Rahul Gandhi and his ignorance about RSS
05 Feb 2022 17:06:10
Many knowledgeable people have written about Rahul Gandhi’s wonderful speech in Lok Sabha. Yes, it was excellently rendered, well punctuated, well-rehearsed and had some good point too. However, once he got into his flow, he slipped on his ignorance on many issues. He also ended up re-igniting the old debate on India not being a nation but being a union of states. Since many commentators have taken his speech apart point by point, I would just stick to one point - his comments on RSS in the last part of his speech, hyphenating it with BJP.
He said, “My understanding is that RSS-BJP is playing with foundation of this country. They are weakening the link between our people and our languages.”
It is interesting that the case filed against Rahul Nehru in Thane court is going to be heard on day-to-day basis from today. May be it is right time for Rahul to get educated a little more about RSS. It was a purely political debate about BJP government and there was no need to draft RSS in the passing, very cleverly, he may have thought. It was as insidious as his comments on RSS earlier and on Hindutva as his comments on states vs centre.
While Congress had been molly coddling the Church in North East since 1947 and letting it dictate the politics there, allowing it free hand in converting people and also its open support to the terrorist and separatist groups there, it was RSS and allied organisations that stood up against the separatism promoted by Church. For Congress, North East Region was only a matter of a few seats that could be won with support of Church and then forgotten. A region that has got bridges, highways, power and railways only after 2014 was treated as another ‘geography’ for all practical purposes. This is how it was ‘weakening of links between our people’. It was RSS and allies who opened schools in NER, nurtured their indigenous faiths and kept their hope of integration with rest of the country alive. For RSS it was not ‘north east’ and India. It was north east being part of India. While Congress hobnobbed with the separatists and the Church; RSS and Hindu missionaries were persecuted, kidnapped, threatened and killed but they trudged along to keep people together.
Only when ‘RSS man’ PM Atal Behari Vajpayee came into power, did NER have a minister dedicated to the NER for the first time. Only when ‘RSS man’ Modi came to power did NER finally get justice with huge development work and brought NER closer; and strengthened the links with our people.
Nehru had said virtual good bye to people of Assam when China overran NEFA – now Arunachal Pradesh. Assamese have not forgotten that ‘distance’. When a favourite secular editor of Congress failed to report news from North East, he called it ‘tyranny of distance’. Did any party pull him up? Did he improve his reporting from NER? I doubt. This is how you weaken the links between people.
When you keep quiet about injustice to refugees from newly formed Pakistan who landed up on Jammu Kashmir, the Dalits, the women and the Gorkhas; that is weakening the links between people. Imagine millions of people sacrificed on the alter of ‘secularism’ in Kashmir! Who stood up the strengthen the links? RSS. Continuously, consistently – for 73 years to finally get them justice. And our ageing princeling says, ‘you are distancing Jammu Kashmir’ where people voluntarily wave Tricolour with pride now.
Ever-on-the-comeback-trail Rahul accuses RSS (ok, RSS-BJP) of weakening languages. His great grand uncle was in power when he pushed Hindi into Tamil Nadu without enough preparation without any ground work. RSS or BJP were nowhere on the scene or anywhere near power. His great grand uncle and grand mother created “Three language formula” but never implemented it honestly. This is how Tamil Nadu and other southern states were treated and their languages too.
What did fascist RSS do? Its second RSS chief Shri Guruji clearly said, “All regional languages are our national languages. Education should be given in mother tongue.” Who promoted English at the cost of regional languages? His forefathers. Who passed the New Education Policy that gives pride of place to regional languages (including Tamil) in education; making provisions for study of medical, education etc in mother tongue/regional langauges? BJP. Who has brought in traditional knowledge system of tribal communities in the mainstream education – BJP! Remember, tribal people are the prime targets of Church that alienates them from their roots, culture and close family and tribe, gives space to separatist tendencies.
Rahul may not know but RSS conducts all its regional meetings in regional languages. It has special translation arrangements at national and larger meetings for the members who do not understand Hindi or English as the case may be. It has patriotic songs in all the languages. There is no imposition. For his information, 15 prachaaraks from different regions of Bharat were deputed to Punjab during the worst terror days in Punjab in 1980s. Right from Kerala, Andhra to Bengal to Maharashtra. None of them knew Punjabi. They learnt and worked there. Some are still working there. Initial batch of prachaaraks in 1950 in North East Region went from Maharashtra two from Punjab.
This is how national integration is achieved, not by misleading people and weakening the social fabric.
Today Rahul is talking of Tamil pride, forgetting that every region has regional pride, it is not above the national pride. Marathi people too are proud people, after all, but for Shivaji “sunnat hoti hum sabki” as Kavi Bhushan has written. But their higher sense of nationhood was awakened. This is how nations are built, not by exploiting fault lines that every society has. Tamil is our proud heritage like every other regional culture and language. Let us come out of British created Dravid-Aryan divide game. Congress has played this game for decades; it needs to be stopped.