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WHAT has so suddenly and seriously gone wrong with the RSS? Why has it dangerously decided to stop being acceptably antediluvian? Not that this calamitous event did not cast its sinister shadow before, but smugly secular Satiricus had derisively dismissed it as an aberration to be ignored. For long years, he watched the RSS dutifully becoming the butt of the jokes of Indian intellectuals. As a Hindu was by definition an ignoramus, it became a given rule that the RSS was an assembly of idiots. Everybody had fun calling it a pack of fools, lunatics and what have you. When it talked of Hinduism and patriotism, it was pointed out to these anti-modern morons that these isms were now wasms. It was further told that Christian science was scientific and Islamic banking was worth banking upon, but Hindu economics was Hindu hocus-pocus.
All in all, it was agreed that the RSS was a lunatic asylum, that is, a place where every lunatic sought asylum. In short, God was in his anti-Hindu heaven and all was right with secular India. Satiricus happily thought this would never change?but he now ruefully recalls what James Bond once said: ?Never say never.? For, with the coming of the present Sarsanghchalak an increasingly alarmed Satiricus began to notice an ominous change. It was that this Sarsanghchalak not only began to talk at length about Swadeshi stupidity, but buttressed it knowledgeably with quotes from the IMF, the World Bank, and assorted American economists. This should have alerted Satiricus, but alas, apparently his secular sensibilities were not sharp enough to notice that this was the thin end of the communal wedge. For, recent RSS reports definitely reveal that on many fronts, from the social to the sartorial, and from the economic to the ecological, the RSS is readying itself for a quantum leap from the twenty-first century b.c. to the twenty-first century a.d.
Because English is the official language of Indian secularism, and once it is polluted with the communal canker, how can the ghost of Macaulay be propitiated? That such pernicious pollution is not only possible but even probable is proved by the fact that Rajasthan´s Education Minister, a rank RSS wretch, has started teaching English to school-children from Class I. The man actually argued that ?learning English doesn´t make a person less national, neither does it erode our culture.? This is the limit.
Take this proposal mooted in a recent meeting of the organisation´s leaders to change its uniform from knickers to trousers. Said one of them: ?Swayamsevaks attend Shakhas in foreign countries in jeans and T-shirts. A similar allowance was proposed by some delegates and is under consideration.? This is shocking, and Satiricus suspects that this is a dastardly attempt to rob secular columnists of a favourite abuse. For, once Swayamsevaks start wearing trousers, how can they be ridiculed as nincompoops in knickers? And unless RSS can be ridiculed, all secular journalism would be jejune, right? What is worse, this proposed change is being reportedly considered ?in order to adapt to changing times?. Good God! Changing times? Does that mean these communal cavemen are going to step out of the anti-secular Stone Age? And once they start their march to modernity, they may even master ?English as she is spake?. That would be an inconceivable abomination, because English is the official language of Indian secularism, and once it is polluted with the communal canker, how can the ghost of Macaulay be propitiated? That such pernicious pollution is not only possible but even probable is proved by the fact that Rajasthan´s Education Minister, a rank RSS wretch, has started teaching English to school-children from Class I. The man actually argued that ?learning English doesn´t make a person less national, neither does it erode our culture.? This is the limit. For, once the RSS adopts English, it won´t stop at saying English is not incompatible with our culture; it would go further and dig out ancient evidence to prove that English is actually an offspring of our culture, that it has a Sanskrit source and even a Vedic ancestry. It won´t stop at pointing a finger at Will Durant, who said Sanskrit is the mother of our (that is European) languages, it will dig deep into Rigvedic history, according to which the Druhyn people, who took part in the Rigvedic ?Battle of Ten Kings? 5,000 years ago, later migrated to Europe, became known as Celts, and spoke the Celtic language, which was spoken in England in pre-Christian times and later evolved into the English language, with the result that even today there are as many as 40,000 words in the English langauge that are, according to Webster´s Dictionary, ?akin to Sanskrit?.
And once the RSS goes berserk like this there is no knowing to what deplorable depths it would descend to outdo intellectuals and outshine secularists. An alarming indication to this effect is provided by another RSS proposal by which it wants to launch an ecological movement to promote technologies viable for rural areas. This is downright ridiculous. What has the RSS to do with technology on the one hand and ecology on the other? Any sane secularist (even Satiricus) would say that the very idea of any connection of these modern disciplines with the medieval RSS is insane. But then, where the RSS is concerned, you can never tell what it will come up with. It might turn tables on today´s techno-savvy secularists by pointing out that even the latest imported technology does not yet know at least two things that ancient Hindu technology knew?how to make the super-fine steel for swords now known as ?wootz?, and how to cut a human hair vertically. And to cap all this, another Rajasthan minister has introduced recitation of a Vedic mantra before meals in students´ hostels. Satiricus happens to know this mantra, which says?Sahanou bhunaktu, sahaviryam karavavahai, ?Let us eat together, let us be brave together?. Now, is this limited to lunch? Satiricus fears not. He sees in it a concerted communal conspiracy of the RSS to out-modern the most modern secularist. And once we have a modern RSS on our hands, where will the secularists seek shelter? They might have to migrate from India to Bharat.
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