No place for religious, racial bigots in SA

WE LIVE in an age of religious extremism in which thugs murder, maim and loot in the name of God.

Politicians across the ideological and geographical spectrum are implicated in this savage slide.

Most peace-loving and God-fearing folk are complicit because of their silence and reluctance to fight for justice and righteousness.

This quagmire was illustrated in the Sunday Tribune and Herald on March 1, with lead stories on the Islamic State and RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) respectively.

Rather than criticising the selfless service rendered by Mother Teresa, the RSS should place on public record the work it has done, (beyond destroying mosques or burning trains with Muslim passengers), in leper colonies in India.

Significantly influenced by the Nazi movement, the RSS is a paramilitary Hindu sect that has been described as a sinister organisation whose members drill in khaki uniforms and salute saffron flags that stand for a Hindu and not a multireligious India.

This was emphasised by RSS guru MS Golwalker: “To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by purging the country of Semitic races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

In South Africa, similar arguments were presented by the architects of apartheid.

More ominously, South Africans should be wary that the RSS masquerades as the Hindu Swayam Sevak Sangh, and, more recently, as the World Hindu Foundation (WHF). Swami Vigyanand, the founder of the WHF, is joint secretary of the VHP, which is in a forceful campaign to reconvert Muslims and Christians in India to Hinduism.

Professor Jagdish Bhagwati, the “guiding light” of the Narendra Modi government, said conversion was “foreign to Hinduism”.

The VHP called for the banning of the thoughtprovoking hit movie PK and its members vandalised some cinemas that were showing the film in India.

In April last year, Dr Pravin Togadia, president of the VHP, instructed Hindus to expel Muslims living in their neighbourhoods.

The presence of such organisations in South Africa will undermine reconciliation, peace, social cohesion and nation building.

There is no place for racial or religious bigots in South Africa. BRIJ MAHARAJ

Durban