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HVK Archives: Ready Selfless Service

Ready Selfless Service - The Organiser

Pramod Kumar ()
8 December 1996

Title : Ready Selfless Service
Author : Pramod Kumar
Publication : The Organiser
Date : December 8, 1996

"I am indeed very grateful to these organisations for the
invaluable service they are rendering", said the Union
Civil Aviation Minister of the United Front Government
Shri Chand Mahal Ibrahim outside the relief camp set up
by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) when he saw the
swayamsevaks playing a leading role in providing relief
to the plane victims. Is not this statement of the Union
Minister of the so-called secular government, who belongs
to the minority Muslim community, enough to reveal the
true face of the RSS which is constantly maligned as
Muslim-hater by the self-styled secularists of this
country?

When the two international airlines. Saudi Arabian
Airlines flight SV 763 and Kazakh Airways flight KZA
1903, collided in mid-air at 6.45 pm on November 12 the
RSS swayamsevaks and the villagers of the surrounding
areas were the first among those who reached the spot to
offer their services. According to the villagers the
official machinery, including the police and the fire
brigade, reached there about an hour later. It was the
RSS swayamsevaks who informed the local administration
about the tragic disaster.

When the two ill-fated air-craft were burning, nobody
dared approach the ruins in which a number of passengers
were burning alive. But the RSS swayamsevaks, without
wasting a single moment, jumped into the furnace and
started pulling out bodies of the passengers some of whom
were still alive. Later, the youths from the surrounding
villages who had by then also reached there, joined hands
with them. In a matter of minutes local tractors were
turned into ambulances and the surviving passengers and
dead bodies were transported to the nearest civil hospi-
tal at Dadri. The Sangh and its affiliate organisations,
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Bharat Vikas Par-
ishad, ABVP, etc., immediately set up relief camps to
help the local administration which was understandably
unprepared to meet the situation and started helping in
identifying the badly mutilated bodies of the victims.
Under the banner of the "Viman Durghatana Peedit Sahayata
Samiti (Relief Committees for the Plane mishap-affected)
the swayamsevaks were not only helping in the loading and
unloading of the corpses into the trucks but also helping
the relatives of the dead in the identification of the
dead bodies and generally helping the bereaved.

The ABVP and Bharat Vikas Parishad workers looked after
the impromtu information centre while VHP workers with
the help of the villagers arranged food supplies. Some
swayamsevaks with the help of the villagers dug out dead
bodies from the debris and made arrangements for their
preservation like arranging for ice, preparing coffins,
etc. The local MLA and other senior RSS workers collected
funds to meet the expenditure. The Haryana State BJP
President Shri Ramesh Joshi with the help of other
senior workers co-ordinated the activities of the volun-
teers with the Administration.

The relief work continued round the clock. On November
14, when nobody could identify 94 mutilated bodies which

had started decomposing, the swayamsevaks performed the
last rites of the unknown victims. 15 dead bodies of
Hindus were cremated while 76 of Muslims and 3 of Chris-
tians were buried. At the time of cremation of the
Hindus' dead bodies the Shankaracharya of Puri Swami
Adhokshananda Teertha was also present. Over two hundred
swayamsevaks and members of RSS affiliated organisations
engaged themselves everyday in the relief work and con-
tinued in their mission till the last dead body was
identified and either cremated or buried.

A few, minutes after the disaster it became clear that
most of the victims belonged to the minority Muslim
community, but swayamsevaks, as is their training and
tradition and also their age-old samskaras, did not
discriminate among the dead. The strictly humanistic
attitude of the swayamsevaks deeply impressed the minori-
ty community. Zafar Ali and Hakim Khan who came from
Balara village in Sikar district of Rajasthan to receive
the dead body of their son, told the Jansatta correspond-
ent Pavan Kumar Vaidya, "God forbid, what abuses are
hurled at these angels of His! Our personal contact with
them (the swayamsevaks) has totally disabused our preju-
diced minds." The words of Salim Ahmed, who came from
Jhunjhunu (also in Rajasthan). that "(the swayamsevaks)
won our hearts" proves that the malicious tirade by the
so-called secularists against the RSS that it is anti
Muslim will not avail for long.

After the earthquake in Lature, it was a second opportun-
ity for the Muslims, who hare always, been misled by some
of their leaders bent upon poisoning their minds against
the RSS, to understand the RSS at close quarters. And,
as usual, in this test also the swayamsevaks won their,
appreciation. Swayamsevaks buried 76 Muslims under a
moulvi's supervision. Similarly the Christian victims
were also buried under the guidance of a Father at the
Grey Yard Burial in Bhivani. The Father was brought over
from Rohtak.

How much the Muslims were impressed by the selfless
service of the swayamsevaks can be gauged from the fact
that the General Secretary of the All India Milli Coun-
cil, otherwise a controversial Muslim organisation,
himself came forward to thank the swayamsevaks at Charkhi
Dadri. He even arranged an elaborate thanksgiving func-
tion at a mosque in Charkhi Dadri. Impressed by the
performance of the RSS swayamsevaks a senior IAS officer
from Rajasthan, when he witnessed the failure of the
official machinery commented. "If they really want to
turn out efficient administrative officers they should
undergo a compulsory, Stint in a RSS shakha. Former
Union Minister Shri P.J. Kurien who was there to help the
relatives of some victims belonging to his constituency
in Kerala. said, "They are doing a much better job than
the local administration".

It has became almost a tenet and a tradition for the RSS
not to seek publicity, for its selfless service. Regard-
ing this mid-air collision Nayee Zameen, a pro-Muslim
Hindi weekly from the capital reported that the Hindu
organisations which were providing relief on war footing,
neither sent any press releases, highlighting their
relief work, nor did they crave for publicity in some
other slain. But the Muslim Organisations. like Jamaat-e-
Islami, All India Milli Council, Muslim Majalis-e-Musha-

warrat. Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Hind- Milli Parliament, as the
weekly writes inundated unaudited newspaper offices with
innumerable press releases. craving for undeserved pub-
licity. In its report entitled 'A slap in the face of
Muslim organisations by the RSS" Nayee Zameen further
writes that if the RSS workers were not there. nobody
would have been available to dig up the mutilated bodies
from the debris. The weekly reported that every swayam-
sevak of the RSS was working like any member of the
family of the dead in the disaster. The swayamsevaks did
what no one else, including the official machinery, was
able to do, reported the weekly rebuking the Muslim
organisations to take a lesson or two from selfless
service rendered by the RSS.



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