New Delhi: Panchjanya, the weekly Hindi mouthpiece of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in its latest ‘Emergency special edition’ featured several opinion pieces and testimonials by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and former RSS pracharaks who drew parallels between Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
“Two dictators, similar legacy,” read the cover, which featured portraits of Indira and Hitler juxtaposed with the title “Hitler Gandhi”. The cover went on to say that there are still restrictions against denying “Hitler’s heinous crimes” in parts of Europe. Similarly, forgetting the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi “can be dangerous for the existence of democracy”, it added.
दो तानाशाह , एक जैसी इबारत।
क्या यूरोप नाजीवाद और फासीवाद का सच भुला सकता है?
भारत में इंदिरा गांधी के लगाए आपातकाल को भुलाना लोकतंत्र के लिए खतरनाक हो सकता है।
आइए याद करें 25 जून 1975 की काली रात से शुरू वह दास्तान।
पढ़िए पाञ्चजन्य का नवीन अंक।#NaziIndira#HitlerGandhi pic.twitter.com/iGmiyV8AAs
— Panchjanya (@epanchjanya) June 24, 2023
Reacting to the developments, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera told ThePrint that this edition of the Panchjanya exposes the “two-faced” nature of the RSS, which he said supported the Emergency.
“Why did the then Sangh chief (Balasaheb Deoras) write letters to Indira ji extending support to the 20-point programme? In a letter dated 22 August, 1975 he writes: ‘I heard your address to the nation which you delivered on 15 August, 1975 from Red Fort on radio with attention. Your address was timely and balanced so I decided to write to you,” Khera said.
He added that Deoras wrote another letter to Gandhi on 10 November, 1975 which he began by “congratulating her” on being cleared by the Supreme Court of disqualification which was ordered by the Allahabad HC. “All the five Justices of the Supreme Court have declared your election constitutional, heartiest greetings for it,” Khera said, quoting the letter.
“This is the real two-facedness of the RSS. They supported the emergency and then also took pensions (in some BJP-ruled states) for fighting against it. We all know what Chaudhary Charan Singh thought about RSS while drafting the membership criteria for the Janata Party,” added the Congress spokesperson
Congress, Hitler & Gandhi
In its editorial, Panchjanya lambasted the Congress for criticising the award of the International Gandhi Peace Prize 2023 to Gorakhpur-based Gita Press, alleging that the party was following in the footsteps of Hitler. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh had while criticising the decision by a jury led by PM Modi to confer the award on Gita Press, termed it “a travesty” similar to “awarding Savarkar and Godse”.
“That Congress, which follows in the footsteps of Hitler by adding Gandhi to its name, is not only far from non-violence and close to Nazism, but it has no relation with Gandhi at all,” said the editorial.
It went on to allege that arguments cited by Jairam Ramesh to target Gita Press were “borrowed from a book based on fake research”. On Ramesh, the editorial said he is “considered relatively sensible in a party that constantly makes stupid comments”.
Accusing Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of making “lies the basis of his politics”, the editorial said that M.K. Gandhi, “a priest of truth and non-violence, cannot be the Gandhi of this Congress”.
“Hitler and the Nazis invoked the word socialism in all respects, and Congress uses the word Gandhi in all respects,” it added.
Meanwhile, the RSS mouthpiece also released a video on Twitter in which a narrator underlined the “similarities” between the Holocaust and the Emergency.
It begins with a narrator stating that the manner in which protesters were “tortured” during the Emergency was harsh even when compared to atrocities meted out during the “Mughal era”. It then compares Hitler’s 25-point plan outlining the political platform of the Nazi party with Indira’s 20-point economic programme, announced in 1975.
“She went a step ahead of Hitler and even indulged in dynasty politics,” says the narrator.
हिटलर गांधी !!
आजाद भारत के इतिहास का सबसे काला दिन। pic.twitter.com/mmJdZXTNuT
— Panchjanya (@epanchjanya) June 25, 2023
The video adds that Congressmen, liberals and communists who have been making “unfounded allegations of Hitlershahi” after losing power in 2014, “tend to forget” that the Emergency was the only chapter in India’s history that resembled such an attack on democratic values.
“In Hitler’s style, she (Indira) ended press freedom and raised a country of sycophant journalists who would say ‘Indira is India’. A roadmap was drafted to turn India’s jails into concentration camps, which in the days to come would surpass even Hitler’s ways.”
“Those talking about dictatorship and an Emergency-like situation in the country are the same people who are used to inflicting atrocities while in power. Their habit of destroying those who oppose them is similar to Hitler’s, and old habits die hard,” Panchjanya editor Hitesh Shankar can be heard saying in the video, in an apparent reference to the Congress party.
“Forgetting these instances while believing them to be old is similar to letting a Nazi party take hold in Europe again,” he added.
‘RSS protected democracy’
In an article in Panchjanya titled ‘Emergency: A Black Chapter’, former RSS pracharak Narender Sehgal wrote that Sangh workers had made efforts to safeguard democracy during the Emergency.
“The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was the only organised force in the country that could take on Indira Gandhi’s dictatorship. In view of this possible retaliation, Indira Gandhi banned the Sangh,” he wrote, adding that 21 other small organisations were also banned as a cover-up.
Sehgal went further to write that Indira Gandhi directed “police officers in all provinces to intensify the crackdown against Sangh workers”.
RSS workers, he added, “accepted the challenge” and the “underground leadership of the Sangh took the initiative to protect democratic rights of all Indians by getting involved in a nationwide non-violent movement”.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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