The recent issues of Organiser and Panchajanya,the RSS organs in English and Hindi respectively,have detailed interviews with BJP president Nitin Gadkari as the cover feature. The Organiser headline reads: The nation is not safe till UPA is in power,while in the Hindi version,it reads Rashtra nirman ka sashakt madhyam bane rajniti (politics should become an instrument of nation-building). The contents of the interview,given to the editors of the two weeklies,are broadly the same. In the interview,Gadkari attacks UPAs economic policy,stresses on the need to expand in states like Tamil Nadu,West Bengal,Kerala,Andhra Pradesh,Haryana,some other states,and among Scheduled Castes,and other weaker sections; argues that if the party (BJP) were anti-Muslim,why would the party have made Dr Abdul Kalam the president of the country?; talks about bringing back interlinking of rivers to the political agenda,and says that he is surprised that the fourteen questions that he asked the UPA government on broad economic issues have not been answered yet.
Responding to a question on whether the Congress has launched a campaign against Narendra Modi and some other CMs of BJP-ruled states,he says that the CBI has become Congress Bureau of Investigation and that CBI and other agencies are being misused with bias against Narendra Modi. During the course of the interview,he also talks about some of his own initiatives like bringing Antyodaya to the mainstream in the party,and the need for party workers to reach out to the poor and the unorganised sector.
Sangh convictions
Panchajanya has put on its front page the suo motu statement put out by RSS general secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi last week,with a heading reading Gair kanooni evam himsatmak gatividhiyon ko Sangh ka samarthan nahin (Illegal and violent activities will not get Sangh support). The statement adds that the RSS condemns the attempts made by newspapers to link the recent blasts in the country to the RSS.
A write-up by Rakesh Sinha (a Delhi University teacher,also associated with the RSS) on an inside page,quotes from various Urdu dailies and says that they have been spreading communalism and a disinformation campaign. He also claims that besides Hindu organisations,there is an attempt to drag the Indian state and its various agencies into it.
Compiled by Suman K. Jha
