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Journalism of Courage
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s remarks that Muslims have nothing to fear in India but they must abandon their “boisterous rhetoric of supremacy” on Wednesday drew criticism from some opposition parties and leaders.
While the Congress was silent, the Left parties slammed the RSS chief. So did AIMIM leader and Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi.
Questioning Bhagwat, Owaisi said: “Who is Mohan Bhagwat to give Muslims permission to live in India or follow our faith? We’re Indians because Allah willed it. How dare he put ‘conditions’ on our citizenship? We’re not here to ‘adjust’ our faith or please a bunch of alleged celibates in Nagpur.”
In an interview to RSS-affiliated magazines Organiser and Panchjanya, Bhagawat had said that the new-found aggression among Hindus in India and elsewhere is due to the Hindu society having been at war for over 1,000 years and finally awakened with the Sangh’s support.
Arguing that Muslims have nothing to fear in India but they must abandon their claim of supremacy, he said that “the simple truth” is that Hindustan should remain Hindustan.
Calling Bhagwat’s remarks “atrocious”, the CPI(M) said the comments constitute an open and blatant challenge to the Constitution of India, to equal rights of all citizens and to the rule of law.
“He has threatened the Muslim minority community that they will have to give up ideas of ‘supremacy’ to remain safe. He justifies the aggression of ‘Hindu society’ in the name of perceived historical wrongs, stating that Hindus are ‘at war’. He has virtually given a call for violence against a section of Indian citizens on the basis of religious affiliation,” the CPI(M) politburo said.
The party said it was not the Hindu society but “Hindutva brigades inspired by the RSS ideology and backed by leaders like Bhagwat who have created a sense of siege in the minority community by their constant assaults on the constitutional and legal rights of minority communities at different levels”.
Bhagwat’s statements, it said, are an “update of the hate filled communal writings of RSS icons like Hegdewar and Golwalkar that Muslims can live in India only if they accept a subordinate position”.
Calling Bhagwat the “self-appointed custodian of Indian society”, CPI general secretary D Raja said he has again breached the walls of Constitution and legality by making such statements. Bhagwat’s remark that the war is not against an enemy outside but against an enemy within has exposed the RSS’s divisive agenda, he said. “Such provocations must be resisted and defeated through unity,” he added.
