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Don't become pawns, RSS tells Muslims

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 27. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh today justified its recently- adopted resolution — ``let Muslims understand that their real safety lies in the goodwill of the majority'' — describing it as ``a statement of fact''.

The RSS spokesperson, M.G.Vaidya, said the statement had not been understood in the proper perspective. ``There are certain irritants, some incidents act as irritants ... 2 lakh Kashmiri Hindus have become refugees, Amarnath pilgrims were attacked, attempts are made to convert Hindus to other faiths, and finally, ... it does no credit to the Muslim community to allow itself to be made pawns in the hands of extremist Muslim leaders and Hindu-baiting political elements,'' (read the last as non-BJP parties).

However, though Mr. Vaidya said that the controversial statement in the resolution was quite innocuous, he did not agree that if one were to substitute Muslims in that sentence with Sikhs to read ``let Sikhs understand that their real safety lies in the goodwill of the majority,'' that sentence would also be a ``statement of fact''.

Mr. Vaidya also did not agree with another formulation of that sentence. ``Let the Scheduled Castes understand that their real safety lies in the goodwill of caste Hindus.'' No, he said, the RSS never believed in caste differences, ``what is being suggested is totally different from what was said about the Muslims in the statement,'' Mr. Vaidya insisted. ``You are stretching this too far,'' he told the correspondent asking the question. There was no explanation why if that statement was a ``statement of fact'' in relation to one community, and nothing more vicious, why did it seem wrong when one minority community was replaced by another in the very same formulation?

Mr. Vaidya claimed that ``similar statements, similar expressions'' had earlier been used by different persons without everyone making it into a major controversy.

He claimed that during the debates in the Constituent Assembly a similar view was expressed by the then Congress leader, Mahavir Tyagi, and another Muslim leader, Aziz Rasul, had rejected the idea of reservation for Muslims on the ground that would give no chance to the minorities to earn the goodwill of the majority community.

On the Gujarat violence, Mr. Vaidya said that no Government could have done better, the Modi Government had done what it could do. He said the Godhra outrage had provided the spark: ``if there had been no Godhra, there would have been no violence following it.''

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