Opinion View from the left: Agenda Unmasked
“If any reconfirmation of this was ever necessary, it has now come.
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Addressing the inaugural session of the three-day World Hindu Congress at New Delhi, Ashok Singhal hailed Narendra Modi for leading the BJP to victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Claiming that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the “mask the RSS needed then to attract political allies to form the government at the Centre”, the CPM’s People’s Democracy has said the RSS no longer needs such a mask with Narendra Modi as prime minister. “With the BJP now securing a majority on its own under the leadership of Narendra Modi, albeit with a mere 31 per cent of the polled vote, the need for such a mukhota seems to have become unnecessary for the RSS,” an editorial states.
“If any reconfirmation of this was ever necessary, it has now come.
Addressing the inaugural session of the three-day World Hindu Congress on November 21 at New Delhi, Ashok Singhal, VHP leader, hailed Narendra Modi for leading the BJP to victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and said that power had returned to a ‘Hindu swabhimani (proud Hindu)’ in Delhi after eight centuries,” it adds. It also believes that Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh “confirmed this unmasking” when he recently said that the RSS is not an external force.
The editorial alleges that a “revamp of the educational system to promote ‘Hindu’ values” is underway. “The RSS had always used its control of the Central government to change the syllabus and rewrite Indian history accordingly,” it states. “The recourse to promote obscurantism and religious fanaticism is aimed at buttressing communal polarisation through the spread of hate against the religious minorities particularly the Muslim minorities. Clearly, the RSS/ BJP have embarked on a concerted effort to completely change the country’s education system and to make it patently conducive for the propagation and advance of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’,” it adds.
Empty promises
The CPI’s New Age says that the first six months of the Modi government has been “marked by [a] game of figures to hoodwink people”.
“A day before the start of the winter session of Parliament, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was boasting that India will achieve a GDP growth rate of 8.5 per cent. He projected a very rosy picture of the economy. The very next day, newspapers carried reports that in the second quarter of the Modi regime, the GDP growth rate has come down by half a point,” an editorial says.
It also accuses the government of remaining “mum” on inflation. This silence, it argues, also “applies to the issue of bringing back the black money stashed away in foreign banks. During the campaign for the Lok Sabha elections, Narendra Modi had promised to bring back the entire black money within a hundred days of assuming power… Now he says he does not know how much black money is there,” it notes. “Above all, there has come the news that the Union finance ministry has decided to cut spending on the social sector to reduce the fiscal deficit. It is said that the budget amount for education and public health will be slashed by 25 per cent as the fiscal deficit is going beyond the estimated target,” it states. “The only promise that this government is interested in fulfilling is to drastically change labour laws to snatch away all the hard-won rights of the working class… That is the real face of Modi regime,” it concludes.
Compiled by Ruhi Tewari
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