On Sunday, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat shocked people by asserting that the organisation has the ability to prepare an “army” to fight for the country within three days, if such a situation arises. He was addressing the workers at a Zila school ground on the last day of his six-day visit of Muzaffarpur. Wording of his statement was telling. He said that Sangh follows a military discipline and can prepare it’s cadre within three days which the Army would do in six to seven months. This is our capability, he asserted adding RSS cadre will be ready to take on the front if the country faces such a situation and Constitution permits it to do so.
The statement has snowballed into a major controversy. Opposition parties have criticised Bhagwats statement but for all the wrong reasons. The real point of what Bhagwat said has been missed and perhaps deliberately so to serve the respective political ends. For example, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that Bhagwat had insulted every Indian by this statement. Similarly, others have rubbished him for disparaging the army. But was Bhagwat doing this? No. Being a nationalistic organization, the RSS looks up to the army. So the alleged insult to the army that Bhagwat is deemed to have culpable of is at best inadvertent in nature. It was not what he meant.
But this by no means reduces the statement’s deeply troubling import. Bhagwat talks of the readiness of the RSS cadre to fight for the country and its mobilization at a short notice. One wonders why a country with one of the world’s largest armies will need the followers of a so-called cultural organisation to fight for it. And even more important is the question under what circumstances.Would RSS fight another country in the event of a war? This is something that a largely unarmed cadre can’t do. Then what is it that Bhagwat seeks to fight? He hasn’t elaborated on this. But one can very well figure out that he talks of an extraordinary internal situation which the RSS cadre could help fight. And what could such a situation be like? There is nothing that comes to mind other than a communal conflagration in the country. And what will be the role of an RSS cadre in this? Certainly, not of preventing the riot. One can trust them to be both abettors and the perpetrators of the violence against minority communities, particularly Muslims.
So, Bhagwat’s statement is a thinly veiled threat against minorities, just what Hitlers SS once represented for Jews in Germany. And this is certain to create deeper anxiety among the country’s largest minority community. More so, when RSS cadre is estimated to be in millions. And if mobilized, they can wreak havoc. Normally, such a dangerous statement should have been taken due note of by the government and the action initiated, but this won’t happen. The RSS is not just a Hindu revivalist organisation, it is an inextricable part of India’s governing structure. But one expects that at least India’s vibrant civil society and the opposition parties show their opposition to the RSS plan and reassure the minorities.
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