The RSS completed its 82nd year on October 20. RSS Sarsanghachalak K.S. Sudarshan’s speech on the foundation day of the Sangh is reproduced in Organiser’s current issue. “When we try to evaluate the result of more than eight decades of efforts, one thing comes out outstandingly. When in 1925 the Sangh was founded, the Hindu society had descended to such an abyss of self-negation that they were ashamed of calling themselves Hindus. ‘Call us donkeys, but don’t call us Hindus’. Today, however, the Hindu has become conscious of his identity, he does not feel any inhibition in calling himself a Hindu. We have experienced this last year when the leaders of different caste groups not only assembled together on the invitation of the Sangh but felt happy that it was because of the Sangh that they had been able to meet different caste leaders, exchange thoughts and partake food collectively without any distinction of high or low. “But the Sangh is not satisfied with only this much. Sangh wants that not only the Hindu society should be vigilant and full of self-respect but should be able to face all types of onslaughts perpetrated on it. Today, though the Hindu society does feel that it is being targeted but expects somebody to take the lead. The people in every village and every ward should rise in protest, even if in small groups, against any injustice perpetrated on the Hindu society.” Hence, it says, “eternal vigilance has become unavoidable. We have to follow the message of Vedas — rashtra jagryam waya — ‘Let the nation be ever vigilant.’” Target SinghOrganiser’s editorial targets prime minister Manmohan Singh yet again on the nuclear deal. “The Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh now looks like Chaudhry Charan Singh who assumed office on a promise of support from Indira Gandhi after the fall of the Janata Party government in the late seventies. The government lacked a popular mandate and every day in office proved beneficial to the opposition. Dr Singh says he is disappointed. He has reasons to be. But his leader Sonia Gandhi goes about as if everything is hunky dory. Now she has gone to China on an official visit. Shocking because she left for Beijing the day it was officially confirmed that China had intruded in 140 places in the last one year. “The CPM leader Prakash Karat is on the look-out for new alliances in his bid to embarrass the government further on the nuclear deal. The Congress is so afraid of the Left that it will not expose it. Like the Lilliputians fighting Gulliver, the Congress spokespersons only attack the Left from the periphery, a statement here on the failure of the West Bengal government in controlling the ration riots or a support to the clergy in Kerala in their crusade against the CPI(M). This is a clever ploy to duck the real issue at the Centre”. Criticising former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee and Leader of Opposition L.K. Advani for the government’s inglorious condition is “ridiculous” says the editorial. For, the UPA must blame itself for the mess it is in, it says.Two evilsM.S.N. Menon argues that the world is caught between two evils — American hegemony and Islamic terrorism. “Both must be fought and defeated.” The writer dips into history. “A hundred years ago or so, we dreamt of an ideal world order. What we got were nightmares — Fascism, Nazism and Communism — each trying to deny men their freedom, trying to make them zombies. However, by the end of the century, they were all discredited. Empires were gone. ‘Utopias’ were gone. But the world paid a heavy price for these experiments. “We were almost sure that no one would try to put us back into a pen. We were mistaken. America wants us to be in an American pen. And the Islamists want us to be in an Islamic pen. They offer no other option.”
