Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said in December 2022 that ‘Not even a dog from the BJP-RSS died for the country, while Indira and Rajiv gave their lives’. This remark was condemned by the BJP, which demanded an apology.
In reality, Kharge’s statement was absolutely wrong on facts. As just one example, Jana Sangh leader Shama Prasad Mukherjee gave his life for the sake of the integration of Kashmir with India. Many RSS workers gave their lives for the country on many occassions such as during the establishment of a Parallel Government during the British Rule in Vidarbha’s Chimur area in 1942, or during the successful attack on Dadra and Nagar Haveli in 1954, during a protest in Goa against the Portuguese Rule in 1955. By denying that RSS workers took part in the freedom struggle, Congress, AAP and Leftists have done a great insult to the great sacrifices made by freedom fighters (including the sacrifice of their lives), just because they were from RSS.
There have been many attacks and killings of Hindu activists, but the RSS and the Sangh Parivar have never retaliated. Those who are called ‘fascists’ are actually very tolerant, to the point of overtolerance. Let us see just some of the cases of killings and attacks on Hindu activists, for which never was any retaliation.
1. In 1948 after MK Gandhi’s murder RSS men were ruthlessly crushed by the Nehru Government. The so-called Gandhians, who claim to present the other cheek when slapped on one, horribly attacked the RSS workers, sympathizers and especially Marathi Brahmins, even though they were all innocent. No court ever found the RSS responsible in any way, and Nathuram Godse himself made it clear several times that he and he alone was responsible for Gandhi’s killing. The Justice Kapur Commission appointed by the Congress Government also said that RSS could not be held responsible. But, without any evidence, the houses of RSS men were burnt, looted and cadres were killed.
Gandhi’s assassination on 30 Jan 1948 triggered a genocide of Marathi Brahmins (because Godse was a Brahmin). Riots started in the cities of Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur and then rapidly spread to rural areas of Kolhapur, Satara and Belgaum which saw the greatest violence against Brahmins. P. L. Inamdar writes in his work “Red Fort Trial” that the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi started ‘the manhunt of Maharashtrian Brahmins irrespective of their party allegiance by non-Brahmins in Poona and other districts’ (Quoted in “Gandhi and Godse” by Dr Koenraad Elst). The total number of casualties is unknown since many researchers have been denied access to police files, but it’s estimated to be at least several hundred if not thousands. Most Indian newspapers did an excellent job of suppressing the news. It is mainly the International newspapers which covered the riots. The New York Times reported in its original report covering Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 that 15 were killed in retaliatory riots in Mumbai (then called Bombay) city itself within a single day of the assassination.
In addition to the killings, the houses of Brahmins (and non-Brahmin RSS members too) were burnt down. The great freedom fighter Swatantryaveer Savarkar’s house in Mumbai was attacked by a mob of mostly Congressmen on 31 January 1948, and its front end was torched. Savarkar’s younger brother Dr Narayanrao was caught and physically assaulted by the mob. Narayanrao never recovered from this attack, and he died of this attack later. The non-Brahmin Hindutva sympathisers too were attacked in 1948. The offices of Hindu Mahasabha, RSS and the pro-Hindutva newspapers (such as the Marathi newspaper Tarun Bharat) were set on fire. And yet, even this did not provoke a single act of retaliation.
2. The RSS office was bombed by Islamic radicals (of the Al-Umma) in Chennai on 8 August 1993 killing 11 and injuring 7. Out of these 11, six were full-time pracharaks, very important high-level officials in the RSS, not just ordinary workers. And out of these six, 5 were senior pracharaks. But the RSS did not do even one act of revenge.
3. On 14 April 1995 the Hindu Munnani office was also bombed in Chennai, Tamil Nadu by Islamic radicals using RDX, killing 1. In an absolute mockery of justice, the trial in the case itself started as many as 19 years later in 2014, and all accused were acquitted. Individuals were also killed by Muslim fanatics. In July 1995, a parcel bomb killed the wife of a District President of the Hindu Munnani (i.e. Hindu Front). The same year Jeyaveerapandian, the then BJP district organiser of Myladuthurai district of Tamil Nadu, was also sent a parcel bomb but was defused before it exploded.
4. Two bombs were planted in RSS HQ in Nagpur in May 2001, by Islamic radicals, both were defused before they exploded.
5. Three armed Islamic terrorists attacked RSS HQ again on 1 June 2006 and their attack was foiled at the very last moment.
6. In 1981, Hindu Munnani leader Thirukovilur Sundaram was murdered at R. S. Puram in Coimbatore by Islamic fundamentalists.
7. In 1994, Hindu Munnani leader Rajagopalan was also murdered in Tamil Nadu by Muslims. 6 people got life imprisonment for this.
8. During the Khalistani separatist struggle in Punjab (1981-93), hundreds of RSS and BJP men were killed by the Khalistanis, yet this did not provoke a single act of retaliation. As just two examples, on 25 June 1988 at Moga 26 RSS volunteers were killed. 22 were injured in an indiscriminate firing in Nehru Park. (Just one link) On 17 November 1990, 11 RSS workers were killed in indiscriminate firing in the morning shakha in Dabwali.
9. When in ca. 1990, and again in 1996, Communist militants started killing RSS men in Kerala, the RSS was very slow to react in kind. The cases of CPI (M) killing RSS and BJP men in Kerala are so many that an entire encyclopedia can be written on that. Just a few cases are being given. As just an example 2 RSS men were killed in Kerala on 28 May 2010.
10. Belgium-based world famous scholar Dr Koenraad Elst has written in his book “BJP vis-à-vis Hindu Resurgence” (Voice of India, 1997): “The Islamic bomb attacks on Sangh centres in Chennai and elsewhere, the murders of BJP politicians in UP, Mumbai and elsewhere, they all have not provoked any counter-attacks. Anti-Hindu governments in Bihar (of Laloo Yadav from 1990-2005) and West Bengal (of Left Front from 1977-2011) have achieved some success in preventing the growth of sizable RSS chapters by means of ruthless intimidation and violence, all without having to fear any RSS retaliation.
The mass killing of Hindus in East Bengal in 1971 (Pakistani Army killed 2 million i.e. 20 lakh Hindus in East Bengal and also some other Bengali Muslims when their leader declared that Bangladeshis are un-Islamic and raped at least 2,50,000 Hindu women during the 1971 war) and the constant petty terrorizing of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh to chase them out have not moved Hindus in India to retaliate in any way; they never even talk about it. By contrast, a single murder by a Hindu, that of Gandhi himself, was enough to throw the Hindutva movement off course for decades. There is no dearth of Hindu soft-brains who feel guilty for the Ayodhya demolition, and who preach that Hindus should make amends for it.”
11. On 25 August 1994, BJP’s Mumbai unit chief Ramdas Nayak, along with his bodyguard, was murdered by Muslims. 4 Muslims were convicted for this in October 1998.
Around that time, from 1992 to 1994, the politicians killed in Mumbai also included Shiv Sena MLA Vithal Chavan (this killing may have been due to mafia gang extortion reason, then Islamic fanaticism), BJP MLA Prem Kumar Sharma (in June 1993) who was killed by Islamic radicals, and Sena MLC Ramesh More (on 29 May 1993, just 5 days before Sharma’s killing).
12. In May 1996 in Kerala, BJP’s Kannur district secretary Panniyan Chandran was killed by CPM cadres in front of his wife, for which CPM workers were found guilty by the SC. BJP suffered a major setback after the murder of Panniyan Chandran.
13. On 1 Dec 1999 the very popular BJYM Kerala state Vice-President was murdered. K T Jayakrishnan, a school teacher, was hacked to death on 1 December 1999 in his classroom in front of his students. The Additional Sessions Judge K K Chandra Das gave the verdict on the case in Aug 2003, which had created a storm in the state political circles. 5 CPM cadres were given the death penalty.
CPM activists demonstrated in front of the Sessions Court and High Court after the verdict. They shouted slogans against the judges and even threatened to kill them. This CPM, which gives long lectures to BJP and RSS on honouring court verdicts openly burnt the effigies of the judge throughout the state (Kerala).
This was also confirmed by the High Court. The court confirmed the sentences and observed that the murder was committed inside a classroom in front of the students. The accused had not made any attempt to conceal their identities. The Kerala High Court judge said, “the accused trespassed into the classroom and translated their evil design into action by committing the murder of K.T. Jayakrishnan in an extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical, revolting and dastardly manner”.
All five convicts submitted their appeal to the Supreme Court against the death penalty. But, in a sudden development, the CPM-led Kerala government replaced the public prosecutor with a weak person. As expected in one of the blackest days in Indian Judiciary the Supreme Court itself acquitted the daylight murderer accused of Jayakrishnan in spite of many witnesses in a bench consisting of who else but Markendey Katju! 4 out of the 5 convicts were acquitted, while the death penalty of the lone person found guilty was reduced to life imprisonment, and he was released by the CPI(M) Government of Kerala soon, after 10 years in jail.
14. U Chittaranjan, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA for Bhatkal in Karnataka was shot dead on April 10, 1996, in his house by Islamic radicals. Chittaranjan’s murder was the first incident in the State (Karnataka) where an MLA was shot dead. The CBI, which is probing the murder, had not arrested the assailants who shot the BJP MLA while he was watching television at his house in the communally sensitive Bhatkal town, for at least 10 years after his murder. In fact, the CBI made a plea to actually close the case, which was turned down by the court.
15. Dr V Shridhar, the BJP city unit chief of Trichy in Tamil Nadu was murdered on 2 February 1999. 7 activists of the banned Al Umma were convicted for this murder.
16- BJP Medical Wing Secretary Dr Arvind Reddy was murdered in Vellore in October 2012. Dr V Arvind Reddy (38), the BJP State Medical Wing Secretary and Indian Medical Association (IMA) Vellore Branch President was murdered in front of the diabetic clinic owned by him. Al Umma members later confessed to having killed him, while Police had earlier arrested other people for it.
17. S. Vellaiyappan, an activist and the Tamil Nadu State Secretary of the Hindu Munnani, was murdered in Vellore on 2 July 2013. Al Umma members confessed to having killed him.
A former BJP councillor K Murugan (45) was also hacked to death in Ramanathapuram in Tamil Nadu on 20 March 2013. Police said that Murugan was returning home for lunch when the gang hurled pipe bombs and hacked him to death.
18. Four RSS officials, not ordinary workers, but high-level officials (and full-time workers, as they call them, pracharaks) were kidnapped on 6 August 1999 in Tripura, held captive for over a year and brutally tortured and killed.
Those abducted and later declared killed were: kshetra karyavah (zonal general secretary) of West Bengal, Assam and the North-East Shyamal Kanti Sengupta, pracharak working in southern Assam Dinendranath Dey, Agartala vibhag pracharak (area-in-charge) Sudhamay Dutta, and district pracharak Subhankar Chakravarty. They were all abducted from a Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram-run students’ hostel in Tripura’s Kanchanchhada area. The NLFT confessed its crime.
Of course, this did not provoke a single act of retaliation from anyone.
19. On 28 March 2002, RSS Publicity Secretary (Prachar Vibhag) man Murugesan was killed at his home in Kuniyamuthur, a suburb of Coimbatore.
20. Four RSS workers i.e. swayamsewaks were brutally murdered by Islamic radicals at Sonakhali village under Basanti police station in South 24 Pargana district in West Bengal on 10 February 2001. The swayamsevaks had gone there to organise a meeting of RSS members on February 11. RSS vibhag pracharak for North and South 24 Parganas district, Tapan Ghosh, said that five RSS swayamsevaks went to the village to collect coconuts and other eatables from villagers for the meeting as donations. The swayamsevaks were: Abhijit Sardar (Mahakuma Sharirik Pramukh), Patitpaban Naskar (Mandal Karyavah), Sujit Naskar, Anadi Naskar and Bikarna Naskar.
When they reached the house of Anwar Hossain Sardar, a local Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) activist, in the Village, they were accosted by a gang of armed men led by Anwar. The RSS swayamsevaks were forced to sit on a wooden bench outside the house and then the assailants killed four of them by firing from their guns at point-blank range. In the melee, Bikarna Naskar escaped from their clutches and informed the local RSS office about the murders. The Basanti police station was immediately informed by the RSS office but the police initially did not pay any attention to the complaint. The police arrived in the village five hours after the brutal murders of the four RSS swayamsevaks.
This is a well-established fact and on the fourth anniversary of that, there was a massive blood donation program organised at that place where 160 people, including a girl, donated blood. Of course, no retaliation.
21. Sunil Kumar, district secretary of the Hindu Aikya Vedi and taluka karyawah of the RSS in Chirayinkeezhu was murdered by Islamic radicals on 9 May 2006. He was also the local agent for the BJP’s Malayalam mouthpiece Janmabhumi.
There are many more such incidents of killings. Some of them can be seen here and here. These should be highlighted to expose the lie that ‘No one from the BJP and the Sangh Parivar lost his life.’
(The writer is the author of book “Gujarat Riots: The True Story” which gives all details about the 2002 riots- Godhra and after, one of the admins of www.gujaratriots.com and one of the admins of the Twitter handle @gujaratriotscom)
