By Ram Madhav
Do you remember the name of a town called Churhat? It became famous for some notorious reason in the mid-80s. The small town in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh was the epicentre of a scandal, popularly known as Churhat lottery scam. A politician nicknamed Churhat Raja was allegedly the kingpin of that scandal. Since then, true to the Congress culture, that politician grew from strength to strength, finally to become a Central minister.
Later, Churhat acquired a great amount of respect and dignity, due to another gentleman, who also used to be called, perhaps rightly, Churhat Raja. He was a saintly and benevolent personality. He was active in organisations that strove for our country and culture. He was the Zilla Sanghachalak of RSS during mid-50s and later on became an ardent follower of Swami Chinmayananda. Presently he lives as a recluse, a sanyasi of the Chinmaya order, somewhere near Rewa.
You can'tcompare two persons who are so divergent in everything in life. Yet you can'thelp but doing that, since they both happen to be brothers. One, the Churhat lottery scam accused is Shri Arjun Singh, the Union Minister for HRD. And the other, one-time RSS leader presently living the life of a saint, is his own brother Sri Ranabahadur Singh, rechristened as Swami Prashantananda.
Known for his penchant to give pinpricks to his own leaders in pursuit of his dream to sit in the coveted chair of the Prime Minister of India at least for a day before it is too late, Shri Arjun Singh, just two months into a government which is functioning on daily wages from the Stalinist Left, chose to shoot his mouth once again to prepare ground for another attempt.
?The only achievement of the RSS is Mahatma'smurder,? he reportedly blabbed. We knew we were only a whipping boy. The real objective was to promote himself as head and shoulders above others in the party.
?That Mahatma Gandhi'sassassination gave a handle to unscrupulous politicians to defame and, if possible, to pull down their rivals is difficult to deny. The attempt was made in Delhi to bring Patel, a non-Brahmin, himself into disrepute and to cause a breach between him and Nehru is well known,? wrote veteran Congress leader, D.P. Mishra, who was the Home Minister of Arjun'shome state CP & Berar at the time of the assassination of Gandhiji, in his memoirs Living an Era. Arjun was merely trying that old Congress trick.
But the blabbermouth has slightly overstepped into a dangerous territory. What he said amounted to accusing the RSS of murdering the Mahatma. Naturally we warned him that he would be sued.
It must have caused consternation in his camp, for, earlier, for a similar loud-mouthing, Shri Sitaram Kesri, the then president of the Congress Party, had to run from one court to another when served with a legal notice by the Sangh. A prominent English daily, published from Delhi and Kolkata, was forced to publish an apology on its front page prominently on the same issue.
Promptly, a written statement was issued with Shri Singh'ssignature. The allegation against the RSS was modified so that no legal hassles would be there. ?I am convinced,? he wrote, ?that the philosophy of hate and violence by which the RSS swears by (syntax error not mine), killed Mahatmaji.? It was clear that he was running away from the original allegation and yet wanted to use all his lung power to mislead people that he was a crusader. He also alleged that he knew the ?expertise (of the RSS) in murder and mayhem?.
As I mentioned earlier, his own brother was an RSS man. Shri Guruji was a guest in their house on two occasions. Does it mean that his own brother was also an expert in ?murder and mayhem??
Our friends in Rewa informed us that in 1957 when Shri Singh wanted to have an advocate to fight his case in an election-related petition, he couldn'tfind a better lawyer in Congress Party. He chose to hire a lawyer from Uttar Pradesh who was a senior RSS leader there?must be an ?expert in murder and mayhem?. This lawyer, who went to Rewa to argue Shri Singh'scase, used to attend the local RSS shakha every evening. Shri Sudarshanji, the present RSS Sarsanghchalak, was the RSS organiser of that region at that time and he recollected that once Shri Singh also accompanied the lawyer to the shakha. Not certainly to acquire a bit of ?expertise in murder and mayhem? I suppose!
Shri Singh'sassociation with that lawyer, who headed the RSS in Uttar Pradesh for several years, continued and perhaps continues even today. A prominent English daily, published from Lucknow and Delhi, reported an unscheduled visit of Shri Singh to that RSS man'shouse at Allahabad in 1993, just three days before his resignation from PVN'scabinet. It also speculated that Shri Singh went to consult the lawyer-cum-RSS leader about his resignation.
We can always have arguments and counter-arguments over ideologies. You criticise us and we criticise you?but in a temperate language. Shri Singh talked about the ?hate and violence? of the RSS in his written statement.
Coming out of a Congress-man'smouth it sounds like ?devils chanting the Vedas?.
It is the Congress ideology, which is most violent and hate-filled. ?The Nagpur incidents were not isolated,? wrote D.P. Mishra, recollecting the horrors of violence unleashed after the murder of the Mahatma, ?as more harrowing scenes of violence against Brahmins were enacted in many parts of Marathi-speaking areas, particularly southern Maharashtra. Those who indulged in these unlawful activities also included a large number of Congressmen belonging to non-Brahmin communities. In fact, in Nagpur and Berar the trouble-makers were mostly Congressmen, some being even office-bearers of the various Congress committees.?
Of course, we still remember that holocaust perpetrated on the Sikhs all over the country after the murder of Smt Gandhi. We also remember those infamous utterances of Shri Rajiv Gandhi supporting the violence against the Sikhs??when a mighty tree falls, earth trembles?. This is your culture Mr Singh, not ours.
Shri Singh talks about Gujarat also. That usual rubbish. I have to return to D.P. Mishra again. Continuing his description about the violence and hatred unleashed by the Congress goons in Maharashtra after Gandhiji'smurder, Shri Mishra writes about his travails as the minister in charge of law and order. ?Among those arrested by the police, there were more than a hundred Congressmen and I was immediately subjected to pressure for their release. In a meeting of prominent Congressmen of Nagpur, I had to face severe criticism. When they threatened to take their complaint to Home Minister Patel, I had to tell them to bring a directive for me from Delhi that Congressmen had been exempted from the operation of the Indian Penal Code.?
Congress ideology has always been soft on terrorism and harsh on nationalist forces in the country. How else could you explain the pronouncements of people like Shri Singh to purge the administration of the RSS men while their government is laying red carpet to the terrorists by repealing POTA?
It is the Congress ideology and hunger for power of its leaders that led to the Partition of the country. Even today the partitionist Muslim League is the bedfellow of the Congress in the government.
Shri Singh has challenged the RSS to do ?their worst?. The ?worst? that the RSS can do to him is to drag him to the courts for accusing the RSS of murdering the Mahatma.
(The author is spokesman of RSS.)
