The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has decided to organise countrywide protests on November 10 against what it perceives to be a “political conspiracy” by the Centre to link it to terrorist activities. And in a resolution on Kashmir it said the call for “azadi” was “nothing short of treason.”
The decision to organise protests was taken by the Sangh at its three-day conclave of its Akhil Bharatiya Karyakari Mandal (central committee) in Jalgaon, Maharashtra that ended on Sunday.
RSS leader Ram Madhav said over telephone that senior RSS leaders, including chief Mohan Bhagwat and general secretary Suresh Joshi, would participate in the demonstrations. While Mr. Bhagwat will be present in Lucknow on November 10, Mr. Joshi will be in Hyderabad.
In a statement, the Sangh defended its leader Indresh Kumar, whose name figures in a charge sheet related to the Ajmer blast (but is not an accused). It said it had refrained from speaking on the subject at length since the matter was sub judice and the charge sheet had neither made out any specific case against him nor named him an accused.
Mr. Joshi said names of “responsible people” (meaning Mr. Indresh Kumar) were being connected with “saffron terrorist” incidents and this was “resented by Hindu society.” Earlier, soon after the Ajmer charge sheet was filed in a court in Rajasthan, Mr. Joshi had issued a veiled threat that any attempt to defame the “nationalist” RSS would not be tolerated.
The fact that Mr. Bhagwat has himself decided to join the protest establishes the seriousness with which the Sangh is taking the issue. There is a view in the Sangh and its affiliated organisations that if a terror link was to be firmly established with the Sangh, its entire “nationalist” and “patriotic” credentials would come crashing down and it could find itself in the position it was in 1948-49 when it was initially charged with involvement in the murder of the Mahatma. Some senior RSS leaders have earlier expressed this fear, and, therefore, initially the decision was taken to “fully cooperate” with investigation agencies and take the stance that some bad eggs in the organisation might have got involved in shady activities but not the Sangh as a matter of policy.
Separately, the three-day conclave passed a resolution on the situation in Kashmir criticising the handling of the recent spate of violence in the valley by the Centre, the State government and now even the interlocutors sent there by the government after the visit of the all-party delegation. Resolutions on the contemporary relevance of views of Rabindranath Tagore and Madan Mohan Malviya were also adopted.
Instead of “delegitimising” separatists and listening to other voices in Kashmir, the Sangh accused the government, the all-party delegation and the interlocutors of unnecessarily giving too much weight to the separatists, who were not articulating the aspirations of ordinary Kashmiri men and women.
The Sangh also charged the government and the interlocutors with ignoring the people of Jammu and Ladakh as well as Kashmiri Pandits, Sikhs, Buddhists, the Gujjars and other communities. It also criticised “intellectuals” and a “section of the media” of “vilifying” security forces in Kashmir, ignoring the great sacrifices they have made in ensuring that marginalisation of secessionists.
It said the State was fully integrated into India on October 26, 1947 through the accession treaty signed by the then Maharaja Hari Singh and any challenge to India in the name of “azadi” (freedom) was “nothing short of treason.”
