to be continuous. Fascists embrace
democracy in order to destroy it.
The attachments of religious prefixes to
terrorism and communalism is problematic not because “terrorists have no
religion” (a cliché, because in their minds they do indeed have a religion, and
very nasty things have been done in every religions name); but because we are
then driven towards the arithmetical concept of communalism that has caused so
much trouble in India. This is what led leftists to make alliances with
‘minority communalists’ (read Muslim conservatives). Moreover, such prefixes
then enable the affected “leaders of communities” to say “they are calling all
of us terrorists!” – and thus attempt to hide their criminality behind the
entire community.
The reduction of all issues to a partisan
dimension (as in anti-Congressism) led the same leftists to ally with the
Hindutva lobby too, as in 1967 and 1989 – it’s a long story. The theory of
appeasement applies to all communalists, not just ‘minority’ communalists. In
fact the very idea of majority and minority is product of the marriage of
‘nation’ and state, the most baleful result of modern state arrangements after
1919.
Yes some Hindus are attracted to fascist
solutions, as indeed there are Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists etc. who
are also driven by fascist political instincts. Of course, we may analyse the
distinctions between them; but having done so, instead of engaging in a polemic
about which tradition is free of the fascist taint (alas, there are none), it
would be more fruitful to think about the anti-democratic thrust of all
communal ideologies, and the many other social, economic, psychic and political
sources that feed them. And the question of violence (in my view) remains
central to such a discussion.
See also:
Madhu Limaye's (senior socialist leader) observations on the RSS (Ravivar 1979)
Text of GoI notification of Feb 4, 1948, banning the RSS after Gandhi's assassination
A Hard Rain Falling (on private armies and political violence in India)
Armies of the Pure: The Question of Indian Fascism
