The real danger to India is from parivar’s communal fascism (Editorial, Kashmir Times)

Kashmir Times - July 28, 2013

Editorial
Modi is just RSS mascot
The real danger to India is from parivar’s communal-fascism

With RSS catapulting Narendra Modi as the head of the BJP election campaign committee, signifying his being the parivar’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 elections, the Gujarat chief minister has been under attack from the Congress and even several well-meaning secular democratic leaders across the spectrum. Modi’s role in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat and his communal-fascist designs cannot be undermined. But it needs to be understood by the secular democratic forces in the country that singling out Modi, and ignoring the real danger from the communal-fascist forces spearheaded by RSS can only prove counter-productive. It only helps Modi to fulfill the parivar designs of polarizing the country’s polity on communal lines and project his own larger than life image. The real danger to not only India’s unity but also its survival as a secular democracy comes not from Modi or any other single leader of the parivar but from the very communal-fascist forces and the pernicious RSS ideology of Hindu Rashtra. The leaders belonging to the parivar outfits may have different shades and colours but quintessentially they all adhere to the pernicious ideology propounded by erstwhile Hindu Maha Sabha headed by V.D.Savarkar, original propounder of two-nation theory and the RSS, which not only advocates the concept of Hindu rashtra but is also opposed to democracy. Inspired by Hitler and Mussolini, the RSS not only believed in ethnic cleansing of all minorities but also in the emergence of India as a fascist Hindu rashtra.

The RSS ideology, thought and action programme have been explicitedly laid down by M.S.Golwaklkar, second sarsanghchalak of the fascist outfit, in his speeches and book “We, The Nationalhood Defined”, which is considered as a Bible by every swayamsewak of this outfit, ranging from the top to bottom. The real threat comes from this ideology and the forces working openly or clandestinely for establishing India as a Hindu rashtra of Golwalkar’s concept. Instead of waging an all-out war against these forces the proclaimed secular democratic leaders not only are trying to make distinction between different shades of communalism but are also appeasing these forces.

It was the campaign launched by these forces during the freedom struggle and later after partitition that led to the assassination of Gandhiji on January 30,1948. The role of RSS, Hindu Maha Sabha headed by V.D.Savarkar in hatching the conspiracy for Gandhi’s murder came to light during investigations in this case. While RSS and Hindu Mahasabha were banned, Savarkar, Golwalkar and hundreds of workers of these communal organizations were put behind bars. But unfortunately instead of waging a decisive war to eliminate such communal-fascist forces from the country’s polity the Congress leaders at the helm, as a matter of political expediency, compromised with them. Not only the ban was lifted but all those arrested were released. Since then leaders belonging to secular democratic parties have frequently joined hands with these forces in the name of ousting Congress from power. The Samukt Vidhayak Dal (SVD) forged by Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, noted freedom fighter and committed democratic socialist by joining hands with BJP, the political offspring of the RSS, not only contributed in providing respectable political space to the RSS and other communal forces but also resulted in the weakening of the secular forces and the country’s secular fabric. The same mistake was repeated by Jayaprakash Narayan, the tallest of Indian secularist and socialist leader in 1975, who sought the support of the RSS, a communal-fascist outfit, to fight against the authoritarian rule of Indira Gandhi and later in the setting up of Janata Party. JP, no doubt, realized his mistake when he in an interview to a magazine regretted his decision. However, the followers of Lohia continued to ally with the BJP and other parivar outfits for the sake of power.

The secular democratic forces must learn lesson from their past mistakes and understand the pernicious role of the RSS and its ideology in polarizing the country’s polity on communal lines and posing a serious threat to the survival of India as a secular democracy, which has already been eroded by the Congress despite its claim to be a secular organization. Instead of targeting Modi or any other individual, the secular democratic forces need to launch a decisive battle against the communal-fascist forces to wipe them out of the country’s political life.


News Updated at : Sunday, July 28, 2013