RSS’ ‘Celebration’ of Independence Day Rejects Basic Principles of Constitution

What strikes one’s notice is the editorial of the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, in its ‘Independence Day Special’ dated August 19, 2018. It states: “The ideals of democracy, secularism and socialism... were non-Bharatiya”(!) This at a time when the country (‘Bharat’) has just celebrated its 72nd Independence Day. The RSS not only denies secularism and socialism, but also democracy. It has not a single word to say on the great democratic structure built after independence, using which it has come to power today.

 Through numerous functions, meetings and gatherings the people and political forces of this great country have reasserted the ideals of republicanism, democracy, secularism and socialism without question. Independence Day celebration is the occasion for the assertion, not denial, of the basic ideals and principles for which the nation fought and established itself. But here is a force, which has become the ruling party today, that opposes and challenges all the basic principles precisely on that great day. These are the people who otherwise make a show of ‘hoisting’ the tricolour ‘higher and higher’ in a hypocritical show of pseudo-nationalism.

 The country has made a stock-taking of the freedom struggle, and the martyrs and leaders have been remembered by the people. We have taken stock of the achievements and failures of the pre- and post-independence periods. It also has been the occasion to trace the future path with great hopes.

Sangh Parivar erases Memory of Freedom Movement

The RSS-BJP have moved in the opposite direction. Its newspapers and leaders have simply failed to mention the great freedom struggles and freedom fighters. They have used even this occasion to spread extreme communal poison and ignore the struggle for the freedom of India.

The latest issues of Organiser and Panchjanya do not have a single word for the actual struggles fought for the country’s freedom, and for the great struggles to build the new independent Indian nation. The RSS directly and openly questions the basic principles of the Indian Constitution and Indian nationhood.

The RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, in its ‘Indepen-dence Day Special’, mentioned above, totally omits any reference to the freedom movement, and keeps on talking rigmarole on the ancient India, its ‘spirit’ and what not. This takes on an obnoxious communal form and content through outpourings against the Muslims and Moghul rulers, while not even mentioning the fact and deeds of the British colonisers. There is no Bhagat Singh, Gandhi, Nehru, non-cooperation movement, civil disobedience movement, 1942 struggle, no references to the revolutionaries etc. And of course, the RSS and Sangh Parivar have no martyrs and personalities of their own to mention simply because they did not participate in the struggle for freedom.

Panchjanya, the RSS mouthpiece in Hindi, has gone a step further and devoted the whole issue to a virulent attack on the Muslims, presenting them as ‘the outsiders’ and as responsible for the division of the country. There is no mention of the British rule again!

India Pitted Against ‘Bharat’

 

The editorial of Organiser (in the above-mentioned number) complains that even after a long period of independence we have not achieved the ‘real Bharat’ and ‘bharatiyata’. ‘We have made strides in different walks of life,’ the editorial admits, yet it is not happy because the achievements are all ‘Western’! One wonders what the Modi Government has done to make India ‘bharatiya’ and to free it from Western influence. Why does he invite foreign investment including in the country’s defence sector? Substituting Hindi or Sanskrit words for the English ones does not make us ‘real Bharatiya’!

RSS’ Idea of ‘Real Bharat’

It is precisely on the occasion of the anniversary of India’s freedom that the RSS-BJP has come out against the basic principles of the Indian Constitution and the nationally accepted policies. This is a typical Rightwing reactionary approach.

The RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, has defined three principles of the ‘real Bharat’ while opposing the Indian Constitution. The ‘first principle of Bharat’ is decentralisation of institutions and government. It attacks the very concept of Central planning and ‘governance from above’. These were ‘never in tune with the idea of Bharat’! So Bharat means destruction of Central planning and the public sector, and replacement of the Central Government with RSS governance everywhere down to the village in the name of decentralisation!! These destructive ideas are carefully couched in an attractive package of words. The BJP Government has embarked upon a campaign of replacement of the Planning Commission by Niti Ayog, UGC by the HECI, and widespread destruction of a a variety and number of institutions created after independence. This is their ‘Bharat’!

The RSS has launched a furious attack on the Nehruvian Framework of Development and has given a clarion call for its dismantling, because it is not ‘Indian’ (‘Bharatiya’).

It naturally comes to mind whether handing over massive production centres and complexes to a handful of giant financial monopolies like the Ambanis and Adanis is an act of ‘decentralisation’ and ‘Bharatiyata’.

The RSS accuses Nehru of centralisation of power. What about our Prime Minister Modi? He is centralising the political authority in his own hands and handing over economic-financial powers to the giant corporate and financial interests, who are seeking a place in the galaxy of the world financial monopolist giants. ‘Bharatiya’ steps like demonetisation and GST have only siphoned off massive amounts of wealth and capital to a handful of monopolist speculators, to the exclusion of the ‘Bharatiya spirit’. The spirit evaporates into thin air when it comes to the massive financial transactions, black market and close alliance with foreign financial capitalists. Accumulation of money, wealth and capital, after all, have to get priority over the ‘spirit’, however ancient and Bharatiya it may be!!

‘Dharma, not Religion’ guides Society

“Dharma, not re;igion in the Semitic sense but more in the spiritual sense, was the guiding and practicing force of this decentralised society.” Dharma is pitted against religion as per convenience and then presented as the guiding force. This ‘dharma’ is not ‘semitic’, claims the RSS. Then what about other religious and dharmic sects and trends, including Shaivas and the Vaishnavas? If the sense of the decentralised society and the state was not semitic, why their persecution then and now? Besides, why shy away from stating religion straightaway? All this is not only confusing but also an attempt to mess up things so that the reality is covered up.

The RSS papers talk of a ‘decentralised’ society but they have always glorified the highly centralised rule by the feudal kings and emperors. The all-powerful state/s violated all the human norms, dharma, and religious-spiritual values to rule over their ‘praja’ and over the praja of other rulers. The rule of Ashoka has been mentioned further in this article.

The Indian Constitution drew upon the nature and experiences of the Constitutions of all the major Western countries, particularly. Our Constitution is basically modelled on the British Constitution. What does the RSS have to say? Why does the RSS single out secularism and socialism and even attack democracy? Why did it not oppose our Constitution when it was written? After all, there is nothing ‘Vedic’ or ‘Upnishadic’ in it!

We, the Nation Revived

The infamous RSS textbook, We, or Our Nationhood Defined (by Golwalkar), also known as We, the Nation, deliberately hidden in recent times, has now been revived. The RSS has ‘withdrawn’ the book from the public view, because of its obnoxious views, but its ideas are not given up. The book is patterned along some of the Nazi and Fascist literature. How stealthily it is being brought back will be clear from the ‘third point’.

The third point constituting ‘Bharatiyata’ and ‘Bharat’ concerns the ‘assimilation and accommodation’ of people coming from ‘outside’. It is a very peculiar process in Bharat, since time immemorial, Organiser tells us. The ominous and obnoxious implications behind it are clear. Says Organiser, “We, the people (!) never considered any group or society as our enemy (!) either by ideology or religion. It was always beyond ‘tolerance’ and more of acceptance which many Nehruvians would never agree. While practising acceptance Bharat never compromised with the basic spirit respecting of ways. Relinquishing of soul in the name of accommodation was never the idea of Bharat. That is why this nation has produced the tradition of selfless sages in the ancient period.” Who are the ‘we’, who are being ‘accommodated’ and ‘assimilated’, the paper avoids telling us, but it is quite clear. The ghostly spirit of the ominous forces pits itself against the real spirit of the nation made up of the rich variety of cultures, religions and views.

The editorial mentions Buddha, Kautilya, Shankaracharya, ‘Sant tradition of Bhakti Parampara’ etc. who ‘saved the soul of the nationhood’.

It is interesting to note that the editorial makes a fine distinction among those who really contributed to the Indian nationhood. It only identifies the ‘

Sant

tradition’ of Bhakti ‘parampara’ as having contributed to the Indian nationhood, to the exclusion of other trends like Sufi, peer etc. This only means that the ‘non-Sant trraditions’ like those of Kabir, Jayasi, the Peers, the Chishtis, the Muslims and the Islamic traditions and those Hindus who stood for communal unity did not contribute to the formation of the Indian nationhood! This is a typical colonial-fascistic rewriting of Indian history.

There are no dividing lines in the movement. Both Bhakti and Sufi sants and peers proclaimed the quality of the human beings before the state and the God. They were a powerful unifying force of the Indian nation. And that is why the RSS does not like it, and replaces unified India with divided Bharat. It is an ominous act of social engineering to erase whole races, communities and castes.

The RSS treats the country as a ‘dharmashala’ run by it. Whom does the RSS include among ‘all those who came here’? The Aryans, the Huns, the Shakas, the Kushans, the Moghuls the British?! And whom does it exclude? The answer is avoided. The RSS has suddenly forgotten ‘Aryavarta’, replacing it with Bharat. The Aryans too came ‘from outside’!

Some of the sages named by the RSS, such as Buddha, by no means belonged to their ‘Bharat’; he came from far-off Nepal foothills populated by ancient tribes and severely exploited and repressed by the expanding state/s.

What does the RSS say about the fact that the ‘Bharatiya’ King Ashoka attacked and decimated another Bharatiya region called Kalinga, and took more than 3 lakh prisoners, forcing them to march all the way to Magadha? What happened to the soul, spirit and Bhartiyata then? Where did the ‘basic spirit’ of Bharat disappear?

RSS’ Silence on the British Period

The BJP-RSS ‘celebrate’ India’s independence in their own peculiar communal manner. Throughout these days, they did not utter a single word against the British rule or its results, on their acts of oppression and repressions, have not remembered a single martyr. The RSS propaganda tries to pit Gandhiji against Nehru. It mischievously states that Gandhiji saved the Bharatiya spirit in the face of the Nehruvian assault! Gandhiji supposedly saved the ‘ancient Bharatiya spirit of societal Dharma’. How? “The original Constitution (!) do not (does not) mention the alien concepts of secularism and socialism”! It was Nehru who did it.

Besides the fact that this is factually wrong, the whole argumentation is garbled, confused and deliberately malicious and misleading. Goebbelsian method is being ever perfected.

If Gandhiji was so wonderful as to protect the very Bharatiya spirit, why was he murdered by the Rightwing Hindu communalists?! The RSS is yet to condemn his assassination even on the occasion of the celebration of the country’s independence.

This is how the Sangh Parivar ‘celebrated’ the Independence Day.

The author is a Marxist ideologne.