NEW DELHI, Mar 25:
The RSS extended help not only to Kashmiri Hindus but Muslims too, when they bore the brunt of terrorism in the Valley in 1990s, its senior leader Arun Kumar said today.
When terrorism was at its peak in Jammu and Kashmir in 1990s, the RSS worked on “multiple dimensions” — from building pressure on the Government to hand over the region to the Army, spreading nationwide awareness among people to “save Kashmir” to helping “general society” in the Valley — he said.
“We started our services to help Muslims when terrorists started targeting them after the exodus of Hindus from Kashmir,” he added.
Kumar, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) joint general secretary and its pointsman with the BJP, was addressing an event organised here to unveil a book, titled ‘Conflict Resolution-The RSS Way’.
He said that a wrong narrative had been created against the RSS after the Independence that it’s a fascist and Hindu militant organisation and such “an ecosystem” is still continuing to spread “disinformation”.
Yet, the Sangh has been able to work in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and the Northeast to resolve conflicts, he said.
“It’s because we do not see differences in society as conflict. We never considered diversity as division in the country, we never saw it as a reason behind differences in society. We have always seen unity in diversity. This is the core belief of the RSS with which we work,” he added.
The RSS has reached more than half of the country’s population today because it never considers anyone its “adversary” and works on its mission relentlessly to unite people in one common thread, Kumar said.
For the RSS, one nation-one people-one culture is not just a slogan but a conviction which is in the core of its work, he said.
“Along with continuity of Sangh, there is continuity of our ecosystem as well,” he said, adding, “To understand Sangh, one needs to understand its perspective.”
The RSS leader said “many people” create division and conflict in society in the name of caste, community and language to implement their nefarious agenda of dividing the country.
“This happens when we go for a smaller identity leaving aside our bigger identity that we are one nation-one people,” he said.
The RSS works on the ground to spread awareness among the people and unite them as the solution lies in the problem itself, he added.
Kumar said there are several misgivings about the RSS — one of them being that it is an undemocratic organisation, which is “far from the truth”.
He said decisions are taken by the RSS through an “elaborate exercise” involving members from across all levels of the organisations, contrary to what many claim that only four to five people take all the decisions.
Addressing the event, RSS national executive member Ram Madhav said the larger mission of Sangh is to unite people of the country.
The physical spread of the RSS is “mind-boggling” today with as many as 60,000 shakhas being organized every day across the country and hundreds of projects being implemented on the ground, he said.
The RSS is criticised because it’s “a successful and an influential” organisation today, he added.
Speaking to the reporters on the sidelines of the event later, Madhav appreciated the film, ‘The Kashmir Files’, saying it is an effort to bring the truth before the the current generation so that they remember what happened with Kashmiri Hindus in 1990s.
“It’s not a material to do any propaganda or campaign,” he said, adding that such efforts to tell the truth behind Kashmiri Hindus’ exodus from the Valley were made in past too. (PTI)
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