KULDEEP KUMAR - A Short History of the RSS and BJP’s Double Standard on Sedition
On the eve of
Independence Day, leaders of the All India Hindu Mahasabha in Meerut, located
only 70 km from Delhi in western Uttar Pradesh, observed it as their 70th
‘black day’ by waving black flags and shouting slogans. They were also
protesting against
the secular nature of the constitution of India because they
believe that India should be declared a Hindu Rashtra. The same
leaders also observed Republic Day as a “black day” and danced to drum beats on
January 30 to celebrate the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination by
Nathuram Vinayak Godse.
In December 2014, the
same group was stopped by the police as
they tried to install a
bust of Godse to build a memorial for him. A newspaper report quoted
Ashok Sharma, national vice-president of the Mahasabha, as saying that the All
India Hindu Mahasabha has been observing Independence Day and Republic Day as
Black Days for the past 69 and 66 years respectively. The report added,
“arrests used to be made until 1987 when the courts prevented the police from
doing so.” He also blamed Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru for the partition
of the country.
So, we clearly have
two sets of criteria for dubbing people seditious and putting them behind bars.
Those who shout slogans in support of Afzal Guru, who never killed anybody and
who was sentenced to death to satisfy the “collective conscience” of the
people, are guilty of sedition and declared anti-national.
On the other hand,
those who glorify Godse, a convicted assassin who never denied that he had
killed the greatest leader of India’s freedom struggle, Gandhi, are ‘Hindu
nationalists’ who belong to a political party that was once headed by Vinayak
Damodar Savarkar, a man whose Hindutva the present ruling party swears by. The
BJP holds Savarkar in such great esteem that in 2003 it got his portrait
installed in parliament facing that of Gandhi’s, the man he had conspired to
kill. In any case, as far as the goal of converting India into a Hindu Rashtra
is concerned, Savarkar and the RSS, the mother organisation of the BJP, are on
the same page. They are also on the same page in their visceral hatred for
Gandhi, although the RSS pretends to respect him.
When Syed Shahabuddin,
who was then a Janata Party MP, called for a boycott in December 1986 to shun
all official functions including the Republic Day celebrations of January 26,
1987, all hell broke loose. L.K. Advani, who had taken the reins of the BJP
into his hands in 1986, demanded Shahabuddin’s expulsion from the Janata Party
unless he apologised for issuing the call. Shahabuddin was projected as a
modern-day Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Ironically, this took place the same
year that the police stopped the arresting of Hindu Mahasabha leaders and
workers for observing Independence Day and Republic Day as black days where
they celebrated Gandhi’s assassination and glorified Godse. One did not see any
condemnation of these activities emanating from Advani or any other BJP
leader at the time.
When Nehru made the
succinct observation that majority communalism can easily masquerade as
nationalism, he hit the nail on its head. We have really come to such a stage
that a Hindu person’s nationalism is never in doubt even if he debunks the
constitution, glorifies the terrorist act of a committed assassin and mourns
the country becoming a sovereign republic. But a Muslim or Christian’s person’s
nationalism is always suspect, even if he swears by the constitution and
expresses faith in the secular order. Savarkar and the RSS’s Hindutva
recognises only those as genuine citizens of the country whose punyabhoomi (holy
land) is India. This obviously excludes Muslims and Christians.
The canard that Gandhi
and Nehru were responsible for India’s partition has become an article of faith
with the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha. Craig Baxter, who in 1969 published the
first political biography of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the BJP’s earlier
incarnation, informs us that “when independence came on August 15, 1947, the
RSS proclaimed a day of mourning for the destruction of the “sacred
indivisibility of Bharatmata”.”
In 1956, RSS supremo
M.S. Golwalkar clearly stated his organisation’s position, “Our motherland has
been partitioned… We have to pledge resolutely not to rest content until we
have wiped out this blot.” On August 17, 1965, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh passed
a resolution at its meeting in Delhi, which stated,“India’s tradition and
nationality has not been against any religion. Modern Islam should also not be
an obstacle in the way of unity of Indian nation. Real obstacle is separatist
politics. Muslims will integrate themselves with the national life and Akhand
Bharat [undivided India] will be a reality, unifying India and
Pakistan once we are able to remove this obstacle (separatist politics).”
In 2012, when Narendra
Modi was Gujarat’s chief minister, he too spoke of an Akhand Bharat in an interview
to Urdu journalist Shahid Siddiqui. As recently as December 2015, Ram Madhav,
BJP’s general secretary and an important functionary of the RSS, told Al-Jazeera in
an interview that he thought India, Bangladesh and Pakistan would one
day re-unite to form Akhand Bharat. When his statement created a furore, he
tried to wriggle out by saying that Akhand Bharat was a ‘cultural concept’.
However, when one
looks at the collective history of the RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha and Savarkar,
it becomes clear that the ideal of Akhand Bharat is nothing but a stick to beat
Muslims with, all because a section of the community split from India to
create Pakistan as their ‘homeland’. However, the reality is that much before
Jinnah propounded his two-nation theory at the All-India Muslim League’s Lahore
convention in March 1940, Savarkar laid out the theory in his seminal book Hindutva. The
book was released in 1923 and he later enunciated it on December 30, 1937
in his presidential address at the Hindu Mahasabha convention. Without mincing
words, Savarkar said, “There are two nations in the main: The Hindus and the
Moslems in India.” A year later, he said: “the Hindus are the nation in India –
in Hindusthan, and the Moslem minority a community.”
R. C. Majumdar, a
great historian who never strayed from the fundamentals of his discipline
despite his right-wing and pro-Hindu views, duly noted that the Muslim League
took notice of Savarkar’s pronouncements, thus implying that Savarkar’s ideas
played a role in pushing the Muslim League towards the realisation that Muslims
could never get justice in a united India.
When India became
independent and the subcontinent witnessed the communal holocaust, the RSS
thought its moment had arrived since the atmosphere was conducive to spread its
communal propaganda. However, the RSS suffered from a huge disability. As it
had deliberately stayed away from the anti-British freedom movement, and had in
fact supported the British during the Second World War when the entire Congress
leadership was put behind bars, the organisation could exert no influence on
the political decisions taken by those who came to power after the colonial
rulers departed India. And, much to the RSS’s chagrin, the Congress leadership
decided in favour of making India a secular country; unlike Pakistan that had
come into existence as a religion-based country. At that time, the RSS and its
fellow traveller Hindu Mahasabha could do nothing but mourn.
Now, the situation has
undergone a fundamental change. The RSS is enjoying political power and the
BJP, its subsidiary, enjoys a majority of its own in the Lok Sabha – it is in
power in as many as eight states. This power has rekindled the RSS’s dreams and
aspirations, although even now it knows that refashioning India into a Hindu
nation is not such an easy task. However, with the RSS focusing on
a long-term strategy, its ideologues are seriously finding ways to
re-write India’s constitution. This is clear from the interviews
given by K.N. Govindacharya and Ram Bahadur Rai, the chairman of
the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts.
In view of all this,
is it really surprising that Godse is being glorified, Gandhi maligned,
Independence Day and Republic Day are being observed as days of mourning and
the constitution is being openly flayed?
ALSO SEE:
Bharat Bhushan: RSS chief Golwalkar threatened to kill Gandhi - 1947 CID report
Discussion following Golwalkar expose
कुमार प्रशांत - तो राष्ट्रीय स्वंयसेवक संघ ने एक बार फिर गांधी से दो-दो हाथ करने का मन बनाया है // Bharat Bhushan: BJP icon SP Mookerjee complicit in raising funds for defending Gandhi's assassins
Discussion following Golwalkar expose
कुमार प्रशांत - तो राष्ट्रीय स्वंयसेवक संघ ने एक बार फिर गांधी से दो-दो हाथ करने का मन बनाया है // Bharat Bhushan: BJP icon SP Mookerjee complicit in raising funds for defending Gandhi's assassins
Kannan Srinivasan: A subaltern fascism - on VD Savarkar's collaboration with the British Raj
The law of killing - a brief history of Indian fascism
The law of killing - a brief history of Indian fascism
The Broken Middle (on the 30th anniversary of 1984)
