History proves how wrong the award-returning, anti-RSS/Modi Left-liberals are

Two things the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has lacked are articulation and timely response before the media. That is the reason why despite being factually correct, RSS spokespersons have generally been the underdogs in media debates with pan-Islamists such as Asaduddin Owaisi managing an upper hand on debating platforms despite the falsity of their arguments.

So, it was indeed refreshing to see RSS leader Dattareya Hosabale choosing his words with utmost precision while denouncing the ongoing drama of Left-liberal intellectuals returning national awards to protest alleged religious intolerance by Sangh Parivar elements. While warning against using RSS as a "punching bag" he called those intellectuals frustrated and intolerant, and accused them of raising a false bogey because they can’t stomach the coming of nationalist forces to power in Delhi. The RSS joint general secretary said during the national RSS meet at Ranchi: “The RSS is not a punching bag for any of these so-called liberal, pseudo-secular, intolerant people. Where were they when Pandits were thrown out of Kashmir Valley and 59 Hindus were killed at Godhra railway station in 2002?"

The press interaction of two RSS leaders, Krishna Gopal and Manmohan Vaidya, in Ranchi too reflected a new sharpness in tackling the Left liberals, notwithstanding the antics of a partial media.

The whiff of fresh air in the RSS’s media-handling corridors also aptly reflected the fine positioning that the RSS did at Ranchi while expressing its concern on the demographic rise of Muslims and Christians in the country. Even in the past the RSS stand amid controversies has been generally based on credible facts and figures. But its articulation has been often poor. That was not the case this time. The figures that the RSS resolution reeled out pointed towards an alarming increase in Muslim and Christian population through conversion and infiltration especially in the border areas of Northeast. It made for a strong argument in favour of its appeal to the Union government to check the rise of the minority population and moot a population policy to protect national security and integrity.

Unfortunately, such has been the noise created by Left-liberals that even the normally balanced President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, has come under pressure. Though a river of communal blood is nowhere in sight he has already appealed three times to the nation for tolerance. On the other hand, an international rating agency like the Moody's has warned the Modi government that it should check the rabble-rousers (read Hindus) or face losing global and domestic credibility.

The blatancy of one-sided liberals

To find the right answers to these controversial questions being drummed up by Left-liberals, one has to go deeper and check for evidence. Some questions need to be examined:

Does one unfortunate and condemnable incident like the one at Dadri or the statements of one Sakshi Maharaj or one Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti amount to a threat to religious tolerance at the national level? If so, what has been the Left-liberal take on many reverse incidents, which the media underplayed under the false notions of minority protection, like the one in Kerala a couple of years ago in which a Christian teacher’s hand was chopped off by a Wahabi fanatic in true Saudi Arabia style ?

When Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, was alive, many Wahabi fanatics took out public rallies in India in his support including one in 2007 in "Hindutva laboratory Gujarat". Why was there no hue and cry from the liberals on these incidents though it was a known fact that the rallyists were all Indian Wahabis or to be more precise, radicals amongst the followers of the Deoband school, its missionary wing Tabligh Jamat, and a second Wahabi stream named Ahle-Hadis? Significantly, last year, Sulayman Nadwi, a senior preacher of the Nadwa seminary, a Wahabi school headquartered in Lucknow, called for support to the terrorist organisation Islamic State (ISIS). Many Sufi Muslims and even moderate Wahabis condemned Nadwi’s call but there was not a word from the Left-liberals who are now in queue to return national awards in what appears to be a last-ditch attempt to rattle the Modi government and the Sangh Parivar.

Are these intellectuals aware that their political actions are coming at a great cost to the nation? If their anti-Modi and anti-RSS stand leads to a slide in India’s economic rating by credit rating agencies, it could mean less investment and lesser jobs, which in turn would impact the war against poverty. In a way Modi finds himself in a difficult situation. His sincere, single-minded pursuit of economic growth and good governance is being hampered with obstacles, first by a few odd rabble-rousers of the Sangh Parivar and then by the Left-liberals who see isolated incidents of Hindu aggression as a golden opportunity to rattle his onward march.

The story of the Hindu-Muslim problem and demographic disparity begins from Partition and it is the Hindus who have suffered

The issue of demographic disparity between Hindus and Muslims assumes a totally different significance  if the dreadful partition story is legitimately brought into the picture. No honest debater on the subject of Hindu and Muslim demography can deny that the story of demographic disparity starts from the day India was divided at the behest of a section of Muslims and against the wishes of the Hindus who saw it as a division of their motherland. Significantly, since 1947, the Hindu population in Pakistan, thanks to ethnic cleansing and religious persecution by a section of Muslim fanatics, has come down to a trickle while in India the Muslim population has burgeoned since.

The dramatic decrease in the Hindu population in Pakistan and the alarming rise in the Muslim population in India since 1947 negates the charges of unbridled persecution of Muslims in India that have been repeatedly levelled by pan-Islamists like Owaisi and their covert and indirect supporters, the Left-liberals, who are returning awards.

Sangh Parivar’s problems

The RSS' problem is that some of its organisations have encouraged an emotional brand of cultural nationalism which often is incapable of going beyond sloganeering and at other times oblivious to the damage that over-aggression in the name of Hindutva can cause to national unity, even if the "saffron" cause is correct. Instead, a robust, broad-based nationalism should have been followed. Strategy-wise too, emotional cultural nationalism is bad. It discourages scholarship which is possible only in an atmosphere of patience and is very necessary when you are fighting an ideological battle in a world that is scientific and rational.

For example, most Sangh Parivar sections including many senior RSS functionaries are often ignorant about the differences between moderate Sufis, orthodox Wahabis and the terrorism-friendly ultra-Wahabis. The statements of Union ministers like Mahesh Sharma who said, "APJ Abdul Kalam was a nationalist despite being a Muslim" reflect bankruptcy of ideological understanding and complete ignorance of the fact that while the medieval history is replete with fanatic Muslim rulers who committed untold atrocities on Hindus, there have been quite a few Muslims, particularly during the later medieval period and even in nearer past who demonstrated unparalleled nationalism.

Strategy-wise, emotional Hindutva has proved very damaging to the RSS and has, on other other hand, given a stick to its ideological rivals to beat it with. An honest study would reveal that the number of Hindus falling victim to the proselytisation activities of the Christian missionaries is much more that those being brought back to Hinduism by RSS bodies in the name of "ghar wapsi" (reconversion). But when an RSS worker raises the cry of "ghar wapsi" it resonates owing to the strategic protests by Left-liberals and camouflages the much more objectionable and widespread conversion activity being carried out by the missionaries.

More discomfiting facts for the pan-Islamists and Left-liberals

There are many more discomfiting facts of recent Indian history that make a mockery of the show that is being staged to project the religious tolerance of the Hindus and the Sangh Parivar. For example, in the last elections held before independence, that is to the Central Assembly in 1945, as many as 86.7 per cent of the total Muslims who exercised their franchise voted in favour of the Muslim League and less than two per cent for the Congress. As late Chimanbhai Mehta, a Congress-turned-Janata Dal leader in Gujarat and Union minister, once told me: “The families of a large number of Muslims who became leaders in the Congress after independence were in fact supporters of Muslim League and Pakistan at the time of Partition. I can vouch at least for Gujarat”. In fact, Ibrahim Chundrigar, one of the earliest prime ministers of Pakistan, was a native of Jamalpur area of Ahmedabad.

So, considering these facts while going into the Hindu-Muslim imbroglio since Partition, who has suffered more injustice – Hindus or Muslims? In fact, it is a reverse case of elder brother getting a raw deal as compared to the younger brother in a family partition. The honest have their reply. But those who want to skirt it for protecting their false ideologies and furthering their divisive agenda would do well to remember that these facts are going to come before the nation sooner or later if the Left-liberals continue with their litany of false charges. One way out for them is by going to Pakistan and seeing for themselves the condition of the hapless Hindus there. If they are honest, they could become sincere human rights campaigners for the Hindus of Pakistan.