As you sow so shall you reap. This time-tested, universally acknowledged adage came to prove true once again when two more senior functionaries of RSS, Ashok Varshney and Ashok Beri, were questioned by the CBI for arranging accommodation for the Ajmer blast accused, Devendra Gupta, in Lucknow and Sitapur, while he was on the run.
Yes, this coming of the foot soldiers of RSS or its affiliates like Abhinav Bharat, Sanatan Sanstha and Sri Ram Sena and its political wing BJP, to name only a few, under the scanner of the CBI, NIA and the various SITs is the natural corollary of decades, nay a century, old nurturing of young, impressionable minds in the shakhas that may well be called the ‘breeding grounds of terrorism’. The emerging situation has once again emphasised that the entire edifice of Hindutva rests on minority bashing, hate mongering and practising violence. The situation has come to such a sorry but alarmingly revealing pass that it is now rather impossible for the organisation to sustain the long-pursued denial. There is no wonder that it has resorted to purging of its rank and file. But this purging is meant to throw sand in the eyes of the investigating agencies. The fact remains that no amount of purging is going to wash its hands off the stain of blood of innocent lives.
Its sowing of seeds of hatred and violence can be traced to the two books, We or Our Nationhood Defined and Bunch of Thoughts by RSS second Sarsanghchalak Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar. These treatises are so full of inflammatory statements, naked hatred for minorities and eulogies for the likes of Hitler that even the followers of RSS shudder to own them. Golwalkar and his followers denigrate democracy and pluralism on one hand and uphold fascist concept of nationhood and sectarian version of culture on the other. It is not that they simply ideologically believe in the fascists ideas of Golwalkar. They are taking diabolically-hatched measures to turn our plural Bharat into a Hindu Rashtra. Let us once again recall the sensational disclosure Rajeshwar Dayal, then Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, made in A Life of Our Times revealing that soon after the partition deputy IGP of the western range BBL Jaitely produced before him two steel trunks full of “incontrovertible evidence of a dastardly conspiracy to create a communal holocaust throughout the western districts.” The evidence included accurate maps “marking out the Muslim localities and habitations”. It was the timely raid conducted on the RSS premises that brought the massive conspiracy to light.
This should have made the powers-that-be nip this evil in the bud. But, as the presence of Saffron elements in political as well as administrative corridors would have it, the Hindutva menace was allowed to grow and yield fruits, detrimental to the plural and democratic ethos of the country. It is high time the Government ensured that the real culprits behind the blasts across the country are brought to the book.