Upbeat Parivar

As the Centre weighs its options before finalising its affidavit to the Supreme Court on the Ram Sethu issue...

As the Centre weighs its options before finalising its affidavit to the Supreme Court on the Ram Sethu issue, the Sangh Parivar is already celebrating. ‘Ram Sethu campaign vindicated, UPA forced to rethink,’ proclaims the cover article in the latest issue of the Organiser. The cause for this euphoria is the January 31 submission of the Centre to the SC that it is yet to finalise the affidavit.

The RSS mouthpiece attributes the Centre’s ambivalence to the one-year campaign launched by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its offshoot, the Ram Sethu Raksha Samiti. Says the lead article: “The Samiti had in the last one year, agitating for the protection of the ancient-most monument of Hindu faith, raised well-documented extensive logistical objections on the project. It was proved that the project is a navigational disaster, that it is unviable and an ecological outrage. The Centre was, however, forced to rethink and perhaps even defer the project after the huge response to the same Ram Sethu agitation.”

The weekly sees a UPA rethink in the latest position taken by Union Culture Minister Ambika Soni that the ASI could not give a definite view on the project without undertaking a survey. The Organiser says: “For all practical purposes, a fresh study will push the project back by several months and the help the Congress prevent it from becoming a major issue in the next general election.”

Look at BMS

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News reports saying that the RSS affiliate, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, has emerged as the biggest trade union, have attracted editorial comment in the Organiser.

After paying rich tributes to BMS founder Dattopant Thengadi, the editorial mounts an offensive against the Left. “Wherever the Communist unions went in the name of class struggle, they ensured that agricultural production reached its nadir, factories closed down, unemployment and agitation accompanied and the industry took to its heels to catch the earliest available flight. Their dubious record tells the big story of the barren paddy fields and dry coconut groves of Kerala and locked out industrial units in the states where they are in power. They have no regret. But the people whom they claim to represent have seen through the maze of the Left doubletalk. And they are overwhelmingly embracing the saffron dawn.”

Remember Russia

Wrapping up a serialised opinion article on India’s strategic interests in Central Asia, writer Kunal Ghosh makes a strong case for close ties between India and Russia even while the country conducts joint naval exercises with the US. The writer says: “Our foreign policy seems ill-advised and short-sighted. We seem to be putting all our eggs in the American basket.” He says India should join the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) — if China can do so, why can not India?

Then the ideological argument: “Orthodox-majority non-Communist and secular Russia is a natural and reliable ally of Hindu-majority and non-Communist and secular India. The orthodox, unlike the Protestant and Catholic, do not have a proselytising mission to convert the rest of the world to their faith and religion…”

pradeep.kaushal@expressindia.com