Is RSS A Terrorist
Organization?
By Ram Puniyani
02 June, 2005
Countercurrents.org
Terrorism
has been witnessed as a horrific phenomenon, more so in the current
times. What is terrorism itself is a matter of debate at one level and
at another the definition of terrorism changes from person to person,
group to group and country to country.
One does not know
as to what criterion the US based Terrorism Research Center, the US
think tank on this issue, has used but it has gone on to label RSS,
the patriarch of Hindutva organizations, BJP, VHP, Bajarang dal etc.,
as a terrorist outfit. RSS shares this category with other organizations
defamed in different parts of the World as terrorists like Al Qaeda,
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Hamas etc. Sangh's (RSS progeny) own definition and
understanding of terrorists has been summed up by RSS pracharak
(propagator) and current Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi in the
sentence, "All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are
Muslims!" How come a Muslim baiter organization itself has been
so labeled!
It seems from amongst
the various definitions floating around about terrorism, the one stating,
killing of innocent persons for political goals, seems to be the one
followed by this center. It goes without saying that in this definition
generally states are not included. Lately some states have been called
as terrorist states and BJP had been urging upon US to declare Pakistan
as a terrorist state. Some states have been listed as terrorists by
US itself. We will not go on to discuss the violence of the state and
its
goals, which is quite a complex phenomenon. We will also not touch upon
the bias exercised by those defining terrorism. In a limited way we
follow the definition, killing of innocents for political goals, we
will try to see whether the assessment of US based center is true.
It is important
to concede here that terrorism emerges from ideology of groups with
specific goals. It is also important to realize that all those who manufacture
this goal and ideology, which leads to violence are terrorists or rather
they are the real ones'. And if the blame is to be apportioned, they
should be held more responsible before the finger is pointed to those
who use sword, bullets or AK 47 or who pilot the planes to ram into
WTC or the like.
No doubt the RSS
pracharks will never even go to pick up arms, to kill anybody personally.
Even in RSS shakhas training is given only for wielding lathis, batons.
Of course keeping with times RSS progeny Bajarang dal and Durga vahini
have begun to give training in the use of firearms and VHP is distributing
knives, disguised as trishuls in thousands, but in RSS shakhas these
are no no. Apart from the lathi wielding the other part of the training
is bauddhik (intellectual). This training is based on the spread of
hatred for minorities, hatred for secular and democratic values. It
goes on to say that in this nation of Hindus, others, Muslims and Christians
are aliens, also that Communists, Muslims and Christians are internal
threat to Hindu nation.
The venom of hate
is tailor made for each community. Muslims are equated to yavan snakes.
Prof Bipan Chandra narrates his experience in listening to the shakha
training. While on a morning walk he overheard the young boys attending
the shakha being told that Muslims are like snakes. It is easier to
kill a young snake rather than the grown up one. The message of this
'intellectual' exercise is too clear. The inspiration and methods of
Hate are picked up from the Nazi Germany. RSS ideologue Golwalkar articulated
it, " German race pride has now become topic of the day. To keep
up the purity of nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by
her purging the country of Semitic races-the Jews. National pride at
its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-neigh
impossible it is for races and cultures having differences going to
the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for
us in Hindustan to learn and profit by." (M.S. Golwalkar, We or
Our Nationhood defined, Nagpur 1938 p.27).
One wondered whether
RSS really means it. But to one's utter shock one was told by a senior
RSS ideologue that if a person of the stature of Gandhi could not solve
the 'Muslim problem', what can the present small genre of pseudo secularists
achieve! As per him (and apparently as per RSS) there is a single solution
to this problem, what one knows as the "Final Solution"! This
hate ideology, which is drilled in the heads of young recruits is the
base on which the foundation of communal violence comes up. The RSS
ideology's outcome first got manifested in Godse's murdering of Gandhi.
Of course RSS never owned the fact that Godse was trained by RSS and
was RSS pracharak before he decided to join Hindu Mahasabha. His brother
Gopal Godse maintained in different interviews that they (his brother
Nathuram and he himself) had never left RSS. Most of the inquiry commission
reports on the communal violence (Justice Reddy, Vithayathil, Venugopal,
Madon and others) have shown irrefutably that their has been a role
of some organization affiliated to or floated by a pracharak of RSS,
which has played crucial role in the violence.
The strategy is very clear, RSS trains the volunteers who carry on the
RSS work by joining or floating different organizations. The advantage
of this strategy is that the blame of riots can never come directly
on the RSS.
One recalls that
after the defeat in 1937 elections, Muslim Leagues and Hindu Mahsabha
stepped up their Hate other campaigns as they could not win the elections
on the appeal of their religion. RSS also stepped up its hate other
campaign. These poisonous seeds of hatred were dormant and are bearing
the poisonous fruits more so after the decade of 1980. This hate other
ideology passes through different conveyor belts and its final stop
is that where the poor gullible sections take up arms, intoxicated by
the opium of hate ideology which is laced in the language of religion
for desired effect.
Every terrorist
outfit has its own agenda. Al Qaeda was trained by CIA via Pakistan
to throw away the Socialist Russia's occupation of Afghanistan. LTTE
is a reaction the Sinahala domination of Tamils, Khalistainis were the
expression of deeper dissatisfaction of Sikh masses on economic and
ethnic grounds, ULFA again is the expression ethnic problem handled
in an insensitive way and so on and so forth. RSS and Muslim League
in pre-partition times were the expression of the fears of feudal elements
that their norms and values are under threat in the wake of modern education,
industrialization and the values of Liberty, Equality and fraternity
becoming the major ideology of the struggling masses. The same fear,
existential anxiety, of another middle classes has got crystallized
in the politics of RSS. And this is the coming up of dalits and women
demanding social and gender justice some themselves. Whatever is the
deeper societal agenda, RSS methods and mechanisms of action do give
rise to the VHPs, Bajarang dals and Durga Vahinis. It is probably this
deeper understanding of the dynamics of RSS functioning which must have
prompted the research center to label it as a terrorist organization.
RSS training is
on twin tracks. One is the physical one, games and all that. The second
is the bauddhik one. It is the latter which motivates its progeny to
incite people to take up arms and kill the 'other', the 'enemy' in the
ruthless fashion. The anatomy of a riot, violence, is very interesting
and complex both at the same time. How the average dalit, adivasi, worker
with empty stomach and non existent future is mobilized as the foot
soldier of RSS agenda, is something social scientists have to explain.
RSS pracharak may be at the same time sitting and giving a quiet discourse
on Hindu values, Hindu rashtra while RSS ideology will grip the section
of population to unleash violence, to kill the innocents. It does achieve
the political goal of consolidation of section of Hindus behind RSS;
it does make them come back to power or strengthen its power. The definition
with which we began was killing of innocents for power or political
agenda is terrorism. And that's precisely what RSS work does.
The only point of
overt confusion some times can be that unlike Osama, or the AK 47 weilding
terrorist in parts of the World, RSS volunteer will appear to be the
apostle of quietness. And this is the wiliest and cleverest part of
RSS operation. To achieve its goal, to get the minorities beaten and
killed without taking up the arms oneself. The violence is leased out
by clever social and psychological manipulation. In that sense AK 47
may miss the target but a mind poisoned and initiated by Hate ideology
propagated by RSS will come out as violence some time or the other,
here or there, it's just a question of time. Culture, the cloak of this
organization is the most subtly disguised cover for the terrorist goals
of this organization. This terrorist outfit kills many birds in a single
stone, the birds being minorities and weaker sections of society. But
of course there will be much noise that name of RSS should be taken
off from the list of this research center. In case of RSS, this outfits'
culture is the terror for large sections of minorities and weaker sections
of society in India.