—– For the past decade, the RSS enjoyed practically untrammelled State power
—– BJP-RSS aims to root out the ideas of Gandhi
—– Hindutva forces continue to persecute Indian minorities
—– The objective of RSS is to turn India into Hindutva State
DM Monitoring
NEW DELHI: To understand the direction in which the country is being propelled by the powers that be, we should consider the recent no-confidence motion debate in the Lok Sabha (August 8-10, 2023) not in isolation, but in the context of the happenings of the past fortnight or so, and a likely scenario for the foreseeable future. A darkening picture emerges.
A pandemic, a natural calamity or war leaves behind death and destruction. A policy disaster such as India’s demonetisation – which struck before the pandemic – had led to mass layoffs and financial dislocation, the brunt of which is still being felt by the country, especially its poor. But the recent events we have witnessed in the country, and the more such that we may in the near future, are of an altogether different character, and indeed of a different order of things. The strategic aim of their proponents is to overturn the constitutional state in India that took its rise in the democratic and non-violent movement helmed by Mahatma Gandhi and the democratic polity it engendered.
Steeped in it, and in part shaping it through his actions and writings, was Jawaharlal Nehru, whose devotion to a liberal order of parliamentary democracy, and whose commitment to a free India for all Indians in a world freed of shackles, nurtured the Indian state upon independence.
The opponents of Gandhi and Nehru were communalist thinkers and actors of the pre-1947 Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha of V.D. Savarkar and Nathuram Godse. Neither showed an interest in the ending of colonial rule. Their interest lay in creating and winning religious wars within. The League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah succeeded in partitioning India with colonial encouragement and assistance. For all practical purposes, the Hindu Mahasabha folded up with the assassination of Gandhi by a man whose founding allegiance to the RSS had transferred itself to the Mahasabha under the inspiration of Savarkar without the severance of emotional links with the RSS, the fountainhead of the Hindu rashtra thought.
For the past ten years, the followers of the RSS have enjoyed practically untrammelled state power under the guardianship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and it is this which is now their aim to extend – at any price. Their immediate objective appears to be to prepare for an ideological seizure of India by the scruff of her neck. The ideas of Gandhi have to be rooted out.
A beginning was made on August 12 by bulldozing the structures of the Sarva Sewa Sangh in Varanasi, the constituency of the prime minister, even as thousands stood to protest this wanton high-handedness imbued with communal hatred and hatred of Gandhi, the man whose ideals mark the line of separation between a democratic India and a communal one.
Communal conflagrations have to be lit – as Nuh in Haryana showed. But Nuh underscores careful preparation since the start of the year, when Muslim cattle traders were lynched and burnt to death. The idea was to give birth to provocation and anger.
In Manipur, the launch of open war against the tribal people and their (Christian) faith is the path that the idea of assertion of the Hindutva forces has taken.
Brutality, atrocities, and brazen disregard for human life and human values have scarred Manipur, but neither condemnation nor effective action has come from the highest authorities. The criminals roam free. Anyone who stands in the way of the project sanctified at the very top has to be rudely shoved aside.
