People's Democracy

Thinking Together

Recently, the BJP spokesman, while answering the charge that the RSS has never participated in the freedom struggle, has claimed that more RSS members participated in the freedom struggle than anybody else.  He also claimed that the Communists betrayed the freedom struggle by opposing the Quit India Movement. Is there any truth in these claims?

V S L N  Moorthy, Bangalore

NOTHING could be farther from the truth.  One need not go into the details of the already richly documented history of the role of the Left in India's struggle for freedom. It would suffice to note that when the country was celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the Quit India Movement in August 1992, the then President of India, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma, addressing the midnight session of the Parliament said: "After large scale strikes in mills in Kanpur, Jamshedpur and Ahmedabad, a despatch from Delhi dated 5 September, 1942, to the Secretary of State, in London, reported about the Communist Party of India: "the behaviour of many of its members proves what has always  been clear, namely, that it is composed of anti-British revolutionaries."

On the contrary, the role of the RSS during India's freedom struggle is an open secret.  The Bombay Home Department, during the 1942 Quit India Movement, observed, "The Sangh has scrupulously kept itself within the law and in particular has refrained from taking part in the disturbances that broke out in August 1942."  Even its leading light, Nanaji Deshmukh once raised the question, "Why did the RSS not take part in the liberation struggle as an organisation?"  Further, throughout the national movement the RSS always collaborated with the princely states who stood in firm opposition to the freedom struggle. One of their closest allies was Raja Hari Singh of Kashmir who was reluctant to join India.

It is both an irony and tragedy for India that the assassins of Mahatma Gandhi are today casting such wicked aspersions against the Left.

It needs to be recalled that whether it is the heroes or heroines of the INA, or, associates of Bhagat Singh like Shiv Varma and Kishori Lal, all of them had spent the rest of their lives in independent India, as leaders of the CPI(M), carrying forward the struggle for the emancipation of the people. Not one of them joined the RSS!

On the contrary, look at the track record of the self-appropriated heroes of the Saffron Brigade like Savarkar. He had in a letter dated November 14, 1913 from the Andaman cellular jail openly begged the British to set him free. It has recently been shown on many occasions that in this letter, which is today a public document, Savarkar had with servility said: "I am ready to serve the (British) government in any capacity they like, for as my conversion is conscientious so I hope my future conduct would."

In complete contradistinction is the record of the scores of revolutionaries who served their full term in the inhuman cellular jail and subsequently became respected leaders of the Communist movement such as Harekrishna Konar who became one of the topmost leaders of the CPI(M), Satish Pakrashi, Ganesh Ghosh, Subodh Roy, Loknath Bali, Ananta Singh, Subodh Chowdhury, Phani Nandi, Haripada Bhattacharya, Ranadhir Das Gupta, Ananda Gupta and many others. 

It is there for all to see as to who are the betrayers of the freedom struggle and collaborators of the British colonialism in India.