Skip to main content

IS and RSS

Ghulam Nabi Azad did not really compare the terrorist outfit, Islamic State, with RSS.  He says he only mentioned the two in the same breath.  He was opposed to both.

Though the IS and RSS may share a few things in common, putting them on two sides of the same balance is preposterous.  Tavleen Singh, in her column in The Indian Express, elaborates on that preposterousness and then goes on to assert that she grew up despising RSS.  This is what she says:

I found their aggressive nationalism silly and their obsession with Hindu revivalism boring. I still do. I believe that reducing the vast wealth of Indian civilisation to a debate about beef is vandalism. Since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, we have seen far too many of his partymen exhibit their complete ignorance about Hindu civilisation by spreading hatred against those who eat beef and believing that they do this in the cause of reviving Hindu thought from Vedic times. Most of them have learned their ideas from RSS shakhas, so it should be clear that the RSS needs to change a lot more than its knickers

This is all, more or less, what I have been telling in my writings all through.  I’m happy to find someone who agrees with me or, being humble, someone with whom I agree.

I also don’t think that the RSS will stretch its ambition beyond the borders of Bharat Mata and seek to bring the whole world (Vasudaiva Kutumbakam) under the wide umbrella of its ancient culture.  The IS wants to bring the whole world under the Caliphate.  I fail to understand why anyone wants to bring anyone else under anything.  This is one thing I fail to understand about the RSS too.  Why does it want to bring India under the Hindutva umbrella?  Why can’t it let people find their own religious and cultural moorings?  Why does it insist on lending its roots to everybody in the country?  It is in this one regard, on the insistence of making everyone wear the same religio-cultural robes, that the RSS is being compared with IS.  Of course, we know, like Tavleen Singh, that the RSS has only grown up from knickers to trousers and has not post-graduated in the ideology as the IS has.


Comments

  1. Totally agree. There's no comparison between RSS and IS at all. RSS is militant, but they do try to help the country during crisis, which is more than what IS does. I'm totally against the policy of RSS and their brand of Hinduism, but given a choice, I'd always choose RSS over IS.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When any organization is on a downward slide, no one can predict how low it will go. Still it's quite certain that RSS won't hit the levels reached by IS.

      Delete
  2. RSS is an organization founded to serve the nation without differentiate between cast , religion or region but those dont know much about RSS are always think that RSS is against Muslims or others but Yes , RSS is against those are in the dress of India but playing for others.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The problem is there are elements both in RSS and its affiliates that have criminal tendencies. If they can be controlled quite a lot of problems will be solved.

      Regarding those who act against the nation, aren't there laws to deal with them? Why should any organization take the law into their hands?

      Moreover, is India such a feeble concept that it will crumble on the face of a few individuals shouting some slogans?

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...

The Covenant of Water

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...

Koorumala Viewpoint

  Koorumala is at once reticent and coquettish. It is an emerging tourist spot in the Ernakulam district of Kerala. At an altitude of 169 metres from MSL, the viewpoint is about 40 km from Kochi. The final stretch of the road, about 2 km, is very narrow. It passes through lush green forest-looking topography. The drive itself is exhilarating. And finally you arrive at a 'Pay & Park' signboard on a rocky terrain. The land belongs to the CSI St Peter's Church. You park your vehicle there and walk up a concrete path which leads to a tiled walkway which in turn will take you the viewpoint. Below are some pictures of the place.  From the parking lot to the viewpoint The tiled walkway A selfie from near the view tower  A view from the tower Another view The tower and the rest mandap at the back Koorumala viewpoint is a recent addition to Kerala's tourist map. It's a 'cool' place for people of nearby areas to spend some leisure in splendid isolation from the hu...