No organization in the world can compete with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in manufacturing and mouthing lies. In fact, none even comes close to the RSS in this area. The RSS has fabricated so many entirely baseless untruths with neither head nor tail about history, politics and society that even a champion liar would turn green with envy. Adding to the long list of such lies, Mohan Bhagwat told the Organizer and Panchjanya in a recent interview that Hindu society has been fighting for the past 1,000 years. When asked whom it was fighting against, Bhagwat replied, “Against foreign people and foreign conspiracies.”
The RSS ensures that its followers, whether blind or otherwise, parrot day and night the untruths it has fabricated. Once the supreme leader has mouthed an untruth, from Nagpur to Mumbai and from Delhi to Kanyakumari, RSS men, whether political leaders, officers, professors or ordinary people, begin repeating it dutifully, suspending their reasoning faculty for a while.
Let us probe the latest untruth that Bhagwat is trying to sell. Except those in the RSS, every Indian citizen knows well that had the Hindus fought, India would not have been enslaved – first by the Muslims and then by the British.
The first invasion of India was led by Mohammed Bin Qasim in AD 711. He conquered Sindh with ease. No Hindu came in his way. Then, in AD 1011, Mahmud of Ghazni mounted 17 attacks on India. In 1173, Mohammed Ghori invaded India and established his rule here. He ran amok for 30 years. Next, in 1221, Genghis Khan led several waves of attack on India. All these invasions were confined to the borders of India. The biggest attack on India was led by Timur the Lame in 1398. Then, Babar attacked India in 1526, followed by two raids by Nadir Shah in 1738. In 1761, Ahmed Shah Abdali attacked India and defeated the Marathas in the battlefield of Panipat.
If the Hindus were fighters, could so many successful invasions have been possible? The fact is that the Hindu society that Bhagwat is talking about never existed. There were only Varnas and castes. Only the Kshatriyas, who were a handful, were supposed to fight. The rest of the vast majority of people did not have the right to bear arms. Had the entire population been permitted to be trained in warfare, India would never have been enslaved. Thus, the untruth of one part of Bhagwat’s statement is apparent – Hindus haven’t been fighting alien invaders for the past 1,000 years.
That brings us to the second part of Bhagwat’s statement, which, like the first one, is a blatant untruth. He claims that Hindu society is fighting foreign influence. What is this foreign influence? By foreign influence, he means the concept of democracy and the principles of liberty, equality and social justice. Bhagwat says that this struggle is for the protection of Hindu religion, Hindu culture and Hindu society. How and why are Hindu religion, culture and society under threat? In India, Hindus are running the Central Government. The President, the Vice-President and the Prime Minister are all Hindus, as is almost the entire Union Council of Ministers, along with the chief ministers of all the states except the few in the Northeast. Hindus dominate the judiciary, they control the administration and the armed forces. Saying that Hindu religion, culture and society are unsafe in such a country is laughable and ridiculous.
Now, what has made Bhagwat peddle this blatant lie? His prime objective is saving the citadel of the weakening Varna system from imminent collapse. And what is the source of the threat to this citadel? It is the Western ideology, which is democratic, believes in the principles of liberty and equality and lays emphasis on the emancipation of the Dalit-OBC castes and the women. The idea of democracy – which the RSS claims is a Western import – is the biggest enemy of the Brahmins of the RSS. That is the reason they are critical of the Indian Constitution, which, according to them, has accorded no place to the values of the Indian (read Hindu) culture. The advent of democracy has not only helped in the rise of Dalits and OBCs in politics but their growing consciousness is posing a tough challenge to the Hindu rule. The RSS wants the Dalits and the OBC castes to continue to be a part of the Hindu fold but as Shudras, devoid of all rights. Its endeavours in this direction have met with a fair degree of success, thanks to the all-out cooperation of the government. But despite all this, it is still impossible for the RSS to efface the impact of Western ideology. It is no coincidence that Mohan Bhagwat’s call for waging a battle to protect Hinduism, Hindu culture and Hindu society from foreign influence has come at a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Uttar Pradesh has been forced to constitute an OBC commission and a caste census has commenced in Bihar.
Now that we know what the real objective of the RSS is, let us talk about the third lie of Bhagwat – about protecting Hindutva from foreign conspiracies. We have our Ministry of Defence and the armed forces to counter the conspiracies of the foreign powers. How do Hindus come into it? The “foreign conspiracy” Bhagwat is referring to has been explained in detail in a book titled Rashtriya Andolan Aur Sangh, published by the RSS under its Rashtra-Jagran Abhiyan. This book says that the religious conversions being done by the Christian missionaries are a “foreign conspiracy”. I have attempted a detailed critique of this “conspiracy” in my book RSS Aur Bahujan Chintan, published by Forward Press.
The author of this Rashtriya Andolan Aur Sangh, who is admittedly from the RSS, says that “Foreign powers, especially Christian missionaries, are making the Dalits dance to their tunes, using the billions of dollars, thousands of workers, international backing, network of NGOs and university teachers at their disposal. Some Indian politicians are immediate beneficiaries of this. But every Indian who has been born on the sacred soil of Bharat is the loser.” This is a lie of momentous proportions. The fact is that it is the RSS that is making the Dalits dance to their tunes. It wants to bring them under the banner of Hindutva, only to push them into an enclosure in which they will be Shudras with no rights. It is snatching away their legal rights and handing them over to the Brahmins. Does this not prove that it is the RSS which is conspiring against the Dalits? What is riling the RSS is that the Christian missionaries have been educating the Dalits and the Adivasis and giving them a life of dignity. That is why they are dubbing it as a foreign conspiracy and are asserting that the Hindus are fighting it. The battle that RSS is talking about aims at depriving the Dalits, the OBCs and the Adivasis of education, saffronizing them and turning into Hanumans, the bhakts of Ram. The second point is that the Hindus, who, Bhagwat claims is fighting the “foreign conspiracy”, are none other than the RSS-minded Brahmins. Mohan Bhagwat wants to portray the minority Brahmins as Hindus. The fact of the matter is that when castes and Varnas have an overwhelming importance, the term “Hindu society” is an oxymoron, which has been coined by the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS just to mislead the people.
Now, we can move on to Bhagwat’s another statement, which is about the Muslims. He said that Islam is not a religion, it is not in danger in India and that the Indian Muslims should stop boasting, including claiming that they were once the rulers of this country. It is as if Bhagwat believes that he owns the nation and is its supremo. He may be the owner and the supremo of the BJP but he is not the supremo of the nation, nor can he ever be. The Muslim leadership of India has chosen to largely ignore Bhagwat’s statement, though Owaisi has sought to know who has given Bhagwat the right to speak about the Muslims and Islam. But there is little doubt that Bhagwat does not recognize any religion except the brahmanical Sanatan Dharma. But he can’t gloss over the fact that the religions which he doesn’t want to recognize, have posed a strong challenge to brahmanical dominance, and that has riled him to no end.
(Translation from the original Hindi by Amrish Herdenia)
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