RSS to counter Left ideology at meeting

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat will meet vice-chancellors and academicians over the weekend to discuss how social science research in the country should be guided and how to create a “positive national narrative in academics”.

Nearly 500 invitees will attend the meeting ‘Gyan Sangam’ in the Capital where, apart from Bhagwat, senior Sangh functionaries will take stock of how the curriculum needs to be revisited, with emphasis on history and social sciences. Suggestions will be made on textbook drafting and areas of research that universities can undertake in areas such as foreign policy and constitutional matters. Sangh sources said the meeting will review how to prevent campuses from being bastions of Left ideology.

Speaking to HT, a functionary said that events such as beef-eating festivals, Mahishasur Shahadat Diwas, and the Kiss of Love campaigns that erupted across university campuses over the past few years are fallouts of Communist ideology foisted on students. The Sangh blames academe for “cultivating” Communist ideology and paving the way for Indian traditions and cultural studies being “questioned and denigrated”.

“Support for such campaigns came from theories evolved by neo-Left academicians who have made Ravana into a hero and question the relevance of goddess Durga,” said a functionary. Alarmed by the Communists “capturing the mind space of youth” and to “unfetter campuses from such ideology”, the RSS will set things rolling.

“There is a need to change the way cultural studies are undertaken at universities. We cannot have the concept of nation dismissed as oppressive and authoritative. Like countries such as Switzerland and Australia that realised the dangers of Western interpretation of cultural studies, there is a need to indigenise these,” he said.