Author: Myra MacDonald
Publication: Yahoo News
Date: April 26, 2002
URL: http://in.news.yahoo.com/020426/64/1mnqe.html
If there are two oft-repeated criticisms
which irritate India's Hindu nationalist RSS, one is that it admired Hitler
and the other is that one of its former members assassinated independence
leader Mahatma Gandhi.
"Mischievous propaganda," says the
national spokesman of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National
Volunteer Corps, which has been campaigning for Hindu nationalism since
it was founded to fight British colonial rule in 1925.
The ideological parent of the ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the RSS also denies its Hindu nationalism
is anti-Muslim.
"All Hindus are tolerant," said
Madhav Govind Vaid in an interview this week. "But there are some things
of which you should be intolerant. Should we tolerate intolerance also?
And should we allow people to abuse and exploit our tolerance?"
Somewhere between a paramilitary
organisation and a Boy Scouts for all ages, the RSS runs cultural and voluntary
programmes, and holds daily exercises and songs for members clad in the
RSS trademark khaki shorts and white t-shirts.
Long a focus of loyalty -- Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was a member for years -- or distrust, it
has been thrust into the limelight by Hindu-Muslim clashes in western Gujarat
state in which more than 850, mostly Muslims, have died.
The violence was sparked by an attack
on a train on February 27 by a Muslim mob in which 59 Hindus were burned
to death.
But an RSS statement that the safety
of minority Muslims depended on the goodwill of majority Hindus drew accusations
that it seemed to be blaming Muslim victims for their own deaths.
The RSS, and by extension its offspring
the BJP, is now the focus of intense soul-searching in India's secular
society where Muslims make up around 12 percent of the one billion population.
"The real safety of the minorities,
any minority, lies in the goodwill of the majority," said Vaid at his office
in Delhi, where the RSS building is identified by a swastika, a symbol
of Hinduism, and Buddhism, long before it was adopted by Nazi Germany.
"It was a general statement. But
it was made to look like a threat, which it was not," he said.
Vaid also denied that the BJP, which
heads a 20-party coalition government, was heavily influenced by the RSS.
"We don't interfere with them. There
are certain issues of national importance about which the RSS expresses
its opinion."
HARD LINE ON PAKISTAN
RSS's views nonetheless find a strong
echo in speeches by BJP leaders, including Vajpayee, prompting some political
commentators to ask who is actually pulling the strings.
The RSS has long opposed Pakistan,
so much so that there have been lingering suspicions that it was behind
the assassination of Gandhi by Nathuram Godse in 1948 in revenge for partition.
"We had many reservations about
Gandhi's approach to placate and appease the Muslims, and those politics
resulted in the partition of our country (into India and Pakistan)," said
Vaid.
But Godse was not backed by the
RSS, Vaid said.
The RSS still clings, however, to
the idea that India and Pakistan could be reunited -- "We have seen the
two Germanys united, two Vietnams coming together," said Vaid.
And it believes India should not
be afraid to go to war with Pakistan over disputed Kashmir, despite the
risk of nuclear war. Both countries held nuclear tests in 1999.
"War is the last resort to resolve
any conflict," said Vaid. "But why should we be afraid of war? Why should
we be blackmailed by the nuclear strength of a hostile power?" asked Vaid.
Close to a million men have been
mobilised on the border after an attack on India's parliament in December
blamed by New Delhi on Pakistan-backed Kashmiri separatists.
Within India, the RSS opposes the
existence of a different legal system for minorities which for example
makes it easier for Muslims to divorce or for Christians to set up schools.
For the RSS all Indians are Hindus,
part of an all-embracing religion which it says leaves room for many different
faiths.
"Even an atheist can be a Hindu.
Hinduism is not a religion. It is a commonwealth of many religions," he
said, blaming religious conflicts on "the aggressive evangelism of the
Church and violent tactics of Muslim terrorists and fundamentalists".
"We base our concept of nationalism
on unity of culture, on unity of a certain value system," added 79-year-old
Vaid.
But he said it was wrong to compare
the RSS to the fascist movements of Italy's Benito Mussolini or Germany's
Adolf Hitler.
"Our ideals are indigenous, not
those of Hitler, not Mussolini."