New Delhi : ‘Panchjanya’ is a Hindi weekly published by the RSS; it was launched by RSS pracharak Deendayal Upadhyaya in 1948 and its first editor was Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Yet on Sunday, after a Panchjanya article titled, ‘Vedas order killing of those who kill cows,’ received much flak in the social media, the RSS lost no time in distancing itself from the weekly, asserting that it was not its mouthpiece.
The aforesaid article also justified the Dadri lynching by taking refuge in Newton’s law that “to every action there is always an equal reaction”.
Distancing itself from the article after the social media outrage, RSS spokesman Manmohan Vaidya described as “false and baseless” reports that it supported the lynching of a person in Dadri over rumours that he had consumed beef. “RSS has never supported any incident of violence. It has clearly stated about Dadri violence that a thorough inquiry should be conducted and the guilty should be punished,” he added.
Vaidya further asserted that “Panchjanya” and its English counterpart “Organiser” was “not the mouthpiece of RSS.’’
The RSS denial came on a day when BJP president Amit Shah, speaking on behalf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pulled up five BJP leaders for making controversial statements on beef consumption and the Dadri lynching.
The Panchjanya article also questioned the conduct of writers who had returned their awards to protest against the Dadri lynching. It further demands why the rebel writers “fail to question the social mindset which encouraged Mohammad Iqlakh to commit a crime which could have such grave consequences”. Holding that all present day Muslims were Hindus a few generations back, the article reasons, “Who taught converted Indians to spit on their own culture? After all, all Indian Muslims, including Iqlakh, were Hindus until a few generations ago. Iqlakh’s ancestors too were cow protectors…’’As the RSS organ’s justification of Dadri killing triggered a political storm, Panchjanya editor Hitesh Shankar, too, distanced himself from the write-up saying the views expressed in the article were personal.
