RSS rejects anti-Muslim image, calls it "mischievous propaganda"

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RSS rejects anti-Muslim image, calls it "mischievous propaganda"

By Myra MacDonald

 

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - 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."