The debate over awards being returned by creative personalities refused to ebb as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Friday attacked the move to be a “politically motivated” one by a “handful of pseudo-secularists” using the Sangh as a “punching bag” out of frustration.
“A handful of people returning awards are losing ground. It is indeed a political, desperate, frustrated act of these people to keep their shop running. They feel they can make the RSS the punching bag in the name of intolerance. The RSS is not a punching bag for any of these so-called liberal, pseudo-secular, intolerant people,” said RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale.
Meanwhile, a convention of writers, artists, thinkers, academicians including Ashok Vajpeyi, Sharmila Tagore, Om Thanvi, M K Raina, Irfan Habib and others will be meeting in the Capital on November 1 to voice their “resistance against attacks on reason, democracy and composite culture.”
The Sangh questioned why these writers, filmmakers and scientists did not speak up in the past when the Godhra train burning incident occurred or when Kashmiri Pandits were targeted in the Valley. It accused them of political conspiracy to create an atmosphere that religious intolerance had increased after the formation of BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, and added “the reality is just the opposite.”
Hosabale said: “Because some people could not stomach the change in the country, the change for the better, the change towards nationalism, the change towards the pride of India, change towards better life and development. These things they cannot stomach, because their ideological shops are being closed. They are frustrated, their desperate act shows that they want to be in the news, otherwise people will forget them.”
He added that the so-called intelligentsia are finding themselves misfit and are desperately trying to be in the news through such “politically motivated acts.”
Hosabale said the “intolerance” of such kinds has been there for the last 60 years, but such people preferred to remain quiet. “I want to ask, when hundreds of people in the Kashmir Valley were being killed, what happened to these people. Why it did not happen when kar-sewaks were burnt alive. Then these people did not raise their voice,” he said.