Bhopal: CPM leader Sitaram Yechury, unmindful of the ‘Ram’ in his name, has described religious epics Ramayana and Mahabharata as specimens of Hindu violence.
The analogy came in the backdrop of his attack on the BJP for fragmenting the society for votes through its divisive policies.
“Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur said Hindus don’t believe in violence. Many kings and principalities have fought battles in the country.
Even Ramayana and Mahabharata are replete with instances of violence. Being a pracharak, you cite the epics but still claim Hindus can’t be violent? What is the rationale behind saying there is a religion which engages in violence & we Hindus don’t,” he said.
“After the initial phases of election got over, they came back to the core Hindutva agenda – Abolition of Article 35A and 370, Construction of Ram Mandir on the disputed site, Uniform Civil Code and NRC. Riding on such issues, the decision to bring in Sadhvi Pragya Thakur to contest from Bhopal after the third phase, is a step which is intended to hype the sentiments of the people,” added Yechury.
He recounted the non-violent traditios of the country, citing the Mauryan empire’s acceptance of the Buddhist philosophy. “The Mauryan empire accepted Buddhism after the Battle of Kalinga. Ashoka’s edicts state that anyone who attacks other communities, damages his own community. Our tradition is this and not the one propagated by the BJP,” said the CPM leader.
Yechury elaborated in detail the Hindutva design and its genesis by recounting instances from history. “Vinayak Damodar Savarkar has himself said Hindutva has no relation with Hinduism. It is a political project. His slogan was ‘Hinduize the Military and Militarize the Hindus’. He encouraged the Hindu youth to join the military.
This was how Hindus were organized into RSS. The person who got inspired by this philosophy was Balakrishna Shivram Moonje. He went to Italy and got inspired by Mussolini. He came back and opened a military academy which inspired the later day Hindu nationalists,” he said. “So, it is a fallacy to say that Hindus can’t engage in violence as historicity doesn’t verify this claim.
All the private armies that have been built in the name of moral policing are based on this philosophy,” he contended. Yechury contended that BJP’s narrative is that if India has to fight against terrorism, one has to support PM Modi. “But the reality is that the fight against terrorism is a united effort; otherwise we play to the tunes of the terrorists,” he said.
“If you take out the records of terrorist attack, in PM Modi’s tenure, 626 terrorist attacks took place and 483 security personnel lost their lives. Ceasefire violations amounted to 5596 compared to 563 in the preceding five years. The number of civilians who died in PM Modi’s tenure is 210 as compared to 12 in the preceding five years,” he corroborated.
