Contentions Unjust: Defying the allegations against the RSS

By U. Mahesh Prabhu

I am not an integral part of the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). I am neither a Pracharak nor do I have any responsibilities within the organization. The comparatively underpaid job that I have currently as the Editor of ‘Aseemaa: Journal for National Resurgence’ has hardly anything to do with RSS, though it was founded by some of its notable affiliates. It’s not a mouthpiece of theirs unlike Organiser or Panchajanya, both published from New Delhi, in the first case. The journal is run by me completely independent of RSS on the editorial side.

Aseemaa is today considered by many of the distinguished intellectuals in this country, and abroad, to be ‘Liberal’ magazine carrying thoughts of writers hailing from almost all school of thoughts, and also from all part of the world. It has articles authored by premier journalists like M J Akbar, Aijaz Zaka Syed, Caroline Glick, and many who hardly have anything to do with Hindutva, or any other ideologies propounded by RSS. Some of them have even, at times, strongly criticized RSS. Yet when I changed my profession, from a management-man to a journalist-editor, people shouted at me saying that I am going ‘fascist’.

‘Fascist’ is the word they wanted to convey, also, to RSS and all its respective organization and its people too. I was taken completely aghast. ‘RSS and Fascism, what do they have it to do together?’ I thought for myself. The allegation was a serious one and I had to answer them all. Within no time I did answer them and completely shut them up.

But recently I happened to write an article entitled ‘We shall continue to live to the end of times, for we have done no wrong’. It was published by over 4 significant medias, both print and internet. While many hailed my efforts many more ever angered for I having taken the name of RSS. A site called Mutiny.in which featured the article found over 60 responses with a few shouting the same old allegation of ‘fascism’, directly and indirectly. Some even called RSS and Sangh Parivar – ‘fundamentalist’, one ‘whose funda is mental’. I am bound to put pen to paper owing to those 70 and odd responses and emails I have received to my previous article, mentioned above, with the aforesaid accusations. I don’t really know as to whether I can convince them that we are neither ‘fascist’ nor ‘fundamentalist’, but all that I can to is to prove that their contention is completely spurious.

Why army is the most important political factor in Pakistan?

With the elections done and Nawaz-Zardari joining hands together to form the government, people in Pakistan and around the world might be of the impression that Pakistan’s military is out of the scene, as if obvious. But I can only wish it to be so. This I say because army is the most important political actor in Pakistan. Even without being a formal political party, it can influence or manipulate most things in the country: from managing its nuclear weapons programme to conducting census. The Fauj is everywhere. It shall not be wrong to state that it’s omnipotent as well as omnipresent even in the presence of a successful civilian government in power. Wearing the Khaki uniform allows you unprecedented status, and transforms you into being part of that tiny elite corps of Pakistanis whose writ run everywhere.

It might just be a surprise for many of you to know that from the areas as disparate as running businesses to finding ghost schools, the army is the ubiquitous face of Pakistan’s government. Besides it also builds roads and fights insurgencies; less important to say that its membership is superior to any exclusive club. From one phase of a military regime to another, the army has ever taken care of its own.

Madikeri Diary: Fight before it’s late and victory is far and bleak

By U. Mahesh Prabhu

It was my first visit to Madikeri on February 7th 2008. There were two compelling reason for me to be there: First to deliver a lecture at Field Marshal Cariappa College and to attend the anniversary celebration of a dance magazine, Noopura Bhramari, founded by my distinguished, and exuberantly gifted, friend Manorama B N. Must say I was spell bound, rather completely, looking at the mystic beauty of the Kodagu. I was indeed repenting for not having visited the place, which was a few hundred kilometers from Mangalore, that which was reachable in less than five hours. Rich with greenery the place is filled with coffee and rubber plantations and several places of historic, religious and adventurous substance.

But before my three day trip to the city could come to an end I was spell bound again, but this time for a different reason. There are two Christian schools in the city named after the ‘revered savants’ of Christianity and, of course, managed by missionaries. Here I was testified by a medical practitioner about the rules and regulation of the said school.
A Hindu girl child, he told me, is not supposed to wear a Bindi on her forehead, not more than two Bangles are allowed and amazingly you are not supposed to take the names of Rama, Krishna and the like even while reciting the prayers. When tried to confirm about it I would find more than seven people, who were not related to each other, confirming the said statement of the doctor, who had introduced me to the issue. When asked as to why the parents didn’t take up the issue at the Parent Teachers Association (PTA), they would say that those two schools haven’t got any, to my utter awe.

Towards God…?

‘The whole world is moving towards God, would Your Excellency not wish to join?‘ said Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a letter to his American counterpart – George Bush. This kind of a letter, for your information, is not new and is simply a continuance of tradition instituted by Prophet Muhammad.

In 625 AD, after having consolidated his position in Medina and having established a secured power base for Islam Prophet dictated three letters: to Khosrow Parviz, the Persian ‘King of Kings‘, a Zoroastrian; and to Emperor Heraclius of Byzantium and the Ethiopian monarch Negus, who were Christians by faith. The Prophet’s offer to the three recipients of his letters was: ‘Convert to Islam and secure a place in paradise or cling to your beliefs and face the sword of Islam.‘

The Persian monarch, apparently angered that Muhammad had put his own name before that of the ‘King of King‘, ordered his security services to find the ‘insolent letter writer‘ and bring him to the court in Ctesiphon, the capital of the Persian Empire at the time. According to Islamic folklore Muhammad escaped capture by the King of Kings‘ agents only because, soon after the incident, Khosrow Parviz was murdered by his son and designated heir. Within a decade of this incident the Persian Empire had disintegrated with most of its territory falling to the armies of ‘Islam’.<!–[endif]–>

Ayathollah Khomeini’s letter came with a similar response to a message sent by Gorbachev through his ambassador Vladimir Vingradov, offering the Islamic Republic a strategic partnership with the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Mikhail Gorbachev wanted the Islamic Republic to help him prevent the victory of the US-backed Islamist Mujahedin in Afghanistan. In exchange, Gorbachev would support the Islamic Republic in the face of mounting American pressure. Khomeini, however, was not interested in that kind of deal-making. As a good Muslim leader he would not be satisfied with having ’something’. He, perhaps, wanted everything. Thus he composed a letter inviting Gorbachev to convert to Islam before he could receive help in Afghanistan or anywhere else. Needless to say the Soviet leader ‘politely’ declined.

Despite it’s many spelling and grammatical errors, written with naive undergraduate style, Ahmadinejad’s letter contained a crucial message that: the present regime in Iran is the enemy of the current international system and is, certainly, determined to undermine and, if at all possible, destroy it. It has now been confirmed that ‘Ahmadinejad believes that hidden Imam is about to return and that it is the duty of the Islamic Republic to provoke a ‘clash of civilizations‘ to hasten that return. As he asserts in his letter, Ahmadinejad also believes that ‘the liberal democratic model of market-based capitalist societies has failed and is rejected even in its traditional homeland’.

Ahmadinejad has been impressed by the extent of recent riots in France in which the extreme Left provided the leadership while the Muslim sub-proletariat offered much of the muscle in the streets. All this, and more, makes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a subject of hate to majority in the ‘civilized‘ society.

Apart from that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his well-known intent to ‘erase’ Israel from the map last Friday with a new twist: ‘Israel is a rotten, dried tree that will be annihilated in one storm.‘ The history at times takes weird twists and turn. During the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the current regime was not considered problematic by Israelis. At that time, Jerusalem saw Teheran as its strategic ally against Baghdad, then under the Saddam’s regime. The situation has reversed because of the fact that Ahmadinejad is a political no voice with a streak of ultra-nationalist tendencies – all poised to make situation for Iran worse.

Writes M J Akbar:

‘The Manmohan Singh government wants to bind India into a strategic relationship with the United States, specifically targeted against Iran (in writing) for starters but developing into a larger axis of the kind that America once had with Pakistan through the Baghdad pact. This was sweetened by much talk of nuclear energy on rather salty terms, intrusive, expensive and imbalanced’

But is there a better way to confine the Iranians? I think that’s the issue we aren’t really debating. Muslims still find themselves aligned with the Iranians. Non-Muslims, should they like it or not, have to align in such cases with the Americans whose President, it seems, prefers to let the weapons do the talking, even when he claims to be engaging in diplomacy. Sadly, there is hardly any much difference between the two Presidents. Both are fanatics in their own aspects.

By denying the Holocaust and Suffering of Jewish people Ahmadinejad has endeared himself to Muslims. By his diplomatic and hawkish posturing, has managed to earn more enemies for Iran during the past year and a half than the leaders of Islamic Republic have over the past quarter century or so.

With inputs from frontlines it looks as if Americans have already made up their mind to attack Iran. It’s now only a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’. According to Oxford Research Group up to 10,000 people would die immediately if the US bombed Iran’s nuclear site. If the US uses nuclear weapons, such as earth penetrating bunker buster bombs, radio active fallout would become even more disastrous.

Says Aijaz Zaka Syed of Khaleej Times:

‘Although Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons – at least not yet – to stave off aggression, it has other options of retaliating. It boasts a standing army of 450,000 troops as well as long range missiles that could hit Israel an even Europe. More importantly, a desperate Iran can play a havoc with the global economy by blocking strait of Hormuz through which much of the world oil supply is routed.‘

I don’t know as to whether the world is moving towards God. But these two leaders are certain to push to world to brink of disaster. We are on our way to war and not God, which is for sure.

U. Mahesh Prabhu | September 22, 2007 | indiamahesh@gmail.com