Modi says Congress committed 'sin' of partition // The Non-politics of the RSS

NB: Fascist political speech may be summarised in 3 words: affirmation, repetition and contagion. They spread lies and practice deceit as a matter of habit. Truth is whatever is convenient for serving their interests. More than anything else, it is the onslaught on the human mind that is the most dangerous feature of totalitarian politics - of any variety. The RSS in power will abolish truth completely. Modi’s lies are a foretaste. DS

Here is the report of the first NDA government's (1998) brazen attempt to 'revise' Gandhi's Collected Works. Hundreds of whimsical deletions and changes were noticed by well-known scholars and Gandhians in India and around the world, who viewed them as an insult to scholarship, and demanded an end to such attempts to play with historical documents. Read the history of the controversy. Tridip Suhrud, now director of Sabarmati Ashram, wrote a detailed analysis of this shameless behaviour in EPW in November 2004. It was only after the defeat of the NDA government that the fraudulently 'revised' edition of the CWMG was withdrawn, in 2005

RSS tradition of manufacturing facts to suit their ideology

Here is their hero V.D Savarkar's declaration on August 15, 1943: "I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah's two-nation theory. We Hindus are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations" (Indian Annual Register 1943 vol.2 p.10). 

As regards Modi attributing all blame for Partition to the Congress (Mulayam Singh Yadav has now joined the fray), a friend of mine has reminded me that 'Modi is saying something that Jaswant Singh said in his book. And he banned Jaswant Singh's book in Gujarat! (August 2009). Media memory is so short that nobody raised this question.' See Gujarat govt bans Jaswant's book on Jinnah (The ban was lifted by the Gujarat High Court). In fact, he accused him of slandering Sardar Patel. Given Modi's righteous indignation, why doesn't his party re-expel  Jaswant Singh? At that time, Jaswant Singh had remarked that "The day we start banning books, we are banning thinking"; (a view I wholeheartedly endorse).  Jaswant compared Modi's step to the ban on Salman Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses'.  (Academic research on Rushdie's literary work sabotaged by Deoband Ulema). I don't recall him protesting at the way the RSS youth wing forced Delhi University  to drop A K Ramanujan's Three Hundred Ramayanas from the DU syllabus in 2011. They reportedly used hooliganism to do this).  Ironically, Jaswant Singh now finds it possible to go along with his party's choice for Prime Minister, the man who believes in banning thought. DS

'Narendra Modi is a poster boy of India's failure to punish the violent' - members of US Congress Commission on Religious Freedom
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Here is the latest barrage of half truths and lies by the RSS candidate:
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/narendra-modi-hits-back-at-pm-says-congress-committed-sin-of-partition-444153?pfrom=home-lateststories
A day after the Prime Minister alleged that the BJP is changing India's history and geography, a combative Narendra Modi today hit back accusing the Congress of altering the country's geography by allowing partition and history by neglecting our heroes and eulogising only the Nehru-Gandhi family. Mr Modi, who is the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, made a scathing attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after inaugurating a hospital in Kheda in Gujarat, which is run primarily by the minority community. "Mr Prime Minister, I am aware that it is not in your hands what you should say or not say. But the country wants to know who changed the geography of India? The village in which you were born was a part of Hindustan. Today it is not. Who changed the geography? Who broke this country into pieces?" Mr Modi said. (Dr Singh was born on September 26, 1932 in Gah, a remote village, now in Pakistan's Punjab province). Mr Modi charged the Congress with the "sin" of dividing India into two parts."You say we are changing the geography. Every so often China creates problems at our borders. It has captured hundreds of square kilometres of our territory. Who changed this geography? It was changed during Congress rule," Mr Modi said. NB : In 2003, the Vajpayee government went further than any other government before by stating that the “Tibetan Autonomous Region of China is part of the territory of China.” - http://www.idsa.in/node/712/1782

He further alleged that the Centre wants to change the route of the Sabarmati-Dandi heritage road that is to be constructed to mark the salt satyagraha underaken by Mahatma Gandhi. "Six months back I received a letter from PMO that the path be shifted 30 km away... You have abandoned Gandhi and now you want to leave the path too," he said...

NB: It is very funny to hear Modi's pious talk about Mahatma Gandhi & Sardar Patel. It is sheer Nazi-style propaganda for Modi & the RSS to insist that Congress alone was responsible for partition (didn't that Congress include Sardar Patel & Rajendra Prasad?) and ignore the part played by the Muslim League & Hindu Mahasabha in poisoning the situation. Not to mention the role of British colonial policy. For more detailed readings on pre-partition politics (of all colours) - click the links below:

The law of killing: a brief history of Indian fascism;

Marzia Casolari: Hindutva's Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s; 

Narinder Singh Sarila; The Shadow of the Great Game: Untold Story of India's Partition 
Rajendra Prasad, India Divided

Venkat Dhulipala, Rallying the Qaum; & Debating Pakistan in Late Colonial North India 

Ishtiaq Ahmed, Punjab: Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed

BR Ambedkar: Pakistan or the Partition of India 
Extracts from B. R. Ambedkar’s book on Pakistan (1940, 1945)

A serious analysis of the politics of partition would also need to study the position argued by the Communist Party of India in 1942. See Communist Party of India's resolution on Pakistan & National Unity, September 1942 (this was later disavowed by the party as a right-wing error); and the CPI's Dhanwantri report, 'Bleeding Punjab Warns' , which is an important historical document. The Indian dilemma of the 1940's was a highly complex & tragic affair. <Rabba Hun Kee Kariye/Thus Departed Our Neighbours> It signifies the danger of casting nationalism in a communal frame, as in Muslim or Hindu or Sikh nationalism. See: High Court of Jammu & Kashmir upholds  Sanjay Tickoo's petition for protection of religious places & castigates communal versions of nationalism

The presentation of one-sided sound-bytes about 1947 for scoring political points is highly irresponsible. As we have seen, the so-called Muslim nation was also partitioned, in 1971, & is barely able to keep itself together even today. It is arguable that 'Muslim nationalism' was most destructive precisely for the Muslims of the sub-continent. The world at large and South Asia in particular have witnessed terrible crimes committed in the name of communally-defined nationalism. Yet the Hindutva fanatics insist that 'Hindu Rashtra' is a viable politics. Democratic-minded Indians should realise that Hindu Rashtra (which Patel called "that mad idea") and Akhand Hindustan are mutually incompatible concepts - if you want the one, you cannot have the other. For those who sympathise with the RSS, I believe they would be doing the country a favour by asking them to genuinely adhere to non-violence, and commit themselves to truthful, rather than clever speech. DS

This is what the GOI wrote in its ban order of Feb 2, 1948 (Patel was Home Minister): "The objectionable and harmful activities of the Sangh have, however, continued unabated and the cult of violence sponsored and inspired by the activities of the Sangh has claimed many victims. The latest and most precious to fall was Gandhiji himself.." Read the full text here:
RSS Declared Unlawful: Text of GOI communique February 4, 1948

The RSS, whose contribution to independence was precisely nothing, is now trying to claim the mantle of Gandhi and Patel. Have they forgotten the role of Savarkar in Gandhi's assassination? That he was a prime accused in the Gandhi murder case? That Sardar Patel was convinced of his guilt? See The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi: Inquiry Commission Report (1969). This is the man whose portrait they caused to be placed in the Central hall of India's Parliament in 2003. Evidently our elected representatives find it necessary to celebrate Gandhi's murder. Sardar Patel was aware of the violent aspect of Savarkarism. 

In his February 27, 1948 letter to Nehru on Gandhi's assassination, (vol 6 of Sardar Patel's selected correspondence edited by Durga Das) Patel held that "it was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that hatched the conspiracy and saw it through" (p 56).  In the same letter, reflecting on the problem of identifying RSS members, he wrote "in the case of a secret organisation like the RSS which has no records of membership, no registers etc., securing of authentic information whether a person is an active member or not is a very difficult task.. (p 57)"  

1948: Supreme Court, RSS and Gandhi

Facts on Savarkar's conduct and ideas: 
from: A  subaltern fascism? - by Kannan Srinivasan

Savarkar’s exemplary conduct in jail won him favour. When World War One began, he protested his desire to serve the war effort and asked for amnesty: "The siding of Turkey with Germany as against England, roused all my suspicions about Pan-Islamism and I scented in that move a future danger to India. I...feared that in this grim struggle between two mighty powers the Muslim in India might find their devils opportunity to invite the Muslim hordes from the North to ravage India and to conquer it."

To combat this he proposed a new British union with her imperial subjects where, from Ireland to India, "an empire would emerge from the process, which can no longer be the British Empire. Until it assumed any other suitable name, it might well be called “The Aryan Empire”. Savarkar’s petition of 30 March 1920 claims that since he was ‘without danger to the State’, he should be granted a reprieve; for, far from espousing "the militant school of the Bukanin (sic) type...I do not contribute even to the peaceful and philosophical anarchism of a Kropotkin or a Tolstoy." Accordingly, he promised that his release would be

"a new birth and would touch my heart, sensitive and submissive to kindness, so deeply as to render me personally attached and politically useful in future.."

George Lloyd, Governor of Bombay, later Lord Lloyd, an influential British imperialist who later  administered Egypt and a supporter of fascist movements in his subsequent political career, was persuaded not by Savarkar’s grand designs but by the use to which he could be put as a former revolutionary. Accordingly, the Government periodically reviewed his loyalty. Only its assurance ensured each improvement in his living conditions and successive reductions in his sentence. "To disarm any suspicion that may yet linger in the Government Quarters, the petitioner begs to solemnly pledge his word of honour that he shall cease to take any part in politics whatever.." Thus  Savarkar is said to have renounced all "methods of violence resorted to in days gone by and I feel myself duty bound to uphold law and a constitution to the best of my powers and am willing to make the reform a success in so far as I may be allowed to do so in future.."

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V.D. Savarkar also recommended rape as a weapon against 'enemy women' in his fantasy world of perpetual war against Muslims. Since the 'Parivar' claim to be outraged by the CBI chief Ranjit Sinha's recent ghastly remarks on rape, they could be asked whether they repudiate Savarkar's views on this. He actually denounced Shivaji's chivalry towards captured Muslim women as sadguna vikriti: 

Here's a citation from his Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History Rajdhani Granthagar, 1963, (translated 1971): The Muslim women never feared retaliation or punishment at the hands of any Hindu for their heinous crime (of playing a devilish part in the mutilation and harassment of Hindu women). Suppose if from the earliest Muslim invasions , the Hindus also, whenever they were victors in the battlefield decided to pay the Muslim fair sex in the same coin or punish them in some other ways that is, by conversion even by force, then with this horrible apprehension in their heart, they would have desisted from their evil design against Hindu ladies.. Even now we proudly refer to the noble acts of Chatrapati Shivaji and Chinaji Appa when they honourably sent back the daughter-in-law of the Muslim governor of Kalyan or the wife of the Portuguese governor of Bassein respectively. Did not the plaintive screams and pitiful lamentations of the millions of molested Hindu women which reverberated throughout the length and breadth of the country reach the ears of Shivaji Maharaj and Chinaji Appa? Once they (Muslims) are haunted with the dreadful apprehension that the Muslim women to stand in the same predicament as is the case with Hindu women, the future Muslim conquerors will never dare to think of such molestation of Hindu women. ... But because of the then prevalent perverted religious ideas (sadguna vikriti), about chivalry to women which ultimately proved highly detrimental to the Hindu community,  neither Shivaji Maharaj nor Chinaji Appa could do such wrongs to the Muslim women .. It was the Hindu idea of chivalry which saved the Muslim women simply because they were women from heavy punishment for committing heinous crimes against Hindu women..  their womanhood became their shield sufficient to protect them.."  Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History; Section 92-93, The Hindu chivalry towards enemy women; paras 449 - 455: 

http://www.savarkar.org/content/pdfs/en/six_glorious_epochs-1to6_savarkar_en_v000.pdf

More on the RSS's non-political nature: The RSS has a limitless capacity for deceit and self deception. It adopts different postures on being political or non-political depending on the degree of dissimulation required to achieve immediate objectives. The long-term objective remains the total conquest of state power. In the year 2000 the Gujarat government of Keshubhai Patel, with the support of the Vajpayee government, lifted the ban on RSS recruitment among civil servants. In the ensuing controversy Prime Minister Vajpayee revealed his mind on February 5. "The RSS is not a political outfit. It is a cultural and social organisation and I don't think objections should be raised to anybody joining it." 

See http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl1704/17040350.htm 
This was stoutly resisted and the BJP was forced to withdraw. http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1706/17060310.htm

On the Gadkari Purti scam, the RSS insisted that the matter was a purely BJP affair. 
See: RSS statement seeks distance from Nitin Gadkari

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/rss-statement-seeks-distance-from-nitin-gadkari-284846

Mohan Bhagwat backs anti-graft crusaders but silent on Gadkari

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/rss-chief-mohan-bhagwat-backs-anti-graft-crusaders-but-silent-on-nitin-gadkari/1/226081.html

RSS can’t do a Sonia with BJP

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/rss-cant-do-a-sonia-with-bjp-power-without-responsibility-501958.html

On October 25, 2012, Mr Mohan Bhagwat declared the allegations against Mr Gadkari to be an "internal matter of the BJP". But Gadkari was and remains an RSS member, and its choice for BJP president - and his installation proved yet again that the BJP is an RSS front. The RSS knew full well what he did for a living, and some of its members may have been his partners. All of a sudden they are "saddened by efforts to drag the RSS name into these allegations"; and declare that his position is 'an internal matter' of the BJP! 'Drag the name'! They were the ones who dragged Gadkari into the post! Why all this assumed innocence? If the very appointment of the BJP President is a concern of the RSS, why is his conduct now an internal matter? The RSS intervenes directly in politics (as it did during the NDA regime) but adopts a self-righteous distance and the mask of a cultural organisation when its chosen instruments run into trouble.

In 1948 the RSS was dubbed ‘storm-troopers of the Hindu Mahasabha’ by the Punjab communist and comrade of Bhagat Singh, Dhanwantri - see: 
http://dilipsimeon.blogspot.in/2013/10/archival-document-of-cpi-from-1947.html  At that time they demanded their men be placed in senior executive positions in the Punjab government, and reportedly warned that Nehru would meet the fate of Burmese General Aung San who was assassinated in July 1947. See p 22 of the above-mentioned Dhanwantri report, 'Bleeding Punjab Warns' , which is an important historical document, and written from a humanist rather than communal perspective.

In the midst of the Emergency of 1975, Sarsanghchalak M.D. Deoras wrote to Indira Gandhi stressing RSS loyalty to the government and opposition to violence, its foundation on ‘Hindu spiritualism’. He asserted that the RSS ‘keeps itself aloof from power politics.’(Goyal, 274).

In 2000 Vajpayee (in support of Modi’s predecessor Keshubhai Patel) said the RSS was not political - in order to formally enable Gujarat RSS cadre to enter the ranks of the state administration. In 2013, as their involvement in politics has become clear, they assert that ‘no promise was ever made to the government in 1949 ahead of lifting of the ban on it that it will never enter politics..’  
M.G. Vaidya, in http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-11-02/news/43611466_1_sangh-m-g-vaidya-pm-candidate

The RSS is political, apolitical and non-political as per convenience

The GoI order lifting the ban on the RSS was made on July 11, 1949; after discussions between Patel and Golwalkar. It included the understanding that the RSS would hereafter be “restricting its activities to the cultural sphere, abjuring violence and secrecy, professing loyalty to the Constitution of India and the National Flag, and providing for a democratic organization..” (D.R. Goyal, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, 1979, 2000; p 254-5). In fact the RSS constitution itself proclaims that it “has no politics” and that it opposed ‘violent and secret methods’. 

We may judge for ourselves whether the RSS's activities over the decades demonstrate any loyalty to their own professed ideas and promises. Have its organisations such as the Bajrang Dal & VHP never indulged in violent & secret methods? Here is a list of judicial commissions of inquiry appointed by different state governments following major communal carnages:

B.N. Srikrishna Commission (Mumbai, 1992-93) 

D.P. Madon Commission (Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad, 1970) 

Joseph Vithayathil Commission (Tellicherry, 1971) 

Jagmohan Reddi Commission (Ahmedabad, 1969)

Venugopal Commission (Kanyakumari, 1982)

Jitendra Narain Commission (Jamshedpur, 1979) 

Two threads run through all these reports: one, the criminal role of Hindutva organisations in masterminding the violence; two, the partisan conduct of the police. Two examples: 

“Here was not only a failure of intelligence and culpable failure to suppress the outbreak of violence but (also) deliberate attempts to suppress the truth from the Commission, especially the active participation in the riots of some RSS and Jana Sangh leaders." 

- Justice Jagmohan Reddy Commission on the Hindu-Muslim Ahmedabad riots, 1969

“The RSS sets itself up as the champion of what it considers to be the rights of Hindus against minorities. It has taken upon itself to teach the minorities their place and if they are not willing to learn their place to teach them a lesson."

Justice Venugopal Commission on the Hindu-Christian Tellicherry riots of 1971.

See : http://www.asianage.com/columnists/bjp-s-bill-frights-846

The RSS is a private army that despite the best efforts of its well-wishers in the Indian elite, has been banned three times, in 1948, 1975 and 1992. In November 16, 1947, the AICC (that included Sardar Patel) declared “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).

Through numerous front organisations, it exercises political power without political responsibility. At the same time it claims to be disinterested in politics. This is what is called 'chhal-kapat' in Hindi. Its adherents have discovered this deceit in due time and at their own cost.  

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Also see:

Shekhar Gupta - National Interest: Secularism is dead!

Meenakshi Lekhi links Sonia Gandhi with Mussolini. Will the RSS/BJP finally clarify their stance on fascism and Nazism?
Early bloomers: RSS tradition of manufacturing facts to suit their ideology

NAPM Press Release: Sardar Statue, Not for ‘Unity’, but for Polity of Falsehood

PAVAN K. VARMA : When art masks politics - Sardar Patel, Modi and the RSS

Prashant Pandey: Modi’s Gujarat has no space for RTI activists

RSS Declared Unlawful: Text of GOI communique February 4, 1948

Neena Vyas: Golwalkar and the BJP

Why does the RSS hate the idea of India ?

Madhu Limaye's observations on the RSS (1979)
The Assassination of Gandhi
Hindutva's Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s
Shamsul Islam: Narendra Modi On Sardar Patel: Putting Goebbels To Shame

The law of killing: a brief history of Indian fascism
A  subaltern fascism? - by Kannan Srinivasan

Superflous People - review of Rahul Pandita's 'Our Moon has blood clots'

Hitler's annihilation of the Romanis: “I as a German prefer much more to see India under British Government than under any other...I must not connect the fate of the German people with these so-called ‘oppressed nations’ who are clearly of racial inferiority” (Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, German edition, p. 747)

Saladdin Said Ahmed: Mass Mentality, Culture Industry, Fascism

Anil Nauriya: Portrait as mirror The Hindu, March 3, 2003

V, D Savarkar and Gandhi’s murder

Rethinking Secularism: Bhagwan Josh, Dilip Simeon & Purushottam Agrawal

More signs of artistry:

In the year 2000 the Gujarat government of Keshubhai Patel, with the support of the Vajpayee government, lifted the ban on RSS recruitment among civil servants. In the ensuing controversy Patel said the RSS was not political (the usual story). This was stoutly resisted and the BJP was forced to withdraw. Read more:

http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1706/17060310.htm

http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl1704/17040350.htm