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Open your eyes, your Lordship (retired)

Justice K T Thomas must know the truth of the RSS

John Dayal responds to KT Thomas (Justice, Supreme Court, retired)

JOHN DAYAL

As a Malayalee who was also a judge of the Supreme Court of India, Justice  Kallupurackal Thomas Thomas occupies an enviable place in the Kerala Christian social pantheon. No one in his right mind will  dare say he is turning senile. Far from it. That man of justice, and of peace, remains as sharp as when he was on the highest Bench in the land. It therefore remains a mystery why Justice Thomas, invited often by right wing forums in his twin identity as jurist and Christian, always ends up praising the Hindutva lunatic fringe and denouncing the conversions of new people turning to Christ.

In an address in Kochi on 1 august 2011, Justice Thomas  praised the RSS for its discipline and said the propaganda that the organisation was anti-minority was "baseless". The Press Trust of India reported that speaking at a function here, attended by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, he also said the ''smear campaign'' against RSS that it was responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi must end. “There is a smear campaign that RSS was responsible for Gandhi’s assassination just because the assassin was once an RSS worker," he said, adding that the organisation had been ''completely exonerated'' by the court. This smear campaign must end against RSS," he said.

Gratuitously, Justice Thomas sought to expand his personal views to make them seem he spoke for the entire Christian community, including you and me. “I am a Christian. I was born as a Christian and practise that religion. I am a church going Christian. But I have also learnt many things about RSS," he said. He said he became an admirer of the RSS in 1979 when he was posted as district judge of Kozhikode, adding simple living and high thinking was its hallmark. During the Emergency, RSS was the only non-political organisation which fought against it. "We owe very much to RSS for sacrificing many lives for regaining our fundamental rights ...". "The propaganda that RSS was anti minority was also baseless," he said, adding he is a great admirer of the organisation as discipline is given importance.

This writer share some qualifications with the venerable justice. Like him, “I too am a Christian, a Catholic as a matter of fact. I was born as  Christian and practice that religion. I am a church going Christian. But I have also leant many things about the RSS.”

One may in fact have learnt many more things about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, for when he was rapidly going the  ladder of jurisprudence, Reporting on the RSS forty years ago, visiting their shakhas, recording what their leaders said, and documenting their written statements and literature, one saw the training of youngsters and college students, and the excesses of fat pot bellied middle agenda traders in khaki shorts and white shirts, an hour before they went back to their shops in Chandni chowk and Chawri bazaar, the wholesale market of old Delhi.

It was perhaps too early in the day,, because one did not see what crowds in Jhansi saw decades later  -- the frightening scene of RSS cadres practicing with mock and real rifle and double barrelled guns down the main thoroughfares of town, or of RSS chief ministers themselves firing military hardware while posing for photographs. But one did see how RSS cadres were trained in  meetings early morning in public parks as much as in closed door vyayamshalas, their “boudhiki” intellectual brain washing, and their war games. “Exercises” no less frightening –elaborate handwork with thick lathis, or staves, the sort policemen carry at night. One also saw “children’s games” in which boys formed a string holding hands, and then swopped down on a rival group, trying to “abduct” or capture persons, presumably women. The “boudhikis” were given to reading the editorials and main articles in those poison-pen official mouthpieces of the Sangh, the Organiser in English, not read at the Shakhas, and the Hindi language Panchjanya, the mainstay of the morning discourses. They would then discuss what damage the Muslims had done to India. It would all conclude with another salute not to India, but to a mythical “Mother India”, more goddess than a symbol of the land which they shared with practitioners of all other religions.

And therefore it is quite obvious that Justice Thomas, as is his right, looked only at the pretty saffron flowers, and forgot to look at the blood which sullies the earth on which the RSS flag is hoist.

First things first. Let us get the Gandhi murder out of the way, so to say. And I am indebted to Professor Shamsul Islam, the global authority of the Sangh Parivar, for once again going me this documentary evidence. He remains, with Communalism Combat,  Sahmat and the All India Christian Council, the national libraries on this fascist organisation.

 

  

 

 
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