http://www.islaminterfaith.org/
Is RSS a Terrorist
Organization?
Ram Puniyani [[email protected]]
Terrorism has been witnessed as a horrific phenomenon, more so in
the current times. What is terrorism itself
is a
matter of debate at one level and at another the
definition
of terrorism changes from person to person,
group to group and country to country.
One does not know as to what criterion the US based
Terrorism
Research Center, the US think tank on this
issue, has used but it has gone on to label RSS, the
patriarch
of Hindutva organizations, BJP, VHP,
Bajarang dal etc., as a terrorist outfit. RSS shares
this
category with other organizations defamed in
different parts of the World as terrorists like Al Qaeda,
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Hamas etc. Sangh’s (RSS
progeny) own definition and understanding of terrorists has been
summed up by RSS pracharak
(propagator) and current Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi in
the sentence, “All Muslims are not
terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims!” How come
a
Muslim baiter organization itself has been so
labeled!
It seems from amongst the various definitions floating around about
terrorism, the one stating, killing of
innocent persons for political goals, seems to be the one followed
by this center. It goes without saying
that
in this definition generally states are not included. Lately some
states have been called as
terrorist states and BJP had been urging upon US to declare Pakistan
as a terrorist state. Some states have been listed as terrorists by
US itself. We will not go on to discuss the violence of the state
and its
goals, which is quite a complex phenomenon. We will also not touch
upon the bias exercised by those
defining terrorism. In a limited way we follow the definition,
killing of innocents for political goals,
we
will try to see whether the assessment of US based center is true.
It is important to concede here that terrorism emerges
from
ideology of groups with specific goals. It is
also important to realize that all those who
manufacture this goal and ideology, which leads to
violence are terrorists or rather they are the real
ones’. And if the blame is to be apportioned, they
should be held more responsible before the finger is pointed to
those who use sword, bullets or AK 47 or
who
pilot the planes to ram into WTC or the like.
No doubt the RSS pracharks will never even go to pick
up
arms, to kill anybody personally. Even in RSS
shakhas training is given only for wielding lathis, batons. Of
course keeping with times RSS progeny
Bajarang dal and Durga vahini have begun to give
training
in the use of firearms and VHP is
distributing knives, disguised as trishuls in thousands, but in RSS
shakhas these are no no. Apart
from the lathi wielding the other part of the training is bauddhik
(intellectual). This training is based on
the spread of hatred for minorities, hatred for
secular and democratic values. It goes on to say that
in this nation of Hindus, others, Muslims and Christians are aliens,
also that Communists, Muslims
and Christians are internal threat to Hindu nation.
The venom of hate is tailor made for each community. Muslims are
equated to yavan snakes. Prof Bipan
Chandra narrates his experience in listening to the shakha training.
While on a morning walk he overheard
the
young boys attending the shakha being told that Muslims are like
snakes. It is easier to kill a young
snake rather than the grown up one. The message of this
‘intellectual’ exercise is too clear. The inspiration and methods of
Hate are picked up from the Nazi Germany. RSS ideologue Golwalkar
articulated it,
“
German race pride has now become topic of the day. To keep up the
purity of nation and its culture,
Germany
shocked the world by her purging the country of Semitic races-the
Jews. National pride at its
highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how
well-neigh impossible it is for races and
cultures having differences going to the root, to be
assimilated
into one united whole, a good lesson for
us
in
Hindustan to learn and profit by.” (M.S. Golwalkar, We or Our
Nationhood defined, Nagpur 1938
p.27).
One wondered whether RSS really means it. But to one’s utter shock
one was told by a senior RSS
ideologue that if a person of the stature of Gandhi
could not solve the ‘Muslim problem’, what can the
present small genre of pseudo secularists achieve! As per him (and
apparently as per RSS) there is a single
solution to this problem, what one knows as the “Final Solution”!
This hate ideology, which is drilled in the
heads of young recruits is the base on which the foundation of
communal violence comes up. The RSS ideology’s outcome first got
manifested in Godse’s murdering of Gandhi. Of course RSS never owned
the
fact
that Godse was trained by RSS and was RSS pracharak before he
decided to join Hindu Mahasabha.
His
brother Gopal Godse maintained in different interviews that they
(his brother Nathuram and he
himself) had never left RSS. Most of the inquiry commission reports
on the communal violence (Justice
Reddy, Vithayathil, Venugopal, Madon and others) have shown
irrefutably that their has been a role of some
organization affiliated to or floated by a pracharak
of RSS, which has played crucial role in the violence.
The strategy is very clear, RSS trains the volunteers who carry on
the RSS work by joining or floating
different organizations. The advantage of this
strategy is that the blame of riots can never come
directly on the RSS.
One recalls that after the defeat in 1937 elections, Muslim Leagues
and Hindu Mahsabha stepped up their
Hate
other campaigns as they could not win the elections on the appeal of
their religion. RSS also
stepped up its hate other campaign. These poisonous seeds of hatred
were dormant and are bearing the
poisonous fruits more so after the decade of 1980. This hate other
ideology passes through different
conveyor belts and its final stop is that where the poor gullible
sections take up arms, intoxicated by
the
opium of hate ideology which is laced in the language of religion
for desired effect.
Every terrorist outfit has its own agenda. Al Qaeda
was
trained by CIA via
Pakistan to throw away the
Socialist Russia’s occupation of Afghanistan. LTTE is a reaction the
Sinahala domination of Tamils,
Khalistainis were the expression of deeper
dissatisfaction of Sikh masses on economic and ethnic
grounds, ULFA again is the expression ethnic problem handled in an
insensitive way and so on and so forth. RSS and Muslim League in
pre-partition times were the expression of the fears of feudal
elements that their
norms and values are under threat in the wake of modern education,
industrialization and the values of
Liberty,
Equality and fraternity becoming the major ideology of the
struggling masses. The same fear, existential anxiety, of another
middle classes has got
crystallized in the politics of RSS. And this is the coming up of
dalits and women demanding social and
gender justice some themselves. Whatever is the deeper societal
agenda, RSS methods and mechanisms of action
do
give rise to the VHPs, Bajarang dals and Durga Vahinis. It is
probably this deeper understanding of
the
dynamics of RSS functioning which must have
prompted
the research center to label it as a
terrorist organization.
RSS training is on twin tracks. One is the physical one, games and
all that. The second is the bauddhik
one.
It is the latter which motivates its progeny to
incite
people to take up arms and kill the ‘other’,
the
‘enemy’ in the ruthless fashion. The anatomy of a riot, violence, is
very interesting and complex both
at
the same time. How the average dalit, adivasi,
worker
with empty stomach and non existent future is
mobilized as the foot soldier of RSS agenda, is something social
scientists have to explain. RSS
pracharak may be at the same time sitting and giving a quiet
discourse on Hindu values, Hindu rashtra while
RSS
ideology will grip the section of population to unleash violence, to
kill the innocents. It does
achieve the political goal of consolidation of section of Hindus
behind RSS; it does make them come back to
power or strengthen its power. The definition with which we began
was killing of innocents for power or
political agenda is terrorism. And that’s precisely what RSS work
does.
The only point of overt confusion some times can be that unlike
Osama, or the AK 47 weilding terrorist in
parts of the World, RSS volunteer will appear to be the apostle of
quietness. And this is the wiliest and
cleverest part of RSS operation. To achieve its goal, to get the
minorities beaten and killed without taking
up
the arms oneself. The violence is leased out by clever social and
psychological
manipulation. In that sense AK 47 may miss the target but a mind
poisoned and initiated by Hate ideology propagated by RSS will
come
out as violence some time or the other, here or
there, it’s just a question of time. Culture, the cloak of this
organization is the most subtly
disguised cover for the terrorist goals of this
organization. This terrorist outfit kills many birds
in a single stone, the birds being minorities and weaker sections of
society. But of course there will
be much noise that name of RSS should be taken off from the list of
this research center. In case of RSS,
this
outfits’ culture is the terror for large sections of minorities and
weaker sections of society in India.
=======
US think-tank calls RSS terrorist, Sangh fumes Add to
Clippings
MOHUA CHATTERJEE
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, MAY 27, 2005 08:18:15 AM ]
Surf 'N' Earn -Sign innow
NEW DELHI: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is
furious with an American think-tank for declaring it a
terrorist organisation and lumping it with a host of
jihadi organisations and secessionist outfits.
The Sangh leadership has written to the Terrorism
Research Centre, protesting against the "terrorist"
tag, but is yet to get a response.
The think-tank has not bothered to take the RSS—which
calls itself a cultural organisation—off its website,
leaving the Sangh bosses seething with anger.
Though the East Virginia-based organisation is an
obscure outfit, the RSS is not ready to let the
"issue" pass. "It has been there on the list for a
while now. We had written to them when we got to know
of it and asked them to remove us from the list, but
they have not," said spokesperson Ram Madhav.
The reasons for resentment are not far to seek, for
others on the list virtually make up the who’s who of
the terror club.
The 38 shortlisted to give the Sangh company include
jihadi biggies like Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul
Mujahideen which have been declared Foreign Terrorist
Organisations by the US.
The RSS’s hardcore ideological foe, the
Jamaat-IIslami, too has found a place. So have
secessionist orgnaisations like the Ulfa, the NLFT,
and ultra-Left groups like the People’s War.
The RSS might find some solace from an interesting
inclusion—the Osho cult is also on the list. It is the
first time that the Oshoites, known for their
controversial views, have been accused of terrorism.
Though this should raise strong doubts about the
criteria used by the centre to slot organisations, the
RSS has reasons to feel surly.
For all its opposition to the "neoimperialist" US,
strong sections within it have fancied themselves as
the superpower’s partner in the “civilisational
conflict.