The irony in the Prime Minister’s exhortation to
Indians to display the national flag in various places may not be lost on those
who know the history of India’s freedom struggle. Modi is fundamentally an RSS
man and the RSS was bitterly opposed to the national flag and they refused to
hoist that flag on 15 Aug 1947. They hoisted the RSS flag instead.
The classical book, Freedom at
Midnight, describes that flag-hoisting thus:
The ceremony being held on a vacant lot in
the inland city of Poona… was similar to thousands like it taking place all
across the new dominion of India. It was a flag-raising. One thing, however,
set the little ritual apart from most of the others. The flag slowly moving up
a makeshift staff in the centre of a group of 500 men was not the flag of an
independent India. It was an orange triangle, and emblazoned upon it was the
symbol which, in a slightly modified form, had terrorized Europe for a decade,
the swastika.
Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins,
authors of the above book, go on to say the swastika was on the RSS flag for
the same reason as it had been on the banners of Hitler’s Third Reich. It was
an Aryan symbol. It came to India during the first waves of the Aryan conquest
of India. “The men gathered about it in Poona all belonged to the RSS,” the
book goes on, “the para-fascist movement, some of whose members had been
assigned the task of assassinating Jinnah along with Mountbatten in Karachi 48
hours earlier. Hindu zealots, they saw themselves as the heirs to those ancient
Aryans.”
Who was the leader of this group that
hoisted the “para-fascist” flag? Nathuram Godse. At the age of 37, Godse still
carried some vestiges of baby fat on his cheeks, “giving him a deceptively
young and innocent look.” The newspaper that Godse edited, Hindu Rashtra,
left the editorial space blank, “its white columns surrounded by a black band
of mourning.”
The RSS mourned India’s Independence.
Godse delivered a hate-filled speech after the RSS flag was hoisted on 15 Aug
1947. He condemned Gandhi and his Congress for imposing on India the “horrible
sufferings” of the Partition. He led the 500-odd men in front of him to a
pledge to sacrifice themselves for the cause of their Motherland.
The book adds that Godse was an utter
failure all his life. His failures led him to the RSS whose fundamental hatred
holds out a charm to many failures even today. But he wiped out all his
failures with one final act of his: the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Godse
was delivering himself from himself through that act of hatred and vengeance
which was intended to look like a historic sacrifice. What are his followers of
today delivering themselves from by promoting a flag which their founders
detested?
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteLike pirates, nailing their colours to the mast... YAM xx
I detest the double standards of these people. I'd rather they stick on to their hatred once and for all. Why this hypocrisy with the national flag now?
DeleteIn Mumbai BMC will be distributing flags to all households. Societies have been asked to state the number of flags needed. I suppose any resident, for whatever reason, fails to display will be noted.
ReplyDeleteYes, noted as traitor... This is going too far.
Delete