This is a limited response
to the article, Betrayal of Hindus and intellectual collusion of the BJP-RSS ecosystem by prof Sarkar , Shanmukh
and Dikgaj .
I will restrict my counter to a few points as the article has
too many allegations/ accusations regarding the RSS /BJP and most of it lacks proper research and is
plain slander.
1) Charge is Attributing a quote
to Mr.Sita Ram Goel to describe /slander RSS /RSS members by giving
circumstantial, selective and arbitrary citations. "The
RSS is the biggest collection of duffers that ever came together in world
history" (1989), The link provided is a
very fine Blog /article written by Shri Koenraad Elst .
The authors ..SSD have breached professional ethics by not giving credit
to Koenraad in the main article itself for "manufacturing" the quote .As this
quote is allegedly spoken by Mr. Sita Ram Goel and heard/witnessed by Koenraad and not what Sita Ram Goel actually
wrote about the RSS. Mr.Koenraad decided to publish it after Mr Goel Passed away. So even if it is true it doesn’t hold the test of authenticity. We don’t even know
the context of this slanderous quote,.
In this blog Koenraad discusses Hindu activism outside of Sangh(RSS)
. He is critical of the Sangh and his criticism is incisive yet balanced as he
understands the Sangh and its shortcomings due to his long association,
interaction and engagement with RSS members, pracharaks and his personal
knowledge and Intellectual abilities.
Being an intellectual who was strongly influenced by Sita Ram
Goel one can sense his disenchantment, probable feeling of hopelessness or
helplessness for/ from the “Sangh””RSS” for
not being able to tune up/Match to
their intellectual wavelength or could we say how the RSS could not implement
their intellectual demand of aggressive ideological warfare in regards to
issues relating to Hindus or the allegation that they were compromising
on core issues of Hindus.
However, whether Koenraad is the official designated
Biographer of Shri Sita Ram Goel to attribute a quote to him after he passed
away ,is the ethical moral question. He has taken the Liberty to quote probably
a private talk by Sitaram Goel ( we don’t know
the context ) . Also the 3 quotes mentioned are during 3 different years
spanning 13 years.Koenraad chose to publish these supposed
quotes after Mr.Sitaram passed away, also mentioning the precise year when the supposed utterings
were made. Probably Koenaard was maintaining a dairy. But it is surprising for
all his courage and straightforwardness Shri Sitaram Goel, which Koenraad vouched for,
chose not to write too harshly or atleast in the words attributed
to him about the Sangh in his
lifetime.
Here Koenraad clearly quotes Sita Ram Goel
"Yet
his judgment of them was merciless. In writing, he diplomatically limited
himself to intimating that "in the history of an organization, there comes
a point when its original goal gets overshadowed by its concerns for
itself". But when speaking, he was much blunter. In the presence of myself
and of prominent witnesses, he said for example: "The RSS is the biggest
collection of duffers that ever came together in world history" (1989),
"The RSS is leading Hindu society into a trap from which it may not recover"
(1994), "Hindu society is doomed unless this RSS-BJP movement
perishes" (2003)."
Now
if Unwritten banter is credible evidence then why not produce other Banter
/private talk which Koenraad has attributed to Sitaram Goel. And then should we
conclude that even Sita Ram Goel Betrayed the
cause of Hindus or that he practiced ethnic discrimination ?
Excerpts
from India’s Only Communalist.
In Commemoration of Sita Ram Goel, Voice of India, Delhi2005[WU1] .
“When the Mohajirs were getting butchered by fellow Muslims in
Karachi, he pointed out that they were the creators of Pakistan, a state based
on communal hate. So, if they became the targets of communal violence in the
country of their own making, they could hardly deny they had it coming.
Now, to say this of a Muslim group and of Pakistan is not all
that original in Hindu circles. But Goelji took the logical next step. When the
Kashmiri Pandits were expelled from Kashmir by the local Muslims and a handful
of Pandits visited his office seeking financial help, he did give some money to
a refugee organization of theirs, but not without showering them with a very
stern sermon. He recounted to their faces the less than glorious record
of the Kashmiri Pandit community in the establishment
of an anti-Hindu secularism as India’s state religion. Leaders of the Kashmiri
refugee self-organizations turned out to have been staunch Communists who only
remembered their Hindu identity as soon as they needed to solicit the
solidarity of the wider Hindu society.”
So from the above
statement can we conclude here that Sitaram Goel felt that Kashmiri
Hindus deserved what they got in Kashmir because of their political
affialition.
This is the
precise charge Prof Saswati and authors regularly throw at RSS
-BJP , when they accuse RSS BJP of ethnic discrimination of hindus
due to their political affiliations. Especially for Hindus in WB & kerala .
What will the Kashmiri hindus and crusaders like Prof Hari OM whom
the authors hold in great regard , react to this charge.?
Now to be fair lets
examine what Sita Ram Goel felt about the RSS in the year 1984 when he was 63 years old and had
sufficient interaction with RSS/ RSS Thinkers/intellectuals for lets say of more than 45 years.
Excerpts from PERVERSION OF INDIA'S
POLITICAL PARLANCE By Sita Ram Goel ( 1984)
CHAPTER 1 - Something Seriously Wrong
Somewhere
The article ponders over the Social /political untouchability faced by the
RSS during those times probably for the longest of times. Below is how Shri Sita
Ram Goel concluded the article where we can understand his broad views on RSS / RSS workers. In the
year 1984.
excerpts :
"WHY I HAVE TOLD THIS STORY
I have
told this story not as a part of my autobiography but in order to point out the
gulf which divided a national leader from a national movement. Here was a
leader who had fought for national freedom and who was actively thinking and
experimenting with methods of national reconstruction. And here was a national
movement which took its birth at a critical juncture in the same fight for
national freedom and which was now concentrating on training our youth for the
same task of national revitalization. Yet the two of them -- the national
leader and the national movement - stood apart and could not see eye to eye on
matters of major importance.
Nor have I chosen J.P. simply because I
happened to see him functioning from close quarters at one time. I have chosen
him because he was a leader who had continued to grow out of closed ideologies,
who had shed prejudices and who was sincerely in search of a wider vision. He
was not like Pandit Nehru and many others whose thought-processes became
fossilized in the `thirties or the `forties and who had subsequently failed to
have a fresh look at national or international affairs. It was all right for
J.P. to disown, even denounce the RSS so long as he was an orthodox socialist
with his moorings in Marxist thought. But the event I have described took place
several years after he had publicly renounced Marxism and affirmed his faith in
the path shown by Mahatma Gandhi.
Nor yet is it my intention to build a case for the RSS which is
quite capable of looking after itself. I have chosen the RSS as the symbol of
an ancient society and culture which have suffered for a long time and in no
small measure from successive waves of aggressive imperialism let loose by
Islam and Christianity, now joined by Communism. The aggression from all these
dark forces is still continuing. There are many people like myself who have
never been a part of the RSS but who nevertheless feel strongly that this
aggression should stop, that our people should come into their own in their
ancestral homeland, and that our culture should flower and contribute to the
greater good of mankind.
J. P. had at last visited an RSS camp. He had been positively
impressed by the quality of the workers whom the RSS had
mobilized in the service of the nation. And yet he had retained his
earlier reservations about the RSS. He could not visualise that the RSS was not
a miracle which had materialized out of the blue. He could not see that there
must be something in a society and a culture and historical tradition which had
created such a splendid band of selfless workers without
the benefit of any patronage from the powers that be and
in the face of much malicious propaganda in the national and international
press.
These were some of the thoughts which rose in my mind at that time.
I felt very strongly that there was something seriously wrong somewhere. But I
could not resolve the contradictions. I failed to lay my finger on the sore
spot in that sorry situation.Ever since I have pondered over the subject. And I
have at last come to a conclusion which I can now present with some confidence."
The authors SSD chose to call intellectuals from the RSS- BJP
ecosystem “duffers”and used the umbrage of an alleged Sita Ram Goel quote to start their 11000 worded rant and personal
attacks, bordering malicious gossip. They would have done great service by
atleast representing Sita Ram Goels thoughts , views and original work instead of
writing slanderous articles.
One such article is .
Ideological Defence of Hindu Society
SITA RAM GOEL
SITA RAM GOEL
Here the author Sita Ram Goel admits that he has written this
article at the behest of K.S. Sudarshan the then Gen Secy of RSS. Whatever was
the outcome of the seminar and the authors comments/anguish on it, my single point is that it was not that the RSS or RSS thinktank not initiating, indulging in intellectual discussions on matters relating
to Hindus. Also we don’t have any response from K. S Sudarshan as to why the paper was
tampered with ? on whose behest was it done ? and if it was done do we have to
callout K.S Sudarshan or should we put all the Sangh Think tank as anti-intellectuals.?
In the
footnote he( Sita Ram Goel ) severely criticizes
the Sangh for messing up with his work
and not willing to listen to anyone beyond the Sangh .
Footnotes
This was written at the behest of Shri K.S. Sudarshan of the RSS
to serve as the working paper of a series of seminars at different places in
the country. The first seminar was held at the Deen Dayal Research Institute,
New Delhi, in 1983 and was attended by several bigwigs of the RSS as well as
the VHP. The writer of the working paper had also been invited. But when he saw
the working paper that was distributed to the participants, he found that it
was not the paper he had written but its �summary�
distilled by some Sangh scribe. The logic, language and spirit of the original
paper had been more or less completely knocked out. (The Sangh Parivar never
touches anything which does not originate from within it, or unless it has been
messed up by one of its members. No Hindu outside the Sangh Parivar carries any
credit with the Parivar unless the person has status either in terms of wealth
or in the eyes of the secularist establishment.) The discussion that followed
was a free for all, the underlying refrain being that the Sangh �knows it
all, has always known it, and can and will solve all problems in due course�. The
only substantial contribution was made by an RSS lawyer hailing from Anantnag
in Kashmir. �I have studied Islam in depth,� he said, �and found
it to be a great religion. I cannot understand anyone placing Islam in the
dock.� Ironically enough this defender of Islam was literally the first
to be shot dead when the ethnic cleansing started in the Valley in the winter
of 1989. The V.P. Singh Government with I.K. Gujral as its Minister of External
Affairs, provided the opportunity the Islamic terrorists were waiting for.
The
above article is from the below compilation
Time for Stock taking whither Sangh
Parivar ? Edited and compiled by Sita Ram Goel (1996)
Interestingly he gives the credit for this compilation to Dr Shreerang Godbole a junior
swayamsevak who was in the Sangh for 17 years. So much for the allegation by
SSD that the Sangh doesn’t encourage debate /
intellectualism .many of the respondents in this complilation are from
the sangh ecosystem. And this is 1996.
The authors should read the warning Sita Ram Goel offers/ advises to scholars among
Hindus in point 9 of his presentation.
“On the other hand, traditional Hindu saints, sannyasins and
scholars have not been able to meet the challenge”
.
we expected the authors knowing some of
them to be knowledgeable and showing concern for hindu causes ,to come out with an original idea, thought ,plan , for the benefit of Hindus or Hindu Society .Instead
I think they are working at cross purposes .After reading the article of SSD
one feels let down that fellow Hindus far from being charitable to a large
Hindu Organisation i.e RSS are busy
abusing and being judgemental about it. Having said that criticism is always welcome, not slander.
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