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‘Extremists told to leave RSS’
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat said on Monday that radical elements, suspected to be involved in blast cases, were asked to leave the RSS.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat said on Monday that radical elements, suspected to be involved in blast cases, were asked to leave the RSS.
Bhagwat’s statement at a public meet in Surat came after a series of reports by HT tracing the roots of saffron terror.
“Elements nurturing extremists views have been asked to leave the organisation,” Bhagwat said in an indirect admission that such elements existed in outfits associated with the RSS.
“A majority of the people whom the government has accused (in blast cases), few had left voluntarily and few were told by the Sangh that this extremism will not work here,” Bhagwat said. Bhagwat also asserted that the Sangh had not allowed “hard-core elements to be associated with RSS outfits”.
“Those elements which are allegedly linked with bomb blasts have nothing to do with RSS outfits,” he said.
Bhagwat lashed out at the Congress-led UPA government, saying it was trying to malign the RSS’s image to placate minorities. “There is a game to gain power by causing a rift among people. To terrorise people, a new label — saffron terrorism — has been floated by some politicians to brand people linked to RSS as troublemakers.”
He said the Centre was arresting nationalists on cooked-up cases. The Congress is trying to divert attention from its failure at the Centre and electoral setbacks it received at some places, he said.
RSS’s link to terror was exposed when Swami Aseemanand, who worked for the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram — an RSS affiliate — in Dangs district in Gujarat, allegedly confessed to his role in the Samjhauta blast.
He is also believed to have confessed that several Sangh activists had a direct role in the Malegaon, Ajmer and Mecca Masjid blasts in recent years.
“It seems that Bhagwatji tried to defend the organisation after the involvement of persons like Swami Aseemanand in a series of bomb blasts came to the fore,” a local RSS leader in Surat said.
According to him, it’s an open secret that Aseemanand and Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, were patronised by RSS in Gujarat. “Aseemanand’s activities in Dangs were backed by the Sangh and its outfits. In 2006, top RSS brass and CMs of Gujarat and MP had attended the Shabari Kumbh in Dangs.”
