RSS out to ‘correct’ image; honour ‘sidelined icons’

Sources said a number of steps to “rewrite history, present the true stories and put the historical personalities in their right places” have already been taken, while others are in the pipeline. Also, Union ministers and RSS leaders are holding interactions to discuss how Sangh leaders would be represented in text books, sources said.

When asked whether this is an attempt to mainstream RSS ideologues, the outfit’s Akhil Bhartiya Prachar Pramukh Manmohan Vaidya said: “RSS needs no mainstreaming. But if some leaders have been neglected despite their contributions to nation building, we need to correct it. The society should be grateful to these leaders, ignoring them is narrow-mindedness.” He added: “So far, only one family’s contribution was known to our young generation. Its time to rise above politics.”

Some of the steps towards ‘correction’ of the outfit’s image are already underway, sources said.

Librarians at Doordarshan have started digging out archival footage of Veer Savarkar, Syama Prasad Mookerjeeand other RSS icons, while bureaucrats have been asked to hunt for new names for welfare programmes.

The rural electrification scheme named after former PM Rajiv Gandhi is now called Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, after the prominent Jana Sangh leader. Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission has been scrapped and a new programme to urbanise rural areas is named after Syama Prasad Mookerjee, founder of Jana Sangh. A training programme for teachers named after Madan Mohan Malaviya is also in the pipeline.

However, the BJP has gone beyond just RSS icons. The National Centre for Excellence in Humanities to be set up in Madhya Pradesh will be named after Jayaprakash Narayan. Sources added that the government will relaunch over a dozen schemes named after B R Ambedkar, Ram Manohar Lohia among others.

“We do not want it to be one-sided. All those who contributed to the nation should be honoured,” Vaidya said.

Added Rao: “Pre-Independent or modern India history is never complete without Savarkar. He is very much a part of the history as is Bhagat Singh or Chandrashekhar Azad. Our objection is to ignore someone only because he is linked to a particular organisation.”

“Now the BJP is in power and Deen Dayal Upadhyay is the man who created that ideology. If Nehru can be remembered for the creation and growth of the Congress, why can’t Upadhyay be honoured. Can there be a history without the BJP? We cannot accept that only Marxists and the Congress contributed towards building India,” Rao said.

He further pointed out: “Archeological Survey of India has found evidence of the existence of Saraswati River. These findings are not the BJP’s or the RSS’s. Similarly, new interpretation for the Aryan-Dravidian divide has also come out.”

The BJP general secretary further said: “Ideological edifices constructed by the post-Independence historians were based on materials available to them. But, history is subject to change.”

Meanwhile, political analyst N Bhaskara Rao said the BJP is trying to replace the existing history with a new one. “The way it is going does not look like it is balancing different versions of history, but it is an attempt to replace. History is not to be erased. Rather, it should evolve and be updated.”