SRINAGAR: Before taking off from Jammu after a 4-day visit, RSS Chief, Dr Mohan Bagwat had an online interaction with Swaysevaks from 989 places within Jammu and Kashmir. The address was mostly about expanding the RSS network besides the emphasis on personality building, organization setup, nation-building, and challenges before the nation.
The party will be celebrating its first century of existence in 2025, he told the cadres. He told the participants that they will have to organize the whole Hindu society and make India a Vishwa Guru. “The work has just started, not finished. So the need to work with patience is more important”, Jammu news portal, The Dispatch quoted Dr Bhagwat saying.
Earlier, Dr Bhagwat had a close-door meeting with the senior leaders of Bharatiya Janata Party, some prominent citizens, and socio-political activists from Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh in which issues related to law and order were discussed. Jammu newspaper, Daily Excelsior reported that there were “discussions on the prevailing political and law and order situation in twin UTs post abrogation of Article 370.”
“Sources said some of the activists from J&K apprised the RSS chief about the problems being faced by the people even after the abrogation of Article 370. They alleged that the public grievances redressal system is totally poor in UT of J&K and people are not being heard by the administration. They said that the administration was harassing the people unnecessarily and production of State Subjects is still being made mandatory by some departments,” the newspaper reported. “They said though they expected a new change will be visible on ground after the annulling of Article 370 but the people still continue to face problems which has led to public resentment also, sources said, adding the RSS chief told them that everything will be set right by and by and people should have patience.”
Those who were invited for the meeting included Ravinder Raina, Ashok Koul, Dr Jitendra Singh and Jugal Kishore Sharma.
In Srinagar, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference stated that the RSS chief’s speech in Jammu unravels his organization’s exclusionist ideology that feeds on majoritarianism.
While taking strong exception to RSS chief’s remarks in Jammu on preaching patriotism to Jammu and Kashmir people, party spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar said: “Before RSS starts serving certificates on patriotism, they should do a fact check on their own history. Their own credentials are under doubt. They have had a persistent problematic relation with the tricolour, which they didn’t hoist on their headquarters for more than five decades. They lack the moral disposition to preach nationalism and patriotism to JK people. They had absolutely no role in the independence struggle of India. On the contrary Sher e Kashmir on account of his sincerity to the thought of secularism and patriotism was referred to as Sher e Bharat by none other than Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy.”
BJP -RSS doesn’t believe in any nationalism, on the contrary, Imran said it is a toolkit to deflect people’s attention from real issues and run away from legitimate issues relating to failures of present incumbent governance. “Their report card on nation-building is poor,” he added.
He further said that India’s legitimate sense of ‘nationhood’ is embedded in a multi-cultural, multi-religious plurality. “It is a vibrant glue that holds our country together. All the people of India are participants in this shared sense of nationhood, and any attempt by one group to claim a monopoly on nationalism by doubting the nationalistic bona fides of the ‘other’ is to deliberately equate nationalism with deeply corrosive majoritarianism. It is because of entities and proxies like in JK that BJP and RSS are trying hard to push their vision. However JK people won’t allow RSS and it’s proxies to achieve their much-anticipated goals in JK,” Imran said.
