People's Democracy

An Unpatriotic Outfit Shouts Patriotism

 Harkishan Singh Surjeet

THE BJP is at its game again. It first raised the issue of Congress president Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin during the run-up to the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, and has since then strove to keep it alive somehow. In between, it also kept threatening to enact a constitutional amendment to debar the persons of foreign origin from holding a high office. BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan even threatened once that Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi must also be debarred from holding a high office --- because of the foreign origin of their mother. It was another thing that, faced with adverse public opinion, he soon had to recoil. Yet the game continues. And every time the behaviour of BJP leaders has been peculiar. They resort to this issue and other nasty kinds of propaganda but when a counter offensive comes, they start complaining, sulking and advising others that the election campaign should be kept free from personal attacks. 

THE ISSUE LACKS SUBSTANCE

THAT the issue lacks substance, goes without saying. Today there are persons of Indian origin who hold high offices in other countries, and nobody questioned their entitlement on the ground of their foreign origin. Basudev Pande is the president of Trinidad and Tobago. Persons of Indian origin like Sir Shivsagar Ramghulam and Aniruddha Jagannath held high offices in Mauritius. Late Dr Chhedi Jagan had been the prime minister as well as president of British Guyana. Danison Buddhu was the vice president of Jamaica, and Mahendra Chaudhari the president of Fiji. Some more instances of this kind may be quoted. Recently a person of Indian origin contested for governor’s post in a US state and he was not debarred from contesting on the ground of his origin. (BJP men even sang paeans to this person.) But if persons of Indian origin can hold high offices in other countries, the question is: Why cannot Mrs Gandhi do so in India? 

Evidently, if BJP men keep harping on Mrs Gandhi’s origin, it is because of the mortal fear that has gripped them. So much so that they have even forgot the simple fact that foreigner and naturalised citizen are two separate categories. If Indians hold high offices in other countries, it is because they are citizens of their respective countries and have equal rights with others. When a military man ousted Mahendra Chaudhuri from power in Fiji, democratic opinion around the world rightly condemned the act. Then, how can one justify a law to debar Mrs Gandhi and her children from holding high offices in this country?

The sum and substance of our argument is this. The question is not where a person was born, but what relation she or he has with the country of her or his choice. Had Mrs Sonia Gandhi not acquired Indian citizenship, naturally she could not be entitled to hold a high office in this country. But, is that really the case? This shows, once again, what scant regard the Sangh Parivar has for our constitution.

And what about our home minister cum deputy prime minister, Shri L K Advani? If the place of origin is really that important, should not he be dubbed a Pakistani? It is not that we think him to be a Pakistani. Yet this case does demonstrate how vacuous the saffron argument is.

FOREIGNERS IN OUR FREEDOM STRUGGLE

THERE is one more aspect to the problem, and of still wider significance. During our struggle for independence from the British colonial rule, there were dozens of individuals who were foreigners but contributed to our struggle. Who can forget the contribution of Mrs Annie Besant in this regard? C F Andrews was one of the trusted lieutenants of Mahatma Gandhi. Bhagini Nivedita, a disciple of Swami Vivekanand, was also a foreigner. Have BJP leaders, who never tire of swearing by Swami Vivekanand, forgot about this instance? But, then, all their swearing is for public consumption, and nothing more.

Foreigners also played a notable role in the communist movement of our country. Philip Spratt, Bradley and Hutchinson were among the 32 accused in the notorious Meerut conspiracy case that the British rulers of India had launched in the 1920s, after the no less infamous Peshawar and Kanpur conspiracy cases, to kill the nascent communist movement in this country. They were sent here by the Communist Party of Great Britain to help in our freedom struggle. It is also known that British workers collected money for helping our freedom struggle. Shapurji Saklatwala came all the way from Britain to fight for India’s independence and dedicated all his wealth and energy for the purpose. Going by the RSS definition, all these individuals were traitors to their country, and the British ruling classes indeed dubbed Spratt, Bradley and Hutchinson as traitors. This coincidence of the RSS view with that of the British ruling classes is not surprising. But the real thing is that all these individuals were fighting for a just cause.   

This is the crux of the matter. The decisive thing is not where one is born, but what stand one adopts vis-à-vis vital socio-political issues facing the country and the world. This is the criterion on which the RSS and its outfits will also be judged.

RSS ROLE IN BRITISH DAYS

IT is here that we come across a peculiar phenomenon. The RSS is an outfit that never tires of boasting of patriotism, but which never took any part in our struggle for independence. The whole history of this communal, fascist outfit goes to show this thing. It is no wonder that their very definition of patriotism is distorted, rather heinous.  

As we know, the RSS was founded by Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar at Nagpur in 1925. That was a time when, following the withdrawal of non-cooperation movement in February 1922, our national movement was temporarily on ebb and vested interests were trying to divert the people’s energies and their anti-British anger into disruptive channels. Communal riots were being engineered in various parts of the country. It was in precisely this background that the RSS was brought into existence. 

Ever since then, the RSS has been refraining from taking any part in our freedom struggle. In fact, its only aim was to polarise the Indian masses on communal lines, create tensions and engineer riots wherever possible. This was why the British rulers very much appreciated the RSS and refrained from imposing any ban on it. For, any division of Indian people on communal lines was only to be liked by the British. One of the now withdrawn volumes of Towards Freedom series gives evidence of this role of the RSS that, directly as well as indirectly, went in favour of imperialist masters. In fact, this was the reason for the withdrawal of those volumes by the now RSS controlled Indian Council of Historical Research.

Even at the time of the country’s independence and vivisection, as Desraj Goyal shows in his book on the RSS, the only role the RSS played was to organise the killing of Muslims in various parts of north India.

RSS ROLE IN KASHMIR

AT the same time, the RSS also extended support to the autocratic rulers of princely states, and it is known all over that most of the princes were contemptible supporters of the British rule. Not surprisingly, given the RSS’ liking for an autocratic system of governance, all through our struggle of independence, the RSS was seen standing against the aspirations and struggles of the states peoples.  

The case of Kashmir is a glaring example. When India won independence from the unwilling hands of the British, Hari Singh, the maharaja of the princely state of Kashmir, tried to utilise a craftily incorporated provision in the Mountbatten plan --- that any of the 560 odd princely states could join either India or Pakistan, or could remain independent if it so desired. This was no doubt aimed at balkanisation of our country, and Hari Singh attempted to retain his state --- despite the fact that the people of Kashmir, under the leadership of National Conference and late Sheikh Abdullah, were fighting for Kashmir’s accession to a secular India. How this accession finally took place and what great sacrifices the Kashmiri people had to make for this cause is a glorious chapter in the history of this state and the country. But the question is: Where did the RSS stand at that time?

The answer is unambiguous. In the princely state of Kashmir at that time, the RSS was working under the cover of Praja Parishad and extending support to the maharaja’s design of not acceding to India. Nay, when the people were striving for Kashmir’s accession to India and were fighting, with guns in their hands, the raiders sent by Pakistan that wanted to grab the state by force, the RSS was not fighting the raiders. Rather, it was busy organising the murder of those who were fighting for the state’s accession to India.

This was the RSS brand of patriotism --- in action.

SAGA OF A ‘REVOLUTIONARY’

STUNG by the criticism that the RSS never took part in our freedom struggle, the outfit has several times tried to manufacture a history to show that it is as patriotic as others. One ‘marvellous’ piece of this history manufacturing is that Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar was a freedom fighter; some of the RSS publications even go the extent of dubbing him as a “revolutionary.” But we also know what type of a revolutionary the RSS’ founder was. When he was a student in Calcutta in the first decade of the last century, he was claimed to be in contact with a group of Anushilan and Yugantar revolutionaries. But when the British launched the Alipore conspiracy case, following the Muzaffarpur bomb explosion, the doctor quietly slipped away from Calcutta and came back to Nagpur where he lay low and refrained from any political activity for 18 long years; he surfaced only in 1925 when he founded the RSS. But then he had no reason to fear the British police or CID, for he was after all doing something that could only help the British.

The Alipore conspiracy case ended with death sentence to Khudiram Bose, an adolescent, and severe punishments to several others. But how much different was Dr Hedgewar’s behaviour from that of Khudiram who went to the gallows smilingly and raising patriotic slogans! That was patriotism, if you ask. And this also shows what kind of a phoney revolutionary Hedgewar was!

After Hedgewar, his successor Madhavrao Sadashivrao Golwalkar kept his outfit away from anti-British activities altogether.

It was therefore no wonder that a person who betrayed his friends in September 1942, at the height of the Quit India movement, not only found a place in the RSS but even rose to become the top leader of the Jan Sangh and then of the BJP. 

The episode is too widely known, and has been dealt with in these columns also. Suffice to only recall a bit of it here. While a student at Gwalior, Atal Behari Vajpayee did take a part in this struggle. But when the police nabbed him, he could not withstand the possible treatment for a moment. Then he not only pleaded that “Maine to koi nuqsan nahin kiya” (I did not do any harm), but went even further and divulged the names of his friends to the police and deposed against them. One of his friends so betrayed, Leeladhar Vajpayee alias Kakua, is still alive --- a witness to his sordid betrayal. 

Later the RSS deputed the same Atal Behari Vajpayee to Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee who had made in Bengal a common cause with A K M Fazlul Haq, the mover of the Pakistan resolution at Lahore in 1940. As is known, it was through Mukherjee that the RSS floated the Jan Sangh in 1951, as its political mask. 

It is therefore no wonder that, if the Sangh Parivar sought to project Vajpayee as a freedom fighter in 1999, this time it has refrained from doing the same. After all, their bogus claim had received a severe drubbing at that time, and many, till then hidden skeletons had come tumbling down from the cupboard.

This history of the RSS also goes to show why this organisation and its frontal outfits have no care for our national interests. Their role in causing harm to our national unity and harmony is well known. It was after all our freedom struggle that bound the people of various religions, regions and languages into one entity, and it is understandable if the RSS has no love lost for this unity. To please their imperialist masters, they have also dismantled out earlier foreign policy and thereby lowered India’s prestige in the world arena. Similarly, in the trade, economic and related spheres, their government has been mercilessly sacrificing our national interests at the altar of imperialist interests. Thus, while shouting patriotism from rooftops, the saffron brigade has been doing the utmost to harm our country and its common people. 

But this too is not surprising. For, the RSS conception of patriotism has everything --- from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean, from the Ganga to Kaveri, the rishis and their ashrams, the Vedas and Puranas, and what not. The only thing this RSS conception of a nation lacks is the people of this country. But, then, one has to ponder whether one would like to buy this peculiar conception of nation and patriotism.