In an opinion piece published in The Indian Express, an anguished Swami Agnivesh has spoken out against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and asserted that the right-wing organisation “is a sinister threat to the Vedic heritage and the core ethos of Indian spirituality.”
“I have been an eyesore to the RSS for long because of my life-long commitment to social justice. The ideal of justice is an irritant to the RSS. It runs counter to the Sangh’s casteist creed of keeping the lower castes and tribals as barely-tolerated second-class citizens,” Agnivesh wrote.
He underlined that the RSS is inspired by the “un-Indian ideology of cultural nationalism borrowed from Hitler’s Germany”. “The RSS has endeavoured to keep India anchored to its feudal past, marked by unjust and unmerited advantages to the upper castes to the detriment and degradation of the rest of the society,” Agnivesh added.
He explained that his social work is against superstition, caste oppression and exploitation of the poor for which his colleague and him, “have been described as Marxists, Maoist-sympathisers, minority-loyalists, fraud swamis, agents of un-identifiable foreign powers, and so on.”
The social activist wrote this detailed article after right-wing goons physically assaulted him recently on two different occasions. Last month, he was brutally assaulted and heckled by Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) and ABVP members at Pakur in Jharkhand for his so-called “anti-Hindu” views.
WhileBJYM state chief Amit Singh claimed that no one from his outfit was involved in the attack, an investigative report published in The Indian Express pointed out that all of the eight named in the FIR were directly linked to the BJYM, BJP and its affiliates or the RSS.
Read more: Swami Agnivesh Alleges Attack By BJP Yuva Morcha, ABVP Activists In Jharkhand
The second attack took place on Thursday,when Agnivesh was on his way to pay homage to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and some BJP workers assaulted and abused him near the party headquarter in the capital.
Reda more: Swami Agnivesh Assaulted At BJP Office