New Delhi: There is no problem with the caste census as long as it is for the welfare of relevant communities and castes, and not for electioneering, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) said Monday after a three-day-long coordination committee meeting in Kerala.
At a press conference, Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh Sunil Ambekar said that caste and caste relations were “very sensitive issues” in Hindu society. “It is an important issue for our national unity and integrity. So, it should be seriously dealt with and not just on the basis of election practices or politics,” he said at a press conference after the RSS’s annual Akhil Bharatiya Samanvay Baithak in Palakkad.
The RSS’s publicity head added, “The RSS thinks… For all welfare activities, particularly addressing a community or caste which is lagging behind, special attention is needed for some communities and castes. For that, sometimes, the government needs numbers. Earlier, too, it needed these numbers. This has been a practice. The government can count, no problem. But it should only be to address the welfare of those communities and castes. It should not be used as a political tool for elections. And so, we put a caution line for everyone.”
The RSS statement came in the backdrop of the BJP’s below-par performance in the Lok Sabha elections.
The Opposition, especially Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, had promised to conduct a caste census if voted to power in the national elections. Gandhi continues to reiterate his party’s demand for a caste census.
In the 2024 general elections, the BJP lost the SC/ST/OBC votes because of what they called Opposition propaganda about a threat to the Constitution and lack of reservation in government jobs. Rahul Gandhi and the INDIA bloc had made these two issues part of their key poll planks in the elections.
The BJP’s “inability” to address the caste census question raised by Gandhi was seen as a major reason behind the party’s reduced tally among SC/ST/OBC communities.
Meanwhile, Ambekar was asked if all was well between the BJP and the RSS, especially after BJP president J.P. Nadda’s statement that the party was capable and did not need the Sangh the way it used to. He replied this was a “family matter” and had been handled internally.
“The basic idea about our mission is very clear to everyone. Other issues will be resolved. It is a family matter and it will be resolved… A three-day meeting happened here, everyone participated, everything is going well,” he said of the Kerala meeting.
The RSS also discussed crimes against women in the three-day meeting, expressing concern over the increasing cases of rapes, including that of a trainee doctor at Kolkata’s state-run R.G. Kar Hospital on 9 August.
The organisation said it discussed the issue in its national coordination meeting at length. The Sangh parivar concluded India needed to relook laws pertaining to such incidents and establish more fast-track courts for quick justice.
Ambekar said that content (sexually explicit) being shown in social media, internet and digital world needed to be checked as they created “havoc in society”. “We have seen in the past that the accused have watched such content for long hours before committing the crime,” he said.
Reacting to the demand of imposing President’s Rule in West Bengal in light of the law-and-order situations in the state, Ambekar said that such action would “destabilise an elected government”, which is not good for democracy.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)