Shahs call finds echo in Sangh - Re-conversion to Gita, RSS has its say, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has welcomed BJP president Amit Shahs call for a national law against religious proselytisation and asked the seculars to prove their credentials on the conversion issue. An editorial and a couple of articles in the December 14 issue of the Sanghs English weekly, Organiser, aired the organisations views on several issues that split Parliament along secular-communal lines over the past two weeks. Among these were the calls for declaring the Bhagvad Gita as a national scripture - as voiced by foreign minister Sushma Swaraj recently - and for adopting Sanskrit as a national third language. The editorial, titled Conversion and Conviction, claimed that conversions of any sort were foreign to the Indian psyche. Let conviction of the nation supersede consideration of vote-bank politics, it warned, otherwise there will be many more homecomings in the coming days. This was an allusion to the re-conversions of poor Christians and Muslims by Sangh affiliate Dharam Jagran Samanvay Vibhag over the past three years in western Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. These events were held usually on Christmas Day. This Christmas, the Vibhag has lined up one in Aligarh, which the Uttar Pradesh government has vowed to block. Organiser said the recent re-conversion of a group of Muslims in Agra had given the secular lobby an opportunity to target the Narendra Modi government on the Hindutva plank. It, however, argued that Hinduism lacked the philosophical basis and intent to convert a person. In other words, Hinduism was a non-proselytising faith. Unfortunately, many invasions based on monolithic religious intent turned this inherent strength of (the) Hindu way of life into its weakness, the editorial alleged. But it conceded that poverty and caste discrimination served as (a) nurturing ground for conversion. The editorial referred to a report by the Niyogi Committee, set up in 1956 by a Congress government in Madhya Pradesh, to ask why no secular party had accepted its recommendations. The panel had been formed as a political response to an agitation by the BJPs predecessor, the Jana Sangh, against conversions by foreign missionaries. It recommended, among other measures, expelling missionaries intent on conversions and banning the use of medical and other social services as blandishments. The article on national status for the Gita was written by Sandeep Singh, who runs the website swastika.net.in and was among Modis earliest cyber cheerleaders. Singh contested the argument that if India has to have a national book, it should be the Constitution. It is worth mentioning that the Constitution is not applicable all over India, example Jammu and Kashmir, and it is not applicable to all Indians, example (the) followers of Islam follow a different set of laws. Hence (the) Constitution is out of contention as the national book, he wrote. On Sanskrit, the Sanghs views were expressed in an article by IT professional Hitesh Rangra. He cited the mammoth task at hand of fighting opponents who want to paint Sanskrit as a language of Hindus, Hinduism, Hindutva. He added that Jawaharlal Nehru University - regarded as a Left-liberal bastion - set up a Sanskrit Studies Centre only in 2001 under an NDA government.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 07:00:01 +0000
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