Stung by the focus on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's alleged terror links, at the Congress plenary session that ended here on Monday, the organisation dismissed it as an attempt by the ruling party to divert attention from other issues it was facing.
“The RSS does not believe in violence or terrorism… if anyone is involved, the law must take its course and whoever is involved must be punished,” RSS general secretary Suresh Joshi stated, while he lashed out at Congress leader Digvijay Singh for making “irresponsible, baseless and false” statements about RSS links to terror acts in Ajmer in Rajasthan, Mecca Masjid at Hyderabad and Malegaon in Maharashtra.
Mr. Joshi said it was counter-productive to talk of majority or minority communities when discussing terror. He charged the Congress with playing vote-bank politics on the issue and “in the days to come, effort will be made to embroil patriotic forces in this manner.”
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The Congress charge has come amid arrests for the murder of Sunil Joshi, an RSS worker and a prime accused in the Malegaon blast case. The police theory is that Sunil Joshi was done to death as he knew too much and if arrested could have unravelled inconvenient links to the higher echelons of the organisation. Several other RSS pracharaks and workers have been arrested for the Ajmer dargah blasts, including Devinder Gupta and Lokesh Sharma, while top RSS man Indresh Kumar was alleged to have organised a meeting where the terror plot was hatched.
Mr. Joshi said that earlier too the organisation had clarified that the RSS was not involved in terrorism and it did not believe in violence or terror tactics. If anyone was found to be involved, the full force of law must be used and the person found guilty must be punished. However, he objected to the Congress linking the RSS with terrorism even as investigations into the terrorist acts at the Ajmer dargah, Malegaon and Mecca Masjid were still on and the accused were awaiting trial.