When shall the UNSC declare RSS a terrorist outfit?

Pakistan has urged the United Nations Security Council to designate India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent organization of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as a terror group. Pak representative demanded that the RSS should also be included within ambit of the 1267 Sanctions Committee.

It is unfortunate that declaring an individual or entity a terrorist has become a political ploy. The freedom fighters of yester years like the taliban could become terrorists of today. Cuban and Latin American terrorists were displayed as freedom fighters in US gallery of portraits.

That’s the crux of the problem. India calls Kashmiri freedom fighters ‘terrorists’. It called Bengali insurgents ‘mukti bahini’, freedom fighters’. Unlike Kashmir, erstwhile East Pakistan was not a disputed state like Jammu and Kashmir. It was an integral part of Pakistan. But, India harboured, nurtured, trained and armed so-called Bengali ‘freedom fighters’ on Indian soil.

The White House welcomed Jalaluddin Haqqani (founding father of formidable Haqqani Taliban) as a guest.

India has a convenient way to exercise its diplomatic clout to get declared any entity a `terrorist’_ through linking it with `freedom movement’ (euphemistically called `terrorism’ by India) in the occupied Kashmir.

Why the RSS qualifies as a terrorist organisation

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, former Madhya Pradesh chief minister, has alleged that “All arrested ‘Hindu terrorists’ have had RSS link”. He claimed, `All Hindu terrorists who have ever been caught have association with RSS in some way or the other. Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, was also part of RSS. So, this ideology is spreading hatred, hatred breeds violence, and from violence is bred terrorism’.

“All Hindu terrorists who have ever been caught have association with RSS in some way or the other. Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, was also part of RSS, bomb blasts were executed by people influenced by Sangh ideology” said Digvijaya Singh

Reinforcing his stand on “Sangh terror,” he said, “bomb blasts were executed by people influenced by Sangh ideology, be it Malegaon blast, Mecca Masjid blast, blast in Samjhauta express or Dargah Sharif.”

Accusing RSS of propagating violence, Singh said, “The outfit which propagates violence and hatred, further propagates terrorism.”

Defending Singh’s charges, senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid said that his statements needs to be seen in the right context. “Ideologically Digvijay Singh has very strong views. He has opposed minority extremism and said that every kind of extremism is bad. We must contextualise what he said rather than generalise it and think he is saying it against one community or organisation,” Khurshid said.

Howdy Modi critic’s allegations

Speaking at the Houston City Council against the city’s participation in the “Howdy Modi” pep rally, Pieter Friedrich expounded the RSS’s nexus with worldwide terrorism’. Transcript of his speech:`

Last month, a white supremacist terrorist murdered 22 people in El Paso, Texas. His evil act was inspired by the murder of 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. That man’s evil act was inspired by the murder of 77 people in Norway in 2011.In Norway, terrorist Anders Breivik left a manifesto that describes how he was inspired by other extremist and nationalist groups around the globe.

Breivik pointed to the RSS in India. He praised the “right wing Hindu nationalism” of the RSS and its goal of making India a “Hindu nation.” He praised the RSS for how “they dominate the streets… and often riot and attack Muslims.” He said the goals of white supremacists and the RSS are “identical” and that they should “learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible.”

The RSS is a fascist paramilitary founded in 1925 — the same year that Hitler published Mein Kampf. The RSS developed with inspiration from the Nazis. And it produced Narendra Modi. In 2002, Modi presided as soldiers of the RSS massacred 2,000 Muslims. They gang-raped women, hacked people to death, burned people alive. Leaders of the pogrom later confessed on camera that Modi sanctioned their violence.

For this reason, Modi was banned from entering the USA for over 10 years. Today, under Modi’s iron-fisted regime, Christians, Dalits, Muslims, Sikhs, and every Hindu who disagrees with the hate, violence, and supremacy of the RSS lives in fear of their lives.

Modi’s hands are stained with blood. Those who shake his hand in welcome cannot wash their hands of complicity in his crimes. Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” So what then if you roll out the red carpet for the oppressor? The philosopher Plato said, “Silence is consent.” So what then if you raise your voice in support of the oppressor? Rather than “Howdy, Modi,” the City of Houston ought to be saying, “Adios, Modi.”

RSS fits in US `terror definition

U.S. Department of Defense Definition of Terrorism: terrorism refers to “the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.”

Narendra Modi is the RSS avatar

Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister, like so many other Bharatiya Janata Party stalwarts, makes no bones about having been a member of the Rashtriya Swayem Sevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps). The RSS has ubiquitous influence in all states and Union territories. Without its consent, no-one can get a party ticket or contest elections.

The RSS is a conglomerate of disguised terrorists. Indian media dare not focus its violent activities, but it is sometimes exposed by viral images of violence by its workers. Images show the RSS members participating in Delhi riots, lynching suspected beef eaters, or Muslim prayer goers. The RSS militants get identified while chanting religious slogans. Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, was an RSS member. It was the RSS that had spearheaded the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992.

RSS emulates the Nathsi

In a work that expressed admiration for Nazi Germany’s purge of Jews, Golwalkar wrote in 1939, “… the foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming  nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen’s rights.” (MS Golwalkar, We Or Our Nationhood Defined, Bharat Prakashan, 1939, 104-105).

Golwalkar made it clear that in the RSS view, Hindu majoritarian identity politics is the only acceptable nationalism, and any politics of  asserting an identity separate from the Hindu identity is ‘anti-national’ and ‘divisive.’ He wrote: “Let us remember that this oneness is ingrained in our blood from our very birth because we are all born as Hindus.”  (Bunch of Thoughts, p. 255).

M.S. Golwalkar, referred to Christians and Muslims as “internal threats”. He praised Nazi Germany as an example of “race pride” from which India could learn. Satish Misra, a political analyst at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi says, [Indian prime minister] “Modi is the most loved child of the RSS.”

Neerja Chowdhury, a political commentator and columnist reported: ‘The party advocates that to be a true Indian one has to be a Hindu. It describes other religious minorities, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, as part of India, because their faiths originated there. They believe that even India’s Muslims are actually Hindu because their Hindu ancestors were forced to convert to Islam’.

The anti-conversion laws in states, ban on cow slaughter, annexation of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir State, and now combined civil code on the anvil are the RSS’s demands. The RSS wants to convert non-Hindu to Hinduism under its homecoming (ghar wapsi) policy. C.P. Bhishikar’s biography of Hedgewar, Keshav Sanghnirmata tells how tbe RSS founder equated Muslims to “yavana” snakes. RSS spurns Indian Constitution and believes India is a place for Hindu nation (rashtra) to live exclusively in.

The RSS’s genocidal role is a caricature of the Indian constitution, visualizing a `sovereign socialist secular democratic republic’ and its article prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth.

Attacks on Muslims

Since 2006, there had been several terror attacks at locations with a majority Muslim population. The deadliest attack was February 2007 bomb explosions on the Samjhauta Express train that runs between Lahore and Delhi, killing 68 people, including 43 Pakistani nationals.

In the same year, there were two more blasts at Muslim places of worship. The investigations had revealed that the terror attacks were carried out by Hindu nationalist organizations. The Indian media has widely covered what is popularly called ‘saffron terror‘.

For instance, Swami Aseemanand was accused of conspiracy in the 2007 bomb attack on the Lahore-bound Samjhauta Express train, the 2007 Ajmer dargah blast case, and in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast terror case.

Pragya Singh Thakur, also known as Sadhvi Pragya, is currently a Member of Parliament from the BJP. She was an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast.  Six people were killed and over 100 others injured when an explosive device strapped on a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Maharashtra’s Malegaon. No cour in India could dare punish theRSS terrorist.

It was the RSS which had founded the Jan Sangh, the BJP’s ancestor in 1951. It has acted as an umpire in times of crisis within the BJP and provides its indispensable cadres during election campaigns.

Induction of the RSS cadres into Indian civil service

On April 27, 1948, Vallabhbhai Patel wrote a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru: “I need hardly emphasise that an efficient, disciplined and contented service … is a sine qua non of sound administration under a democratic regime even more than under an authoritarian rule. The service must be above party and we should ensure that political consider­ations either in its recruitment or in its discipline and control, are reduced to the minimum, if not eliminated altogether.”

An RSS-ridden civil service cannot work a secular constitution. For, “it is perfectly possible to pervert the constitution, without changing its form, by merely changing the form of the administration and to [sic] make it inconsistent and opposed to the spirit of the constitution”.

The parliamentary system is based on a professional, politically neutral civil service. Put political favourites in crucial positions and the entire system is perverted. Yet, hordes of the RSS members were recruited into civil service.

Political influence

Former UP chief minister Kalyan Singh said in 2000: “I have spent a greater part of my life in [the RSS] and I can say that right from the distribution of election tickets … in BJP to selecting cabinet ministers, it is only the RSS which calls the shots. What else is political activity?’ ”

 Rakesh Sinha, BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP and Hedgewar’s biographer, said, “Hedgewar formed RSS in order to consolidate the Hindus. He wanted to liberate them from restrictions imposed by the protracted Mughal-British rule.

Driving force for Hedgewar to form RSS was Vinayak Damodar (Veer) Savarkar’s ideas on Hindutva and motherland. Savarkar had spelled out that only those who considered India as their fatherland and a holy land could be considered patriots. He ruled out Muslims, suggesting that their patriotism should always be suspected.

The ruling BJP has a symbiotic relationship with RSS as is obvious from Babri Masjid demolition.

Shashi Throor’s view

Dr. Tharoor was the Congress nominee for the post of UN secretary-general.  during the Jaipur literature festival he said, `We are living in a country where on the one hand the Prime Minister says the Constitution is his holy book and on the other hand, he extols as a hero and instructs his Ministers to study the works, writings, and teachings of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, who explicitly rejects the Constitution. “

The only thing that had stood in its [BJP’s] way is a two-third majority in the Rajya Sabha”. BJP’s official ideology is “Integral humanism”, coined by Deendayal Upadhyaya in 1965. The RSS stands committed to Hindutva, a term coined by VD Savarkar. Upadhyaya sugar-coated the term Hindutva as Bharteeyata. Upadhyaya presented his `theory of Muslim purification’ at the BJP National Council meeting in Kozhikode in 2015.

Conclusion

When shall the world wake to recognise the hydra-headed monster that the RSS is?

Amjed Jaaved
Amjed Jaaved
Mr. Amjed Jaaved has been contributing free-lance for over five decades. His contributions stand published in the leading dailies at home and abroad (Nepal. Bangladesh, et. al.). He is author of seven e-books including Terrorism, Jihad, Nukes and other Issues in Focus (ISBN: 9781301505944). He holds degrees in economics, business administration, and law.