February
7, 2006
An Open Letter to Rahul Dravid
From
Prof
Shamsul Islam
Dear Rahul Dravid,
Namaskar!
You,
presently, lead the cricket team of India and wear the National
Flag, Tri-colour while playing for India in different parts of the
globe. You must be well aware of the fact that this Tri-colour
represents a Secular-Democratic India and team led by you which
includes players from different religions and regions of the
country, undoubtedly, symbolize the same reality.
I hope you are familiar with the
glorious heritage which the
National Flag and a Secular-Democratic polity represent.
These
are the products of great anti-colonial struggle and ruthless fight
against theocratic politics represented by organizations like the
Muslim League, the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha. Despite the
partition of India on the basis of religion mainly forced by Muslim
League and dastardly killing of Father of the Nation by persons
affiliated to the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, India chose to remain
a non-theocratic state. That is the significance of the Nation which
you and your team represent and the Flag which you display on your
costumes.
I am sorry to write that by participating in the birth centenary
programme of M. S. Golwalkar (Guruji), the ideologue of the RSS, in
Nagpur on January 20, 2007, you have not only violated the trust
which this country has put in you but also saddened large sections
of your fans who love and adore you
because you and your team represent a Secular-Democratic India.
According to a report which appeared in the Hindi organ of the RSS,
Panchjanya (February 4, 2007, p. 11), ‘Indian cricket captain
inaugurated the Surya Namaskar Mahayagya programme in the Vidarbh
region (of Masharashtra)’. This campaign was organized by RSS ‘to
commemorate the birth centenary of Shri Guruji’ who happened to be
the second chief and the most prominent ideologue of the RSS. The
cover page of Panchjanya also shows you lightening the lamp before
the garlanded photograph of Golwalkar.
I do not know who led you to join this programme of the RSS but I
feel duty-bound to bring to your notice few crucial facts about the
RSS and Guruji who led it from 1940 to 1973.
The first Home Minister of independent India, Sardar Patel, held the
RSS responsible for the assassination of Gandhiji. He in a letter to
Golwalkar, dated 11 September 1948, clearly stated that it was
communal poison spread by the RSS which was responsible for this
tragedy. Without mincing words he wrote: ‘As a final result of the
poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable
life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government, or
of the people, no more remained for the RSS. In fact opposition
grew. Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed
joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.’ I hope you know
that consequently the RSS was banned for its role in the
assassination.
Dear Rahul Saheb! Golwalkar whose birthday centenary programme you
inaugurated was a die-hard fascist who rejected any talk of a
democratic-secular India. In 1939 he penned a terrible book We or
Our Nationhood Defined which ousted minorities like Muslims and
Christians from the Indian nationhood. Even after Independence, in
another book his Bunch of Thoughts, Golwalkar declared Muslims as
enemy number one and Christians as enemy number two of the country.
I wish you had boycotted such a programme as you can vouch to the
fact that many Muslim and Christian players playing cricket with you
have done proud to the nation. Golwalkar also glorified dictators
like Mussolini and Hitler and insisted on adopting their methods for
cleansing minorities in India. In his 1939 book
while eulogizing Hitler he wrote: ‘German race pride has now become
the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the Race and its
culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the
Semitic Races-the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been
manifested here. Germany has also shown how wellnigh impossible it
is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to
be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in
Hindusthan to learn and profit by.’ It is really
astonishing that a renowned sportsperson like you went to be part of
programmes dedicated to such a nasty person.
I also would like to draw your attention to what RSS thinks about
the Tri-colour which you so proudly wear. When the Indian
Parliament decided to have Tri-colour as the National Flag, the
English organ of the RSS, Organizer, (‘Mystery behind the Bhagwa
Dhawaj’, August 14, 1947) denigrated
this great choice in the following words: ‘The people who have come
to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour but
it never [sic] be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is
in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly
produce a very bad psychological
effect and is injurious to a country’. The RSS has been demanding
the adoption of saffron flag as the National Flag of the country. It
also needs to be known that when the Constituent Assembly of India
finally passed the Constitution on 26 November 1949, the RSS
demanded that it should be
replaced by the Codes of Manu (Organizer November 30, 1949) which
openly glorified Casteism, upheld persecution of Untouchables and
denigrated women.
Dear Mr. Rahul! You went to commemorate the birth centenary of a RSS
leader who hated democracy and declared (while addressing the top
cadres of the RSS at its Reshambagh headquarters, Nagpur in 1940)
that Hindu India of his dreams needed only ‘one flag (saffron), one
leader and one ideology’.
Moreover, it is really unfortunate that you went to honour a person
who believed and practiced Racism. Interestingly, his kind of Racism
was blatant in glorifying the racial superiority of North Indian
Brahmins. According to a report in Organizer (January 2, 1961)
Golwalkar while addressing the
students of the School of Social Science of Gujarat University
declared: ‘In an effort to better the human species through
cross-breeding the Namboodri Brahamanas of the North were settled in
Kerala and a rule was laid down that the eldest son of a Namboodri
family could marry only the daughter of
Vaishya, Kashtriya or Shudra communities of Kerala. Another still
more courageous rule was that the first off-spring of a married
woman of any class must be fathered by a Namboodri Brahman and then
she could beget children by her husband. Today this experiment will
be called adultery but it was not so, as it was limited to the first
child.’ This only showed Golwalkar’s hatred for South Indians. Isn’t
it shocking that you went to honour such a person! Let me end with
the hope that a great cricketer like you who stands as a symbol of
Democratic-Secular India will not betray the trust the country has
shown in you and fall prey to the designs of Hindu Separatism.
Wishing
you all the best.
Shamsul
Islam.