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Organizations for Minorities of India | March 28, 2024

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India’s Lockdown: RSS Cadres Enforce Checkpoints

India’s Lockdown: RSS Cadres Enforce Checkpoints

| On 15, Apr 2020

Paramilitary accused of pogroms assumes police role

Hyderabad, India: April 15, 2020 — India’s minorities are further terrified after the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a violent Hindu nationalist paramilitary which is the patron of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was pictured manning checkpoints on a highway near Hyderabad, Telangana.

“The stated agenda and practice of RSS is to assimilate or eliminate all non-Hindus and declare India a Hindu nation,” warns Arvin Valmuci of Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI). “It is written by their founders, preached by its leaders, practiced by its members. RSS murders minorities, en masse, in pogroms. People are already so weakened by the Hindu nationalist agenda already shoved on them with the Citizenship Act, lockdown in Kashmir, bans on religious conversion, prison penalties for eating beef, and RSS takeover of educational materials. Now they have Nazis as police.”

On March 25, BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a nationwide lockdown which has left India’s almost empty streets crisscrossed by police checkpoints. Viral videos show police beating anyone caught in public. In March, Telangana Chief Minister KC Rao threatened to “shoot on sight” anyone breaking curfew.

Yet pictures of masked and armed RSS members enforcing a checkpoint in Telangana raise concerns that Indian institutions are being operated by the paramilitary.

“It reveals who is in control when the RSS openly runs police checkpoints with impunity while every other Indian is locked down,” explains South Asian affairs analyst Pieter Friedrich. “World nations must recognize that the RSS holds the levers of power in India. It influences all major Indian institutions and controls much of the country’s media, bureaucracy, courts, and education system. This year, the RSS even opened a military school to funnel officers into the army. It already infiltrated police ranks, but now footage of plainclothes civilians participating in police beatings indicate that RSS units are embedded with law enforcement.”

The paramilitary’s founders called Indian Christians and Muslims “traitors” and “foreign races.” RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat calls it is “non-negotiable” that India is a Hindu nation and describes non-Hindus as “property” that must be “taken back” by RSS. This religious nationalist ideology has led to many violent clashes.

In 2009, RSS groups staged a pogrom against Christians in Odisha, killing approximately 100. It is also implicated in widespread attacks on churches and killings of pastors, including the burning alive of two young boys and their father in 1999, also in Odisha. Prime Minister Modi, an RSS member, is connected to instigating anti-Muslim pogroms in 2002 in Gujarat and across northern India in 1992. The paramilitary is also blamed for a February 2020 pogrom in Delhi sparked by a local BJP leader.

According to John Dayal, All India Christian Council, RSS was also complicit in the 1984 Sikh Genocide. “Everybody thinks that the perpetrators of the 1984 violence were Congress lots, which of course they were, but for every Congress lot his companion was an RSS lot,” said Dayal. “I’m an eyewitness.”

Released on Twitter on April 9, pictures of the Telangana checkpoint were captioned “RSS volunteers helping the police department daily for 12 hours.”

RSS members outnumber police at Telangana checkpoint

Confusing statements make it unclear if RSS had government permission to run checkpoints in Telangana.

RSS-Telangana office claims its members “do not interfere with the work of the administration and perform activities only after getting proper and full concurrence from local administration.” However, local police commissioner Mahesh Bhagwat said, “We don’t want to get associated with any religious or political group while doing law enforcement. This is the job of the police and we can do it. No permission has been given.”

“The Sangh’s lip service to only operating with police permission is a joke,” says OFMI’s Pawan Singh. “Permission was denied but the RSS ran the checkpoint anyways. It makes police look weak, like they’re not even in charge. The RSS is grabbing total control of all aspects of Indian life. Let the world take notice that the Sangh’s ambitions don’t stop at the borders of India.”

Emerging reports claim RSS receives emergency lockdown passes to provide various civil and social services. Accused of filling a police role in Hyderabad, RSS has reportedly mobilized thousands of members to distribute food in Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and other large cities. Pictures of uniformed members serving Muslims provide positive press for a paramilitary linked to multiple anti-minority pogroms.

“RSS praises itself for serving food but only do so when it has a monopoly on serving food,” says OFMI’s Valmuci. “Free kitchen is such an old practice in the Indian subcontinent and even part of how Sikhs practice their religion. Sikhs do it to recognize equality of all, but RSS’s only reason for doing it is to control people’s food source during lockdown. One day, RSS poses for a picture putting food in the hands of a Christian or Muslim. The next day, they rape, dismember, and burn alive whole families of minorities. It’s just like invaders first bombing and killing, then snapping pictures of themselves as occupiers putting candy in the mouths of kids.”