RSS Getting Put In Its Place After Ridiculous Comments...

I posted about this earlier, and I guess this is what happens when the other shoe drops, as the RSS is being roundly castigated for its anti-Sikh remarks. Sikhs are taking shots at them, for differing reasons, but taking shots nonetheless...

from Hindustan Times editorial:

This is not the first time the RSS has put the BJP in an embarrassing position. Over the years, the BJP has been attempting to get away from its exclusivist Hindu image and project itself as an accommodative organisation. To an extent it succeeded in the years that Atal Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister. But, every now and again, under pressure from the RSS, the BJP has had to prove its Hindutva credentials with one or the other anti-minority statement. The RSS must realise that its own future lies with the growth of the BJP. On its own, the RSS is stagnating. The number of its shakhas has declined dramatically and its dedicated pracharaks too have not increased significantly. However, the BJP’s numbers have grown in the last decade, indicating that power politics rather than ideology is what draws people. The RSS’s best bet would be to try and keep in sync with the pragmatic politics of today. It must endeavour to tone down pronouncements on minorities and try to project an image that it respects the diversity of faiths that puts India in a class apart from many other countries.

from Hindustan Times article:

Reacting sharply to the RSS statement, SGPC President Avtar Singh Makkar asserted that the Sikhs have their own separate identity and are not a part of the Hindu samaj.

Speaking to HT, he questioned the RSS authority for raising such controversies time and again. “How can the RSS claim that Sikhs are part of the Hindu samaj.We believe only in Guru Granth Sahib and are ordered by the highest Sikh temporal seat,” he said while advising the Sangh not to expand their domain unnecessarily.

from Punjab Newsline:

The Sikh Students Federation condemned the statement of RSS in which it was claimed that Sikhs though have a distinct religious identity but are part of larger Hindu society.

Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, senior office bearer of the Federation claimed that Sikhs are not a religious minority but a Nation. He said this fact is very well established through the course of history. This status of the Sikh nation had been internationally recognized and accepted by the major powers of Europe and Asia, viz. France, England, Italy, Russia, China, Persia (now Iran), Afghanistan, Nepal, and the Company Bahadur, Fort William, Calcutta, till the middle of the 19th century, and again by the outgoing British as well as by the Hindu-dominated Congress and the Muslim League of India in the middle of the 20th century.

from Zee News:

The Akal Takht today rejected as "divisive" an RSS statement that Sikhs are part of "one great Hindu Samaj", saying the community is distinct in virtually every respect.

"The Sikhs are distinct in every respect. We respect every religion but the Guru Granth Sahib is our spiritual guide and guru. Our customs are different whether it is a Sikh marriage or other event. We are a distinct community in every respect," Akal Takht Jathedar Joginder Singh Vedanti, at the seat of the highest decision-maker in the Sikh temporal authority, told reporters over phone from Punjab.

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