Calling ‘cow protection’ or change in names of cities communal was because of colonised mindsets of some people, RSS publicity in-charge Sunil Ambekar said on Wednesday. “If India wishes to walk its own path, it will have to decolonise its mind. Sometimes people ask why are you changing names? I ask if Bombay becoming Mumbai and Madras becoming Chennai is secular, why is Allahabad becoming Prayagraj not secular? Save tiger and save birds is secular but save cow is communal… This is due to a confused and colonised mind,” Ambekar said during a book launch event at Constitution Club. “If we remove the symbols of British Raj, it is acceptable, but how does removing symbols of Mughal invaders become communal? We need to be free of such thought,” he added. The RSS leader said different people in the world have different attitudes as a society, as a nation and as a religion and these attitudes were causing conflicts. Ambekar was speaking at the launch of the book — ‘A Hindu in Oxford’ by former Oxford University Students’ Union president Rashmi Samant. As the first Indian woman president of the Union, Samant was forced to resign in 2021, within five days of her election, owing to outrage over some of her past social media posts that were perceived as anti-Semitic and racist. Even though Samant offered an apology for “unintentionally” hurting sentiments, she was forced to step down. Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani, who was also present at the event, said, “The institutionalisation of hate against a Sanatani woman is what this book is about. There is an environment that if you are persecuted and you belong to the Right Wing, you can be shamed, you can be destroyed and no one will even blink an eye.” Ambekar during his address also said that the definition of the word “modern” was loaded with colonial articulation. “Whatever is from there (the West) is modern, whatever is from here (India) is regressive. We need to free ourselves from such a thought. If I am taking an ayurvedic medicine, it is not regressive. It is the most modern. My pranayama is modern. Just because an idea was born in the East, it can’t be called regressive. Only certain countries cannot claim a right over modernity. Modernity is universal. Everyone has a claim over it. The Prakrit language was modern for its time,” he said. Ambekar also argued that there was no conflict between science and religion. “What is the meaning of science? People say you can either be religious or scientific. I say you can be both. That’s the tradition of India. That is what Swamy Vivekananda said. It is from science that spiritualism is born. The tradition of our scriptures is scientific,” he said.
