Radha Rajan's last installment

Smt Rajanwrites – Hedgewar, in the wake of the Moplah massacre realized that the INC did not have the capacity to handle jihadi Islam and that the direction in which Gandhi was leading the INC was certain to have tragic consequences for the Hindus. It was this realization which forced Hedgewar to create the RSS but given the Muslim League’s political orientation and political objectives, it is puzzling why Hedgewar did not fashion the RSS as an effective Hindu militant political instrument to deal with the Muslim League.

Hindu nationalists are left with the baffling question, how if the Muslim League had political objectives, was Hindu society going to handle the threat without a political instrument. Gandhi declared the INC was not a Hindu party and did not serve Hindu interests while Hedgewar created a Hindu socio-cultural outfit that had neither political objectives nor a militant orientation; in retrospect, it is obvious that neither the INC nor the RSS was equipped to stave off the bloody vivisection of the Hindu nation in 1947.

And elsewhere in the same article Smt Rajan asserts –

To put it bluntly, both Gandhi and Hedgewar, two most powerful Hindus of the time, heading two very powerful organizations,did not aim to stop the Muslim League or jihadi Islam in their tracks.

Election 2009 – The BJP got what it deserved – 4

– Namaste

–Varta–

Pala S writes: Whenever I think of the Ramajanmabhoomi movement, I am reminded of Gandhi. The vast masses of Hindus rallied around Hindu organizations and Gandhi for precisely the same reasons and we should never forget this. They rallied because the medium touched their hearts. The Dharma inspired message stirred them onto tremendous action. Gandhi was successful as a mass leader only because he used a Hindu idiom to drive his message. His satyagraha, ahimsa, fasts, vegetarianism all of these appealed to the innate Hindu respect for renouncers and saints. Hindu masses hardly knew him as a consummate politician. That was his strength and proof of a serious flaw in his Hindu followers. The flaw of not questioning a saint’s purpose. Hindus never asked Gandhi why he rallied Hindus with Hindu idoms but did not work for their Hindu national goals. 

In a similar vein, Hindu masses who rallied under Hindu organizations never monitored how their tremendous energies were being utilized to achieve specific Hindu national goals. Naturally they (Hindu masses) as with Gandhi trusted Hindu organizations to do the right thing by their people. Gandhi let the Hindus down and so did the RSS and it’s family.

Political mindedness makes people question, grow skeptical, to look through schemes for what they are. I’m not talking about being cynical but about being alert to reality. I think what happened with Hindu attitudes to Gandhi and toward the Ramajanmabhoomi leadership was that there was too much awe. A tendency to allow leadership to take charge of a people’s destiny without question.

There can be no doubting that Gandhi and the later Hindu leadership were right in their essentials, i.e. the need to wed politics with dharma. Where they went badly wrong is the failure to take their base along with them in their understanding of both. This blind spot in their support base made it that much more easier for these worthies to betray the Hindus.