Dr. Shreerang Godbole, a Swayamsewak of the RSS for 17 years, put forth his views frankly and plainly on �Hindu Organisations and the Muslim Problem� at a Seminar in the presence of the think-tanks of the Sangh Parivar. Immediately after that, he wrote a letter to Shri K.S. Sudarshan, Sah-Karyawaha R.S.S., bemoaning the formation of the �Sarva Panth Samãdar Manch� by the Sangh.
Thanks to Voice of India both the documents are now available to the interested persons. As far as the aforesaid letter is concerned, the analysis presented by Dr. Godbole is clear and complete and needs no addition. The analysis regarding the �Eight Formulations� of the Sangh Parivar is no doubt elaborate. Even then it needs some additions.
(1) Firstly, the logic of adding Jesus and Muhammad to the 33 crore Hindu Gods and Goddesses may be attractive and fascinating at first sight but, in practice, it is not so. It will prove �one-sided love�, or at least Muslims will never like to put Muhammad, who is for them the last prophet (not God), with innumerable Hindu Gods and Goddesses which are nothing but kufr according to their faith - Islam - which proclaims Manotheism and hates Polytheism to the extent of using the sword. Secondly, this is nothing but an imposition of iconoclastic mazhab-i-Islam on idolaters. Thirdly, social assimilation is never achieved by such means. The flop-show of Akbar�s Din-i-Ilahi is an historic evidence. And lastly, this logic of the Sangh Parivar is not at all novel. In fact, the originator of this logic was the veteran national leader, Lala Haradayal. But ultimately, in the year 1925, Lalaji opined in his article, Merã Pavitra Pãgalpan, that Muslims will never accept willingly my proposal of calling themselves �Muhammadi Hindus�! So, if Islam is not ready to accept Bharatiya Nationalism, then this type of foreign religion should not be allowed to stay in Bharat.
(2) Philosophers may say that all religions lead to God. In fact, philosophers are above religions. But when we think of the common man, such high flying is not appropriate; they are rather harmful. e.g. if all religions including Islam lead to God, then some Muslim zealot can come forward and say that if all Hindus embrace Islam, then, within no time, Hindu-Muslim unity will be achieved. He may even generously offer that the �New Muslims� will be called �Rampanthi Muslims�. Then why bother to describe Indian Muslims as �Muhammad-panthi Hindus?�
(3) To say that �Islam is good but Muslims are bad� is astonishing. Because the original Hindus who embraced Islam sometime back became �Muslims�. And so, when it is said that �Islam is good but Muslims are bad�, then it implies that Hindu religion, culture, and blood is bad - so bad that even the philosopher�s stone of Islam could not make them good!
(4) In some respect, it can be accepted that Muslim leaders are responsible for the ghetto mentality of Muslims. But to remove the present Muslim leadership is not a joke; it will need a total revolution, and to create a revolution in an alien society, particularly Muslims, if not impossible, is a hard task. Even Mahatma Gandhi could not get the slightest success in his mission, and we had to lose a part of our country in the form of Pakistan. Is it not strange that the present-day RSS leaders have forgotten the oft-quoted aim and object of the first two Sarsanghchalaks, Dr. Hedgewar and Shri Guruji Golwalkar, that first we have to organise, unite and strengthen the Hindu Society?
(5) Some
clever political Muslims have no doubt said that Namaz offered on a disputed
site (like Ayodhya) is not acceptable to Allah. On this, Dr. Godbole has
rightly observed that nowhere is any such thing said in the Koran and the
Hadis, and that this is plain nonsense. If we accept such �plain nonsense�,
then somebody will say that the RSS Kendriya Karyalaya at Nagpur is also
a Mosque because the then BJP leader Shri Arif Beg and some other Muslim
members offered Namaz in that very Karyalaya as that Namaz was accepted
by Allah.
Miracle of Balancing Votes
It is pitiable for the Hindus as such that the one-time unflinching protagonists of Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra are now bent upon ideological adultery of this sort. This drastic change in their attitude is because of the Power Politics. The Sangh Parivar has decided to go ahead on the Rajpath of Power Politics. They think that political power will solve all the problems; it will even given shape to the Cultural Nationalism of their dream. In this age of democracy, power can be achieved by the majority of votes. But the days of statistical calculation have gone and the reality of �balancing votes� is on the screen. This �balancing votes� factor can produce miracles in any constituency to the Legislative Assembly as a whole. This fear of Muslims in the form of �balancing votes� has created the terror in Hindu intelligentsia - Muslims are in crores and we will have to accommodate them, which means accommodating them at any cost, and on their terms.
At the time of partition we could not follow the path which Spain had followed centuries ago. No one should hope that in the twenty-first century Hindus can follow that path. Before partition, Muslims were in crores in number. Even after partition, they are in crores today. Be sure that if a new Pakistan is carved out and Muslims are not driven out of that retruncated Bharat - it is dead sure they will not be driven out - then with the silver jubilee celebration of that new Pakistan, the number of Muslims will again sore up to crores. That means the Muslim Problem before the nation, in other words, before the Hindus, will remain till Muslims do not change their basic ideology. And as their basic ideology is totally based on the Koran, the Hadis and the Sunnah, no one can expect a change in the attitude of Indian Muslims for decades to come. It is up to Hindus, particularly votaries of Hindutva, to decide ultimately how to solve this critical Muslim Problem.
In fact,
this Muslim Problem is not a new but a chronic one. There are remedies
to root it out. But as Voice of India has rightly said, since 1885
the Indian National Congress and now the Sangh Parivar tends to take Hindus
for granted. In the forties, Congress partitioned the country and today
the Sangh Parivar is going to submit to the Muslims for the sake of political
power. Their greed for political power is so great that they cannot see
the other side of Democracy, namely, that in politics power is never perpetual,
it generally changes hands. In order to attain power, they have already
gone to the unimaginable extent.
Well-Planed Conspiracy
The Tribunal constituted under the Unlawful Activities (Preventation) Act 1967 to hear the case of the ban on the RSS, had served a notice to the RSS. In a detailed reply to the allegations made against it in the said notice, the RSS through its General secretary had explained its view of Hindu and Hindu Rashtra as follows (Organiser, June 6, 13 and 20, 1993):
�(9) It is submitted that the term Hindu in the conviction as well as in the constitution of the RSS is a cultural and civilisational concept and not a political or religious dogma. The term as a cultural concept will include and did always include all including Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Christians and Parsis. The cultural nationality of India, in the conviction of the RSS, is Hindu and it was inclusive of all who are born and who have adopted Bharat as their Motherland, including Muslims, Christians and Parsis. The answering association submit that it is not just a matter of RSS conviction, but a fact borne out by history that the Muslims, Christians and Parsis too are Hindus by culture although as religions they are not so.�
�(10) The RSS by conviction attaches to the term �Hindu� the cultural and civilisational meaning accorded by history. The answering association submit that the term �Hindu� was synonymous with the inhabitants of Bharat. Bharat was and is even now referred to as Hindustan and its subjects Hindus by culture and nationality.�
�(13) The RSS holds on to the cultural concept of Hindu and says that all Muslims, Christians and Parsis are by culture Hindus, although their methods of worship are different, for example Shaivites or Vaishnavites.�
�(14) The answering association submit that this integrative and inclusive concept of Hindu by RSS can hardly be construed as separatist or as distinguishing between Muslims and Hindus. In fact, the RSS ideology holds the Muslims as part of and not distinct from Hindus.�
�(17)
It is submitted that the term Hindu is thus an inclusive concept not limited
to any community or a religion and therefore cannot exclude Muslims or
Christians and in fact, includes them as Hindu. It is in this sense of
the term Hindu that the RSS regards Bharat as culturally a Hindu nation.
This is the meaning of Hindu Rashtra expounded by RSS.�
The RSS Constitution
This official statement of the RSS before a legal body, can be called deceptive, misguiding and sheer jugglery. The RSS Constitution finally submitted on 10th July 1949 clearly says that, upto that day, the RSS had no written constitution. The speeches of the Sara Sangh Chalaks and Sara Karyavahas of those days show very well that the RSS was open only to Hindus in the traditional sense and was concerned with the upliftment of Hindus on the basis of Hindu religion and Hindu culture. In the introduction of the first and even the final Constitution of the RSS, it is mentioned that �Under the disorganised conditions of the state, an organisation was thought necessary for the exhaustive resuscitation of the Hindu Society on the basis of its religion and culture�. In the �aims and objects� section of the said Constitution also, this very phraseology is repeated. No one can find even the words Muslims, Christians and Parsis in the RSS Constitution. So to say it today that �the term as a cultural concept will include and did always include all including Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Christians and Parsis� is nothing but an untruth and totally dishonest in every sense. It needs special mention that the term �Hindu Society� occurs four times in the RSS constitution. To include Muslims, Christians and Parsis in Hindu Society is nothing but absurd.
Needless to say that it is a well-planned conspiracy of the leaders of the Sangh Parivar. Broadly speaking, the Sangh Parivar has established a sort of monopoly on organisational grounds as far as Hindutva ideology is concerned, and now they are in a mood to take undue advantage of the situation. The drama of a seminar on the closed platform of Prajna Bharati in July 1996 was nothing but a manipulation for pushing the policy of so-called �Vyapak Hindutva� put before the Government (the Tribunal) in June 1993. Voice of India has rightly cautioned the comatose Hindus, �It has become a habit with Hindu leaders to take Hindus for granted and bargain with Muslims on the latter�s terms. Now Hindus have to decide as to how long they are going to be taken for granted.�
O Hindus!
A clarion call by a young RSS Swayamsevak (Dr. Shreerang Godbole) having
seventeen years of sanghãyu, is before you. It is high time for
you to warn the protagonists of �Vyapak Hindutva� that you will never allow
them to sacrifice the larger and long-term interests of Hindu Society and
nation for the meagre and minor interest of political power for the Sangh
Parivar.
Footnotes:
The
writer is a Professor of Economics, retired from Government Education Service
of Madhya Pradesh. At present he owns and edits Hindû Asmitã
weekly published from Indore in the same Pradesh. He has been a Swayamsevak
of the RSS for 57 years.
