Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: RSS ( MP Government's Silent revolution in Education)
From: bhatnagr@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Raj Bhatnagar)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 92 19:02:55 GMT
Organization: University of Cincinnati

In article <92248.121423DXS23@psuvm.psu.edu> 
Deepak Srivastava <DXS23@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:


>As far as contributions of militant freedom fighters towards our
>freedom struggle is concerned I think it was complementary to
>the overall movement (of ordinary people) led by Gandhi. Can I
>also put this other way round, i.e., mass movements led by Gandhi
>were complimentary to what militant freedom fighters did ? I
>do not think so. And this is precisely what RSS, through Vidya
>Bharati schools and changes in history books, is trying achieve
>in BJP ruled MP and UP state schools.
>
>
>regards..        Deepak


The following is an excerpt from an article that appeared in
`The Tribune' newspaper of Lahore on May 14th, 1934. It was
written by Prof. Gulshan Rai, a regulat political columnist 
of the paper. It provides a peep into the difference of perspective
between Gandhi+Nehru's vision of independence and the vision
of Independence being pursued by the RSS-parivar today, and since
their inception.


   "Our present day political leaders have developed a peculiar 
   mentality. Many of them think that if in order to win political
   independence it becomes necessary to sacrifice the Hindu culture
   and civilization, we should not hesitate to do it. To these
   amiable gentlemen the winning of political independence alone
   is the end in view. They are quite willing to throw into the 
   Arabian sea the very basis and the definitional charactersistic
   of the Indian unity and identity - namely, the civilization and
   culture which our rishis and saints took thousands of years to
   build up.  To me the winning of political independence is only
   a means - a necessary and effective means - to attain the 
   objective of reviving, and re-establishing the evolutionary 
   civilizational process of Hindu culture in its home and birth 
   place - India. If I cannot attain this objective then Swaraj 
   is of little use to me."


So, keeping in view the above feelings, it is not difficult to 
see the difference between Gandhi+Nehru's vision of political
independence and RSS's vision of cultural renaissance.  RSS, 
therefore, wants to put into limelight those people whose vision 
of Hindutva being the basis of Indian identity is yet to be 
achieved. Gandhi's very effective and commendable leadership role 
in winning the political independence is not to be denied
or negated, but the objective now is to focus attention towards the
cultural renaissance, the political independence having already been
won.

The emphasis on more militant freedom fighters, in my view, is to
present as role-models those individuals who had given up everything
towards the national cause. You will notice that what is highlighted
is only their intentions to free India and not other philosophies
etc. that they may have propounded. For example, Bhagat Singh is 
projected as a role-model who gave his life to bring an awakening to
the masses. His personal beliefs, some of which may be termed as
left-leaning in today's lingo, are not of any consequence to the
"role-model" that is being presented to the students. Of course,
Gandhi is also one such role-model and nobody is denying it, not
even RSS. I haven't seen any RSS literature denigrating Gandhi on
this count.

---raj



Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian