Saturday, July 20, 2019
Pranab Mukherjee speech at RSS HQ highlights: Ex-president praises Sardar Patel at Nagpur ##
Pranab Mukherjee speech at RSS HQ highlights: Ex-president praises Sardar Patel at Nagpur
8.34pm: Former President Pranab Mukherjee ends his address at the RSS event in Nagpur.
8.30pm: “Every day we see increased violence around us. This violence is a form of darkness. Our motherland is asking for peace, harmony, happiness,” says Pranab Mukherjee.
8.25pm: Sardar Patel united and integrated India, says Pranab Mukherjee.
8.21pm: Democracy became our most treasured guide. Democracy is not a gift, but a sacred guide: Pranab Mukherjee.
8.18pm: Intolerance will only dilute our national identity. Any attempt to define our nation through religion, dogma or intolerance will only fade our existence: Pranab Mukherjee
8.15pm: “Our national identity has emerged after a long drawn process of confluence and assimilation, the multiple cultures and faiths make us special and tolerant,” says former president Pranab Mukherjee.
“We derive our strength from tolerance. We respect our pluralism. We celebrate our diversity,” he added.
8.12pm: “Nation is defined as a large group of people sharing same language, heritage. Nationalism is defined as identification oneself with one’s own nation. Patriotism is defined as devotion to one’s own country,” says Pranab Mukherjee.
8.10pm: Pranab Mukherjee begins address at RSS headquarters in nagpur.
“I am here amongst you to share my understanding with you of the concepts of nation, nationalism and patriotism in the context of India,” he says.
8pm: RSS is trying to bring everyone together in the country and not trying to establish itself as a Hindu outfit. No one is alien to us: Mohan Bhagwat.
7.50pm: “The Sangh has one objective, that no matter difference in opinion and language, individuals in the nation work to make their environment better,” says Mohan Bhagwat.
7.40pm: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat thanks Pranab Mukherjee for taking time to understand his organisation. “This is an annual event. We call dignitaries every year. Those who can come, grace the event with their presence. But all the discussion and opposition around who visits us and when is needless,” he says.
7.35pm: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat addressing the audience at the valedictory function of the Sangh’s third-year officers’ training camp in Nagpur.
7.15pm: Former president Pranab Mukherjee is introduced to the audience. He will be addressing the workers shortly.
6.50pm: Images of Pranab Mukherjee at RSS HQ have anguished millions of Congress workers and those who believe in pluralism, diversity, tweeted Anand Sharma.
6.30pm: Former president Pranab Mukherjee arrives at Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Tritiya Varsh event in Nagpur.
5.40pm: “Today I came here to pay my respect and homage to a great son of Mother India,” writes former President Pranab Mukherjee in his message in the visitor’s book at RSS founder KB Hedgewar’s birthplace in Nagpur.
5.24pm: Former President Pranab Mukherjee visits the birth place of the RSS founding Sarsanghachalak Keshav Baliram Hedgewar ahead of his speech at the Sangh headquarters.
RSS’s role in nation-building’ part of Maharashtra varsity syllabus Read | RSS affiliate says India should not issue foreign currency bonds ##
German Ambassador meets Mohan Bhagwat, RSS chief looks smitten
HIGHLIGHTS
German Ambassador took a tour of RSS headquarters in Nagpur He visited the facility and met RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat He also shared the pictures of his visit to the RSS facility on social media Germany's Ambassador to India Walter J Lindner on Wednesday visited the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters in Nagpur, Maharashtra. The German Ambassador took a tour of the facility and met RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who looked very pleased in the picture shared by the diplomat. "Visit of Headquarters of RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) in Nagpur and long meeting with its Sarsanghchalak (Chief) Dr Mohan Bhagwat," German Ambassador Walter J Lindner wrote on Twitter. The diplomat, however, also alleged that the organisation has had a controversial past. "Founded 1925, it is world’s largest voluntary organization - though not uncontroversialy perceived throughout its history... (sic)," his tweet said.
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Friday, July 12, 2019
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
The RSS-BJP Kinship and Future of Secular India
KULDIP NAYAR
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]f there was any iota of doubt about the links between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Prime Minister Narendra Modi dispelled it. He presented his key Ministers to the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, and asked them to provide information on the working of their Ministries. That the Prime Minister had no qualms about it was evident from the way the entire presentation was aired on news channels. He has been an ardent pracharak of the RSS before joining its political wing, the BJP.
The party has been evasive on the link because of its realization that the RSS does not go down well with an average Indian. It was the same question of connection which split the Janata Party. The Jana Sangh, the earlier avatar of the BJP, promised to severe its links with the RSS when it joined the Janata Party and gave an assurance to the Gandhian, Jayaprakash Narayan, that it would cut off its relations with the RSS, provided it was allowed to stay in the Janata Party. This delinking did not, however, happen and it betrayed JP’s confidence.
I recall asking JP why he allowed the Jana Sangh to merge with the Janata Party when the former had not cut off its links with the RSS. In reply he said that he had been betrayed because the Jana Sangh leaders had gone back on their word. They had given him an undertaking that once the Janata Party started attending to the organisational work, after forming the government, the Jana Sangh would have nothing to do with the RSS. “I have been personally let down,” said JP.
This must be true but in the process the Jana Sangh was able to get secular credentials. The blunder committed by JP has cost the nation dear and the Jana Sangh of yesterday has emerged as the BJP of today, and has been able to secure an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha.
The Congress should have gained from the situation. But its obsession with the dynasty and party President Sonia Gandhi’s insistence on having her son, Rahul Gandhi, as her successor has dissipated the advantage. The party has lost its dependable vote-bank of Muslims. The community is now following either regional parties or even flirting with the idea of supporting Owaisi, who is trying to present himself as the sole representative of Muslim leaders, as those in the Muslim League used to do before partition.
The community does not want to go back to parochial politics. Yet, it may have no option except to toy with the idea since the RSS has come out openly on the field to guide the BJP, jettisoning its role of being a pure cultural organisation. That the RSS has not gone through the electoral process does not bother the organization because it knows that the BJP has to depend on the RSS cadres to win elections.
Nonetheless, it is sad to see on television channels RSS chief Bagwat making it clear who is the boss when Prime Minister Modi met him and paraded his ministerial colleagues in front of him. True, the electorate has given a majority to Modi but never did he say during his campaign that when it comes to the country’s governance, the RSS would be very much there.
In fact, during his campaign, Modi assured the minorities, particularly the Muslims, that whatever be the party’s stance in the past the new slogan was sab ka sath, sab ka vikas. At a few meetings he went out of the way to make the Muslims believe that he would be their best custodian.
Really speaking, there is nothing discriminatory in his way of working so far. However, the fact of the RSS saffronising the educational institutions and making appointments of its own men in key positions is visible. It suggests that Modi is implementing the RSS agenda slowly but relentlessly. It is evident that the Muslims have seized to count in the affairs of governance. The Central Cabinet itself has just one Muslim Minister. Even otherwise, the increasing impression inside and outside the government is that a soft-type of Hindutva has begun to prevail in governance.
The target of the RSS-to have a Hindu Rashtra-may look distant at present. But Modi still has three-and-a-half years to go. Both he and the RSS chief, who now often meet publicly, seem to be working according to the plan which they have devised at Nagpur, the RSS headquarters. The BJP and its students’ wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, have no independent thinking. They just follow the script finalised at Nagpur.
This has a different manifestation. Sometimes it appears in the shape of a ban on meat and sometimes the dress code and even compulsory teaching of Sanskrit in schools and specific morning prayers in assemblies. The redoing of the Nehru Memorial Museum at Delhi is part of the same thinking. The RSS, which was nowhere when the movement to oust the British was fought, is now trying to occupy all the space and parade as the real champion of freedom.
One sadly feels the absence of the passion of the freedom struggle and the philosophy of pluralism. Even the name of the architect of modern India, Jawaharlal Nehru, is being systematically erased. For example, the postal stamps of Nehru and Indira Gandhi are being obliterated. The havoc caused in the field of education is terrible. History is being re-written and textbooks are changed to downgrade the role of leaders who were instrumental in getting us our freedom. It is no surprise that the names of Frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who stood bravely against the Muslim League, are seldom mentioned.
Understandably, the RSS and its affiliated units like the BJP and the Bajrang Dal, feel left out when freedom struggle is mentioned. But they do not have to minimize the freedom struggle itself because that will amount to a great disservice to tomorrow’s generations. The important thing is the struggle for independence and the sacrifices made by innumerable people.
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