Objecting to the increased intervention of right-wing forces in Union government’s functioning and policy making, D. Raja, general secretary of Communist Party of India (CPI) and Rajya Sabha member, said that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had taken centre stage in Indian polity after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power at the Centre. He was speaking at his party’s State Council meeting in Kalaburagi on Saturday.
“Being cultural organisation, RSS is playing a political game in the national politics. It is dictating BJP-led Union government on policy matters. Bending to RSS pressure, the government is taking unilateral decisions side lining democratically elected parliament. Indian democracy is in peril,” the communist leader said.
Terming RSS ideology as sectarian, communal and fascist, Mr. Raja said the right-wing forces were making serious attempts to polarise society along religious lines and trigger communal tensions just to turn majority population into a vote-bank for their political outfit, the BJP.
“RSS and its right-wing forces are eyeing the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh. They are attempting to divide people along communal lines and trigger clashes among them so that they could create a majority vote bank for their political arm, the BJP,” he said.
Hailing heroic struggles and sacrifices of left forces in the Indian freedom movement, Mr. Raja claimed that it was left and progressive forces, and not right-wing forces, that fought the British.
“My party and like-minded forces heroically fought British and freed India from colonial yoke. Where were right-wing forces during Indian independence movement? Since they were nowhere in the historic struggle for freedom, they now want to rewrite the history in their favour,” he said.
'Fascism'
Mr. Raja questioned the kind of patriotism being aggressively advocated by RSS and its right-wing outfits and called it “fascism.”
“Those who question RSS ideology and BJP policies are labelled as anti-national and then unleash attacks on them. They even go the extent of physically eliminating them. This is not patriotism, but fascism,” he said.
He made oblique reference to the murders of rationalists M.M. Kalburgi, Govinda Pansare and Narendra Dabolkar and expressed concerns over growing influence of right-wing forces and called his party's rank and file to mobilise progressive and secular forces to collectively fight and defeat their designs.
"RSS wants to transform our democratic and secular republic into a Hindu Rashtra to be governed by Manusmrithi and not by the Constitution. We must should not allow it to happen," he said.
Party leaders Aziz Pasha, P.V. Lokesh, Siddanagowda Patil, Bhemashankar Madiyal and others were present.
