Maligning the Hindu Right...

Mr. Ramachandra Guha is a sociologist writer who was written on subjects related to history and politics. He is famous for his work "India after Gandhi: History of the worlds largest democracy" and is a regular contributor to 'The Telegraph'.

Here is an article written by him recently on the Maoist problem where he makes interesting points but tries hard to discredit the RSS. For one who has written a pretty massive book on the subject of Indian history and is supposed to be an expert on the subject, the mis-representations in this article are clearly deliberate.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100226/jsp/opinion/story_12145914.jsp

"Soon after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in January 1948, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was banned. This was in part because Gandhi’s murderer, Nathuram Godse, had once been a member of the RSS; and in part because RSS leaders played a crucial role in the polarization of Hindu-Muslim relations that led to that tragic event."

Godse was a member of not just the RSS but also apparently of the Congress as well (Read the "Aftermath" section on this page). The author also cleverly chooses to not mention the real reasons for the Hindu-Muslim polarization and blames the RSS.

"In the short-term, the government of India might invoke the Naga model and follow the offer of a ceasefire by speaking to the Maoists. In the medium-term, it must look to the RSS model, whereby a group that once refused to recognize the Indian Constitution comes round to working within it. While in private some RSS leaders may still dream of a Hindu rashtra, in public they have accepted the legitimacy of the Indian State. In the same fashion, the Maoists must be persuaded, over a period of time, to give up their fantasy of a communist dictatorship, and work within the plural, multi-party, democratic process mandated by the Constitution of India."

Here the author equates the nationalist RSS with the Christian separatist Nagas and the blood thirsty Maoists!! It is a common ploy to name the person/group you want to malign by naming them in the same breath with unrelated and violent groups so that one thinks that they are in the same league. Guha gets it right when he blames the communists for the problems in West Bengal but tries to balance it by dragging in the RSS even though mentioning the RSS in this context was completely out of place.

While it is fine to be ideologically different from the RSS, equating them with such anti-national groups betrays a lack of intellectual and moral integrity which is not too uncommon with such analysts. It appears that Ramachandra Guha is of the same tribe as Romila Thapar, whose deception is brilliantly exposed by Arun Shourie in his book "Eminent Historians".

For interested people, here is a very good article on how communist historians misinterpret archeological discoveries to fit their world view.