The RSS - whose contribution to freedom struggle is considered minimal - sought to create an iconography of its own.
It released a book on its “429 martyrs” who have fallen to “the swords and bullets of the nation-splitters in 15 states” over the last three decades. The “nation-splitters” include the Marxists, Naxalites, Islamic fundamentalist outfits supported by the ISI, and the north-eastern insurgents.
Releasing the book, entitled “Struggle against Nation-Splitters: Martyrdom of Swayamsewaks” compiled by S.Y Seshagiri Rao, borne minister L.K. Advani on Thursday stressed the RSS credo was to work for preserving “the unity and integrity of the country” and to uphold “values of democracy and tolerance”.
If the country won freedom in 1947, he said, it was the RSS activists who fought thereafter to preserve it, whether against the “nation-splitters” or during the Congress-sponsored emergency.
Mr Advani said, “There is a great deal of talk about Jammu and Kashmir in the area where I work. The West sees it as a dispute between India and Pakistan. But to us, it is an integral part of the country, legally and constitutionally ours, because the people of that region rejected the two-nation theory and chose to remain in India. If we lose it, there will be a domino effect in the country.”
That Mr Advani was invited to release
the book is being seen as significant, since the martyrs include the RSS
activists killed by the National Liberation Front of Tripura last year.