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| Agnivesh, Bhagwat |
Taking strong exception to RSS sarshanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, who recently said that all Indians are Hindus, well-known social activist and religious thinker Swami Agnivesh has said that his Hindutva agenda “flies in the face of the Constitution of India” and seeks to “erase cultural and religious diversity of India, unveiling “the RSS hobbyhorse of homogenization: one nation, one language, one culture.”
Regretting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who vows by the Constitution of India, “keeps mum in the face of the anti-Constitutional posturing of Bhagwat”, Agnivesh in a statement said, “The idea that those who live in the territory from the Sindhu (in the North) to the sea (in the South) is an arbitrary invention of VD Savarkar.”
Calling Savarkar’s logic, spelt out his book “Hindutva”, an insult to Hinduism, Agnivesh said, “Savarkar condemns Hinduism as a source of endemic disunity and asserts that it can never serve as a framework for national unity. Hence the need to shift from ‘dharma’ to ‘rashtra’.”
Claiming that RSS ideology “implies a rejection of Hinduism”, the veteran swami said, “The RSS ‘Hindu’ supersedes the religious ‘Hindu’, which, regrettably, Hindus refuse to recognize.”
Quoting Maharishi Dayanand, Agnivesh said, “He held that the word Hindu does not exist in the Vedas or Puranas, and that it is imported from Persia, where it means ‘black’, ‘thief’ etc.” Dayanand believed, Agnivesh added, “India was, and must remain, Aryavarta: the land of the Arya; meaning, the noble.”
Opposing “RSS agenda of imposing Hindu Rashtra on India, because it forebodes a vulgarization of our spiritual heritage”, Agnivesh said, “India was never like European nations, each identified only with one religion. This bigotry is an aberration. It breeds violence and intolerance. This mocks the spirit of India.”
Underlining that Indians should “never degenerate into a theological state and regress to the pre-modern misery of religious obscurantism and communal bigotry”, Agnivesh claimed, Bhagwat’s “communal posturing derives some legitimacy from the caste practices prevalent among religious minorities.”
“The caste system is, strictly speaking, not even Hindu. It has no Vedic basis. It is, like Hindutva itself, an arbitrary invention of the Brahminical brain aimed at securing a permanent stranglehold on the rest of Indians”, he added.
Calling the Government of India allowing European Parliamentarians to visit Kashmir a clear case of ‘internationalizing’ the Kashmir issue, in a separate statement, Agnivesh said, “It is embarrassing that the plight of our sisters and brothers in Kashmir has to be certified by a cherry-picked menagerie of overseas MPs.” He added, “Commonsense tells us that Kashmiris themselves are in the best position to tell the rest of the world whether they are doing well or ill.”
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