The RSS on Monday began its three-day shivir (camp) in Muzaffarpur under the stewardship of Suresh (Bhaiyyaji) Joshi, second-in-command to Mohan Bhagwat, at a time when love jihad is in the news in north India.
“We are not here to specifically discuss the issue of love jihad. But we are concerned at the terror conglomerates enticing thousands of Hindu girls into matrimonial alliance with minority youths, in Kerala and Uttar Pradesh. We have collected substantial evidence to suggest that they are targeting several north Bihar districts as part of their larger conspiracy to destabilise Bharat (India),” said Mohan Singh, general secretary of the Bihar-Jharkhand region of the RSS and a key participant at the camp.
Mohan admitted that RSS swayamsevaks operating through 1,500 shakhas (branches) across the state had embarked on a mission to check the nefarious design to “contaminate” culture and society and spread “awareness” against the despoilers at work to “soil” what is known as the larger religious identity of Bharat and its Hindu samaj (society).
Police and social experts are yet to find even an iota of evidence to suggest that the terror clubs were using “love jihad” to increase the numerical strength of the minorities and spread their network. But the manner in which the RSS has organised its camp and that too under the stewardship of its top-level functionary (Joshi), highlights the BJP’s parent organisation’s stepped-up “penchant” to campaign against a practice that hardly exists at the ground-level, at least in the eyes of investigating agencies, social experts and society at large.
The executive president of the Bihar Women’s Society, the CPI women’s wing, Nivedita — who is married to Shakeel, a Left activist and doctor — said: “The administration should maintain strict vigil on the RSS volunteers carrying out a hate campaign to fuel communal divide in society rather than on the effectually non-existent love jihad. The society’s watchdogs should also monitor Twitter and other networking sites, which the divisive elements are using in a big way to fuel hatred.”
The selection of Muzaffarpur — the venue of the RSS’s three-day camp, a closely guarded affair barred from the media — is also significant in the sense that it is in the centre of minority-dominated pockets such as Darbhanga, Madhubani and Samastipur, bordering Nepal. Yasin Bhatkal, the Indian Mujahideen mastermind, operated in this region. Yasin’s alleged accomplice, Tehsin Akhtar, belonged to a village in Samastipur, barely 20km from what is also known as the biggest business centre of north Bihar. Bhatkal was arrested near the Nepal border, around 40km from Muzaffarpur. The developments had fuelled large-scale “suspicion” between the two communities, something the BJP benefited from during the May Lok Sabha elections.
“Now, insulated from deliberating on real issues like Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Japan or the BJP’s poor show in the just concluded bypolls, the RSS is back in business to keep the rumour mills grinding through its shakhas, shivirs and ubiquitous volunteers,” said a sociologist, preferring anonymity.
