RSS in charge

The lead editorial in the latest issue of CPI(M) mouthpiece People’s Democracy claims that the RSS appears to have assumed the “reins of direct control” of the BJP, which was plagued with internal dissensions and organisational problems after the Lok Sabha elections. The article says it feared that RSS control over the BJP would bring the aggressive hardcore Hindutva agenda to the fore, which cannot but sharpen communal passions. “This is because the RSS/BJP appear to have come to the conclusion that it is only through an aggressive display of hardcore communalism can it succeed in polarising the society in its effort to mobilise the ‘Hindu vote bank’.”

“Unfortunately, these apprehensions are turning out to be true. For a week now, communal tensions continue to simmer, threatening to burst into flames in the districts of Sangli and Kolhapur in western Maharashtra. Violence broke out on the last day of the Ganesh festival in the Miraj town of Sangli district. It soon spread to adjoining districts in the country’s sugar bowl...As always, there is a deliberate design stoking such violence. The trouble started in the district after the police seized a decorative poster in one of the Ganesh mandals which depicted Shivaji Maharaja’s killing of Afzal Khan. Such a depiction was designed to provoke a confrontation...”

Gas feud

An article by Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) leader Dipankar Mukherjee criticises the prime minister for appealing to the warring Ambani brothers to settle the KG basin natural gas price dispute in the national interest. Since when has national interest become synonymous with corporate interest? he seeks to know. “On one hand the government — though belatedly but rightly — asserted a couple of months back that natural gas is a national resource and an asset which is owned by the people of the country, and on the other hand the corporate siblings are being cajoled openly by ministers to amicably settle the issue between themselves...”

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