December was stepped with vitrified electrified hate speeches roaring at the Haridwar event, and Christians were attacked on Christmas
The Haridwar event held in the state of Uttarakhand in India comprised of a conclave of Hindu religious leaders and political activists in saffron robes in the holy city of Haridwar which sadly has brought great shame to India hitting the heart of the nations constitutional and religious values. The event sparked rage not only in India and neighbouring countries but also raised eyebrows in the West causing many leaders to ask serious questions.
The Haridwar Event Sparks Outrage
In a so-called Dharam Sansad or a religious parliament, key personages with a track record of inflammatory and provocative speeches made outrageous calls for genocide against Muslims and asked Hindus to arm themselves with weapons stating one hundred Hindus should kill two million Indian Muslims.
Stunningly, they also evoked the people to kill former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh!
In the event, they also derided and mocked the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi and elevated the name of his slayer, Nathuram Godse lauding him for killing Mahatma Gandhi. In 2019, the police arrested three people in Aligarh after a video of a Hindu fringe group’s workers shooting Mahatma Gandhi’s effigy with an air pistol went viral on the day observed as Martyr’s Day, the death anniversary of Gandhi.
Pakistan summons the Indian envoy over Haridwar hate speech where the charge d’affaires of the Indian high commission was summoned to the foreign ministry in Islamabad and asked to convey the Pakistan government’s serious concerns “over the widely reported open calls by Hindutva proponents for carrying out genocide of Indian Muslims”, an official statement said.
In the meantime, In India, 76 lawyers have written to Chief Justice of India (CJI) NV Ramana, requesting him to take suo motu cognisance of hate speeches made at separate events organised in Delhi and Haridwar.
Organizers and BJP Links
The conclave was organised by Yati Narasimhanand, a religious leader who has been accused in the past of inciting violence with his incendiary speeches. According to a police complaint filed by Trinamool Congress leader and RTI activist Saket Gokhale today, others associated with the gathering are Hindu Raksha Sena’s Prabodhanand Giri, BJP women’s wing leader Udita Tyagi and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay, who is out on bail in hate speech case.
BJP Tejasvi Surya Comments
To add fuel to fire, after the Haridwar event, BJP leader Tejasvi Surya wanted ‘re-conversion’ of Muslims, Christians to Hinduism setting up new flames to an already volatile situation. He took back his comments after wide anger sparked over his speech. Sources report that Surya was told to take back his comments in light of the upcoming Goa elections, where Christians form a sizeable chunk of the population
Churches Attacked on Christmas in the BJP Rule States
On Christmas Day in different parts of India notably from BJP-ruled states, several men from the Bajrang Dal stormed into churches and did not allow Christmas worship to be performed. In states such as Haryana, Assam, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Agra city, Madhya Pradesh, and others, Christmas services were disrupted. Considering Christians mainly celebrate only Christmas and Easter, two days in the year, this greatly upset Christians all over India.
After disrupting Muslim Friday prayers, Gurugram, which is in the state of Haryana, sets another record where on the eve of Christmas, prayers were disrupted in Pataudi town. From ‘law will take its own course’, it has fallen so low where police claim that they did not receive any complaint so far.
While radical Hindus are claiming to do this to preserve their culture, in all cases, these attacks have nothing to do with the survival of Hinduism rather an irrational fear that “Hindus Khatre Mein Hain” meaning Hindus or Hinduism is in danger of being extinguished which is far from the truth because India consists of 80% Hindus.
The Haridwar Event Throws Focus on the RSS Again
The Haridwar event led to people questioning the RSS alleged to be linked to the organizers of the Haridwar event. Ashok Swain, a professor, UNESCO Chair on International Wate who lives in Sweden wrote, “First, Hindu Right-Wing started with Muslims, denying them to pray on Fridays in Gurgaon, India. Now, they are denying Christians to pray even on Christmas Day. This country still claims to be a secular democracy!”
Earlier in Mumbai in a sharp attack against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, Prakash Ambedkar, chief of the Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh (BBM), alleged that Bhagwat did not follow Indian Constitution, but instead followed the ideology of Golwalkar Guruji (M S Golwakar, the second sarsanghachalak of the RSS).
He raised questions over the RSS as an organisation and asked why the organisation had not been registered and did not pay income tax. Ambedkar further claimed the RSS supported the Aryan theory, and considered Hindus to be the most superior and preached genocide of people from other religions if they were not ready to leave the country.
Bhagwat this year had delivered a three-day lecture series at the Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi, during which he asserted the RSS is the ‘most democratic’ organisation and not dictatorial. He insisted that it neither imposed its ideology nor did it remote-control its various affiliates and rejected the claim that it controls the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Ambedkar, the grandson of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, architect of the Indian Constitution, while addressing the media on Thursday said Bhagwat was trying to pretend he and his organisation have changed. “We condemn the new theory of Mohan Bhagwat. The RSS does not follow the Constitution of India. The RSS does not follow any law of the nation. The RSS only follows the ideology of Golwalkar Guruji,” he declared.
“RSS is intending to go back to the Hindu national theory, which is based on the Aryan race theory of Hitler which was against minorities (non-Hindus),” alleged Ambedkar. While condemning the RSS’s Hindu national theory, the Dalit leader cautioned people should beware of the RSS stand while casting their vote.
“Mohan Bhagwat’s latest speech reiterated Golwalkar Guruji’s theory, mentioned in his book, ‘We, Or Our Nationhood Defined’, published in 1939. This is the same theory they intend to adopt if the BJP comes into power after the 2019 Lok Sabha poll,” alleged Ambedkar.
He claimed the book is circulated in Sangh camps and at the Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini Centre during seminars. “The book has stated Hinduism is the national religion and other religions should be accepted as secondary. Hindus should decide how long people belonging to other religions can live in this country. If they will not leave the country, there should be genocide, these are the lessons in the said book,” claimed Ambedkar.
Further elaborating on the theory, he said, “All other religions should scrap their culture, language and religion and should accept Hinduism as the national religion. This is what Bhagwat was trying to convey.” He claimed these books were the gospel of the Sangh. (In Christianity, the gospel, or the Good News, is the news of the coming of the Kingdom of God).
According to Ambedkar, a pact was signed between Golwalkar Guruji and Sardar Patel on July 26, 1949, through which RSS had agreed to follow the Constitution, the tricolour and the national anthem. “However, leaders including Pranab Mukherjee, who had recently shared the RSS dais with Bhagwat, have to clarify whether the RSS had accepted these conditions with their heart?” Ambedkar asked. He claimed ahead of polls, the RSS fears people will not vote for the BJP on the Ram mandir agenda and hence, it was an attempt by Bhagwat to avoid backlash against Sangh workers.
While the “misdeeds” of other NGOs have been targeted, The Indian Express, revealed that a 21-page Intelligence Bureau report has claimed that foreign-funded non-governmental organisations have been “negatively impacting economic development”.
The newspaper said that the environmental group Greenpeace had been singled out for attention, as had other groups agitating against nuclear power projects, mining plans and attempting to organise construction labour. It has since transpired that a portion of the IB report plagiarised portions of a speech delivered by Narendra Modi in 2006 to mark the launch of a book called NGOs, Activists & Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industry.
The Express series has triggered an outcry against all NGOs, which are being denounced with special vehemence on Twitter as frauds and scoundrels, as anti-national entities that are dishonest about the source of their funding. The critics seem blind to the transformative role played by non-profits such as the women’s group SEWA and the child-support service Childline, among others.
The mushrooming of NGOs in recent decades is a direct consequence of the neoliberal philosophy of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a passionate advocate. As in the west, NGOs are filling the holes in social services created by minimal governments aspiring to maximum governance. NGOs are a cornerstone of the public-private partnerships for social development that are seen as a vital part of this economic model. Other non-profits are adjuncts of the corporate world, established to avail of tax breaks for corporate social responsibility initiatives.
Amidst this debate about non-profits, one fact seems to have gone largely unremarked upon India’s biggest NGO, one that played a crucial role in installing Modi as prime minister, also receives foreign funds.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which has an estimated 2.5 million members, created an army of panna prabharis to help Modi during the election campaign. Each prabhari was entrusted with contacting voters on a single page of the electoral rolls and getting them to the polling booth. As Scroll.in has reported, this strategy paid rich dividends.
While foreign-funded NGOs are hit with rules and bound up, many closed down, neither rules nor taxes are extended to the RSS, of which he has been a member since 1971. In 2002, a report titled The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva, put together by a group called The Campaign To Stop Funding Hate, documented how the India Development and Relief Fund, a charity based in the US state of Maryland, was funneling funds to Sangh institutions in India. It claimed that the IDRF had sent more than $3 million to Sangh institutions in the seven years before the report was published.
Thus, while NGOs are suspiciously marked and many put down, the government needs to also investigate the funding of the RSS in all fairness. The unequal yoke is causing discontent and difficulties to the NGOs.
The abolishment of Muslim and Christian NGOs was analyzed by experts to be rooted in fear of the minorities. It is said that PM Modi Govt’s eradication of 13,000 NGOs proved disastrous for India during the worst time of COVID-19 as NGOs are the source and root of helping and saving people’s lives and many NGOs did not have the funds to help. Foreign money also helps the Indian economy, as tourism and trade do.
In the meantime, the climate in India is churning with fear, uncertainty, and rage in the wake of a very polarized atmosphere triggered more heavily by the Haridwar event. Will things get worse?
Rita
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