Yechury echoes Digvijaya,tugs at fragile Oppn unity in House

Says his party will raise during the Budget session the issue of terror attacks.

Ahead of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjees February 8 meeting with Opposition parties in a bid to break the logjam on the latter’s demand for a JPC (Joint Parliamentary Committee) to probe into 2G spectrum allocation,there surfaced chinks in the Opposition camp with the CPM on Friday targeting the RSS and echoing Congress leader Digvijaya Singhs views on Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar being the first proponent of two-nation theory. CPM parliamentary party leader Sitaram Yechury declared that in the forthcoming Budget session,his party will raise the issue of terror attacks involving RSS activists and put pressure on the government to release innocent persons (belonging to the minority community) arrested in connection with these attacks.

Digvijaya Singh demanded an investigation into the international funding of organisations like Abhinav Bharat,the RSS,the VHP and Bajrang Dal. He also said there was an urgent need to fix a time-limit for disposal of mercy petitions. This came in the context of the Oppositions criticism of the government for the delay in hanging Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

Justifying his controversial visit to Sanjarpur and Azamgarh last year to meet the families of Muslim youths arrested in connection with different terror attacks,Singh said,Don’t push any community to such an extent that they take up arms. Such a scenario was developing. I,therefore,went to Sanjarpur and Azamgarh.

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Singh even seemingly supported Pakistans stand on the status of victims affected by communal violence in India. After all,Pakistan has been reiterating for the last seven years that Muslims will not get justice in India, he told The Indian Express.

He also echoed the Left leaders concern about the delay in enacting Communal Violence Bill,which is presently being re-drafted by the National Advisory Council.

Yechury and Singh were speaking at a day-long conference organised by civil rights group Anhad to highlight the plight of people who were targeted in the aftermath of terror attacks in which the role of some RSS leaders is under scanner now.

The senior CPM leader said there was a history of militant ideology of the RSS and it is wrong to assume that violent tendencies have developed only recently as a reaction to certain provocations. The violent strain in Hindutva is very old. The two-nation theory as reminded to us by Digvijaya Singh was propounded by Savarkar. At the time of coining the term Hindutva,he had given a slogan Hinduise all politics and militarise Hindu religion. That was the genesis of this militancy and violent activities to create Hindu Rashtra, said Yechury.

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Referring to B S Moonje who is considered RSS founder K B Hedgewars mentor,Yechury said Moonje had noted in his diary that he wanted to meet Italian dictator Mussolini and after meeting him in 1931 he had established the Central Hindu Military Education Society,which was later converted into Bhonsale Military School. This was the place where people like Col Shrikant Purohit took training, he said.

At the conference,civil rights groups raised a number of demands,including a white paper on the number of Muslim youths arrested in the aftermath of recent terror attacks in the country.