How the propaganda against RSS falls flat on its face

(This is a reprint from NewsBred).

RSS suffers from misinformation
(Image by newsbred.com)   Details   DMCA

Indian Express has two voices that do not like RSS or BJP or Hindu resurgence in India. You scroll down articles of either Christophe Jaffrelot or Ashutosh Varshney and get the drift. Jaffrelot is more scholarly and dense; Varshney more sound and less substance. Both are present in Indian Express of today, dominating two separate pages.

Jaffrelot is the crudest today than he has perhaps ever been in his long association with the Indian Express. All the veneers of scholarly nuances are out of the window. What remains is a pen-pusher who is unsure of his dwindling influence over the readers or his promoters. The crux of his agenda is that lynchings is orchestrated by the present dispensation who appear in different garbs at different times: RSS, its affiliates, BJP etc. He terms it the "deep state." Everything that's wrong with Modi's India--the "cruelty" against Muslims and Dalits--is part of a larger design. In his view, India is a theocratic state in the making.

To Jaffrelot's misfortune, Varshney has a detailed interview on page 25 with Waltern Andersen who has a new book, "The RSS: A view to the inside" in the market. It completely debunks Jaffrelot's argument that RSS and its affiliates are the "deep state" in India. Indeed, Varshney couldn't have done a better service to RSS or BJP with this interview (a must read, I say).

Now Varshney must not have bargained for it but the Andersen interview is a validation of RSS. All Indian Express could do was to pick a comment as headline: "A battle between Hindutva and Hinduism is coming." I will reserve dwelling on this headline in the end: I promise the irony in it would have you doubling up in uncontrollable laughter.

The interview first establishes the credentials of Andersen: the only scholar to have observed the RSS for five decades. Then Varshney rolls out the questions, which reflect his own venom:

(a) What about RSS chief MS Golwalkar and his book, "We, our nationhood defined."

(b) For Savarkar, Muslims and Christians born in India were not Indians/Hindus.

(c) What pledge pracharaks take? Can they marry? (An answer hopefully which would nail Modi, himself was a pracharak).

(d) RSS influences state and its' policies.

(e) What is RSS views on Modi's economics.

(f) RSS is committed to promotion of Hindi as language.

(g) What is RSS view on ideal Hindu women, and divorce.

(h) The RSS relationship with Muslims.

(i) How does RSS integrate lower caste? What is RSS views on Ambedkar who was anti-Hindu?

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).