New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s six-day visit to the US earlier this month, and his statements and interactions there, were a key point of focus for the Hindu Right in various publications.
The period of Gandhi’s visit had coincided with the 39th anniversary of Operation Blue Star, in which the Indian armed forces had stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984 to flush out Sikh extremist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers.
Then prime minister Indira Gandhi, who had ordered the operation, was subsequently assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards that year, which led to the retaliatory 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
In an article for OneIndia last Wednesday — titled ‘Rahul Refuses to Learn From History’ — former BJP MP Balbir Punj pointed to the role of the Congress in the riots, while citing the book The Khalistan Conspiracy: A Former R&AW Officer Unravels The Path To 1984 by G.B.S. Sidhu.
“Have we learnt any lessons from the chain of events leading to ‘Operation Blue Star’ and its unfortunate aftermath?” Punj wrote.
Referring to the demand for a separate Khalistan state for the Sikhs, he asked “what led to the sudden spurt in pro-Khalistan activities in Punjab and abroad only after the Congress came to power in January 1980?”
“Sidhu answers ‘the real reason was a conscious decision taken by some senior Congress leaders, soon after Indira Gandhi returned to power in January 1980, to win the next elections (due before January 1985) by first creating and then solving the Khalistan issue through the use of Bhindranwale’,” Punj added.
“Both she and the country paid a heavy price for this short-sighted tragic misadventure. But this malfeasance seems to run in the family,” he wrote, adding that “Rahul rants abroad against India, his close association with ‘tukde tukde’ gang and his frequent mouthing (of) communist clichés questioning India’s existence as a nation — all underline one ugly fact — he hasn’t learnt anything from the sad experience of his father (Rajiv Gandhi) and grandmother (Indira Gandhi),”.
Another right-leaning author, Minhaz Merchant, highlighted Rahul Gandhi’s “hard-left gamble” in a column in OPEN magazine Friday, asking whether the Congress was misreading the national mood.
“Rahul has added two ingredients to his political pitch. First, minorityism. Second, welfarism. The Karnataka victory was built on these twin pillars. Muslims, who comprise 13 per cent of Karnataka’s electorate, voted en masse for the Congress, abandoning the Janata Dal (Secular). Welfarism meanwhile ensured Congress retained its core Hindu caste voter base,” he wrote.
“If minorityism and welfarism can work in Karnataka, one of India’s wealthiest states, why shouldn’t it work nationally in 2024? The Congress leadership believes it can. Rahul is therefore under no pressure to move from a hard-left, minority-leaning, welfare-oriented position to the centre-left. That could prove a miscalculation,” Merchant added.
He argued that the Congress may be misreading the national mood as India was an aspirational country. “The average Indian doesn’t dislike big business. She wants to be an empowered employee and one day, an entrepreneur herself,” he said.
Merchant concluded in his piece that “in a politically conservative country like India”, Rahul’s “hard-left gamble” could be in trouble in 2024 — when the general elections are due.
Also Read: ‘Fully endorse Manmohan, Sonia’ — Rahul asserts his stand on Operation Blue Star
‘Bharat has transformed under Modi’
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) mouthpiece Organiser, in an editorial, cited a World Bank report to say that even though international organisations are “not known for being kind” towards India, they all “recognise that under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bharat has transformed”.
“The Indian economy continues to show strong resilience to external shocks, the World Bank in its latest India Development Update said. Most of these United States-dominated agencies are not known for being kind towards Bharat or the present dispensation. Still, they all recognise that under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bharat has transformed, gaining a position in the world order and becoming a key driver for Asia and global growth,” Organiser said.
Giving the example of India’s new Parliament building, it pointed out that the Modi government had always tried to strengthen the civilisational roots of the country.
“The sense of inferiority and colonial prism has been ingrained in our psyche and intellectual milieu. The Modi government has shaken them to the core and unleashed the inherent potential of the Bharatiya populous for all-over development,” the editorial stated.
“Of course, there would be political positioning by the opposition, heartburns for vested interests and antagonism by anti-Bharat forces. No one can correct the wrongs of centuries in nine years. Further reforms and delivery are expected in rural development, agricultural and environmental fronts, but based on facts, it is tough to question the intent behind the actions,” it added.
China’s ‘cultural genocide in Tibet’
In an article in Organiser, author and senior journalist Vijay Kranti expressed concern that the Chinese president had been “orchestrating cultural genocide in Tibet by adopting European Church’s Colonial Residential School System”.
“In February this year, three independent United Nations experts pointed out that nearly one million Tibetan children have been separated from their families and are sent to residential schools run by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). The experts expressed concern over the fact that in these schools these children are forced to learn Mandarin Chinese in a curriculum, which is built around Chinese culture and CCP’s political propaganda,” he wrote.
The article added that in March this year, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights had drawn the international community’s attention towards “China’s coercive ‘boarding school system’ in Tibet” and the “large-scale campaign to eradicate Tibetan culture and language among the younger generation of today’s Tibet”.
Kranti further pointed out that during a museum tour, Tibetan children were “made to denounce the rule of His Holiness the Dalai Lama by declaring that old Tibet was under the rule of feudal serfdom under the banner of the monasteries and the state”.
“In India, the British colonial rulers used the ‘Convent School’ system and replaced the traditional school system with the one to detach Indian generations from their original Indian identity. In today’s Tibet this cultural genocide is being run by the Chinese Communist Party,” Kranti noted.
Also Read: The real story is Gandhi, Savarkar were on same page on Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan — and caste
Cost of ‘freebies’ by Congress in Karnataka
In another article in Organiser, authors Ravi Pokharna and Shreya Ganguly argued that the Congress’ promise of free electricity in Karnataka “threatens to derail the state’s recent efforts towards fiscal consolidation”.
The Congress wrested Karnataka from the BJP in the state assembly elections held in May this year. It had announced the ‘Gruha Jyothi’ scheme in January as an electoral promise, which guarantees up to 200 units of free electricity per month to eligible households.
“High spending on power subsidies not only jeopardises state fiscal health, it imposes substantial opportunity costs by limiting the funding available for social programmes in other domains. Indeed, Karnataka’s budget allocations for education and health are lower than the average allocations in these sectors by all states,” Pokharna and Ganguly wrote.
They added that a departure from rational electricity pricing sends out poor signals of true economic costs to consumers, leading to inefficient energy consumption.
“Low electricity pricing incentivises wasteful consumption, which has negative environmental implications as long as fossil fuels account for the majority of power generation. Additionally, underpriced electricity is also associated with groundwater overuse by farmers. To reduce the burden they place on the exchequer, the state may choose to fund the power freebies by incorporating higher cross-subsidies into the tariff schedule,” they stated.
According to the authors, ever since the Congress-led government came to power in Karnataka, it was being discussed how it would fulfil its poll promise when the state was already facing a fiscal deficit.
“Now, the government has hiked electricity prices in the state by Rs 2.89 per unit and the citizens will have to pay an extra amount of Rs 2.89 per unit in June if they fall in the more-than-200-unit slab,” the authors said.
Ram Madhav on ‘Dharmocracy’
In a 3 June article in The Indian Express, senior RSS ideologue Ram Madhav proposed the idea of ‘Dharmocracy’ which, he said, was different from democracy and was not merely the rule of the majority.
“In any form of democracy in India, election, majority and minority… all must be combined and harmonised at one place. Anyone who has a different opinion from the majority, even if he is a single individual, his viewpoint must be respected and incorporated into the governance. That is Dharmocracy, the Indian version of democracy,” wrote Madhav, adding that Dharmocracy was the “true spirit of our Constitution”.
He recalled the time of India’s independence.
“Seventy-five years ago, it was Jawaharlal Nehru who was at the wheels of independent India’s government. He led the country through the first 17 years, or “Six Thousand Days” as Amiya Rao and B.G. Rao, the bureaucrats served under him called it. He too had a vision for building a developed India. Socialism was the path chosen by him to achieve that,” stated Madhav.
He then referred to PM Modi and his recent inauguration of India’s new Parliament building, adding that “if Nehru believed in democracy and constitutionalism, Modi too insisted that ‘democracy is our inspiration, our Constitution is our resolve’.
“But Modi’s vision, irrespective of the idiomatic approximation with some Nehruvian ideals, markedly differs from that of Nehru. Many rightly see it as the demise of that Nehruvian vision. Some revel in it while others lament,” wrote Madhav.
According to him, while “Nehru appreciated India’s age-old civilisation but abhorred its manifestation in its religion and culture”, Modi “presented the new building as an embodiment of the coexistence of modern and ancient traditions, symbolised by the Sengol (sceptre) (which has been placed in the new Parliament)”. He added that the sengol also represented Dharmocracy.
“Modi, and the ruling establishment — for that matter a majority of the countrymen — do not see cultural and religious symbols of India as anti-secular or revivalist,” said Madhav.
“Nehruvians detest religion of the majority and endorse communalism of the minority. How else can one explain Rahul Gandhi’s ridiculing of ‘prostration’ before the Sengol and declaration of Muslim League as secular?” he asked.
Also Read: Modi’s Parliament inaugural was an elaborate mimicry. It displayed the sham that is New India
VHP defends Bajrang Dal
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) earlier this month reacted to Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind president Maulana Arshad Madani’s statement that if the Congress had banned the (right-wing outfit) Bajrang Dal 70 years ago, the country would not have been ruined.
“If there was no anti-Muslim policy of the Bajrang Dal, then the (banned Islamist outfit) Popular Front of India (PFI) would not have emerged. PFI is not an action but a reaction,” Madani was quoted as saying in media reports last month.
In an editorial in its fortnightly magazine Hindu Vishwa, the VHP said that Madani’s statement reflected his prejudice towards Hindu society.
“This same Madani had called Islam (more) ancient than the Hindu religion a few days ago. The antiquity and superiority of Hindu religion is not being digested by them… forceful efforts are being made to show themselves as superior to Hindus. These people do not leave any opportunity to humiliate and defame Hindus with their conspiratorial and cheap activities,” it stated.
The editorial added that “Congress’ Narasimha Rao government had banned the Bajrang Dal in 1992… but the court made it clear that the Bajrang Dal had not been found involved in anti-social activities, which is why the ban was lifted”.
“The whole community of traitors is shaken by the ban on PFI. By attacking the Bajrang Dal, they are becoming a shield for terrorists. By comparing PFI to the Bajrang Dal, attempts are made again and again to prove the terrorists (as) innocent. Films like The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story and social media have exposed them. The organised attack on Hindu society will not be tolerated,” the editorial stated.
RSS-wing calls for ‘rupee-denominated trade’
The RSS-affiliated Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) has urged the central government to promote the use of the Indian rupee in international markets and encourage more countries to use it as trade currency.
In a statement put out on his website, the outfit’s national co-convener Ashwani Mahajan said the SJM had asked the government to consider developing a “robust” rupee-denominated bond market.
“The national council of the SJM urged the government to encourage more countries to use the rupee as a trade currency. India can do this by signing bilateral agreements with other countries that would allow for rupee-denominated trade,” it said, adding that the recommendations were made by the national council of the SJM at its two-day meeting in Pune on 3 June and 5 June.
“This could involve providing more liquidity in the rupee market and making it easier for businesses to open rupee accounts. This could also involve encouraging foreign investors to invest in Indian rupee-denominated assets. By taking these steps, India can help make the rupee a more widely accepted currency for international trade, reduce India’s reliance on the dollar for international trade and payments, insulate the Indian economy from fluctuations in the value of the dollar and boost India’s exports,” the SJM stated.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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