Hindutva Politics And Islamist Politics Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin - Part I
By Shamsul Islam
25 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org
The flag-bearers of the Hindutva politics specially RSS in India keep on boasting that they represent the true fight against the politics of Islamists which stands for a theocratic Islamic state which denies equal rights to followers of other religions, is opposed to democracy and wants to overthrow the Indian Constitution and hates all symbols of Indian polity like the Tricolour, the Indian National Flag. The Hindutva camp-followers also claim that all those who oppose the Hindutva Gang are in fact the agents of Islamists.
This claim of the Hindutva Gang is not only fictitious but a series of white lies. It is only this Gang trained by the RSS, ‘the gurukul’ of training for the degrees ‘Doctorate in Spreading Lies’ & ‘Master Liar’ which can so brazenly unconcerned about facts. Here is an attempt to reproduce facts from the archives of the Hindutva camp which conclusively prove that the Hindutva Gang & the Islamist Gang have been together and presently too together in undoing a democratic-secular Indian polity. Far from being opposite they complement each other as we will see in the following.
BOTH DENIGRATE OUR TRICOLOUR
The hatred of Islamist for our National Flag, the Tricolour is well-known. They hated it as it represented the Indian freedom struggle jointly waged by the Indians of all religions and regions. But a fact not much known is that both Hindu Mahasabha, led by the Hindutva icon, ‘Veer’ VD Savarkar and RSS led by Dr. Hedgewar and Guru Golwalkar decried this symbol of unity of Indian masses. They continued demanding acceptance of Peshwa saffron flag as the Indian flag like the Muslim League which demanded green flag in place of the Tricolour.
It should not surprise anybody that the English organ of the RSS, Organizer just on the eve of Independence, August 14, 1947, carried a feature titled 'Mystery behind the bhagwa dhawaj' (saffron flag). Following into the footsteps of Savarkar it demanded hoisting of saffron flag at the ramparts of Red Fort in Delhi, openly denigrated the choice of the Tri-colour as the National Flag in the following words:
"The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour but it never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country."
Thus there was no difference between the Hindutva gang and the Islamist Gang in rejecting our National Flag.
BOTH BELIEVED IN THE TWO-NATION THEORY
We know quite well that Muslim League led by MA Jinnah demanded separate homeland for Muslims as it believed that Muslims & Hindus are two different nations. But it was long before Muslim Leagues’s Pakistan Resolution in 1940 that the Hindutva icon, ‘Veer’ Savarkar declared that India was inhabited by two antagonistic nations, Hindus and Muslims.
While delivering presidential address to 19th Hindu Mahasabha session at Ahmedabad in 1937, Savarkar unequivocally declared:
“As it is, there are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India, several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation, or that it could be welded thus for the mere wish to do so. These were well meaning but unthinking friends take their dreams for realities…Let us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main: the Hindus and the Moslems, in India."
Importantly, the RSS organ Organizer in its issue on the very eve of Independence, dated 14 August, 1947, rejected the whole concept of a composite nation (under the editorial title ‘Whither’):
”Let us no longer allow ourselves to be influenced by false notions of nationhood. Much of the mental confusion and the present and future troubles can be removed by the ready recognition of the simple fact that in Hindusthan only the Hindus form the nation and the national structure must be built on that safe and sound foundation […] the nation itself must be built up of Hindus, on Hindu traditions, culture, ideas and aspirations”.
Shamsul Islam is a former professor of Delhi University
Email: [email protected]
[I will be uploading a new instalment every Sunday on the fraternal ties between Hindutva Gang & Islamist Gang in the pre-Partition and post-Independence India. Please circulate these facts so that the Indian sub-continent can be saved from being a playground of theocratic fascism.]