A group of around 200-odd academics, including professors from leading institutions like Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Madras Institute of Development Studies, IIT-Delhi and IIM
A group of around 200-odd academics, including professors from leading institutions like Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Madras Institute of Development Studies, IIT-Delhi and IIM-Calcutta, on Friday expressed “shock” at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “late response” to the incidents of intolerance, even as the RSS criticised returning of awards by intellectuals as a “politically-motivated” action out of frustration of pseudo-secularists, who were using the Sangh as a “punching bag”.
Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Phadnavis also took a dim view of the trend and urged the intelligentsia to help the government with “constructive criticism”.
“We as social scientists, scholars, teachers and concerned citizens, feel extremely concerned about the lynching at Dadri, and the murders of scholars and thinkers like M.M. Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and others and wish to register our strong protest,” a statement by 250 academics said.
CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, however, lent support to the intellectuals’ action and demanded that the Modi government listen to what the “eminent minds” have to say.
The RSS hit back at a “handful” of people returning awards as part of spiralling protests against the Modi government over the “climate of intolerance”.
The Sangh questioned why the protesting public intellectuals did not speak up in the past when the Godhra train burning incident occurred or when Kashmiri Pandits were targeted in the Valley.
“A handful of people returning awards are losing ground... It is indeed a political, desperate, frustrated act of these people to keep their shop running... They feel they can make the RSS a punching bag in the name of intolerance. The RSS is not a punching bag for any of these so-called liberal, pseudo-secular, intolerant people,” RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale told mediapersons in Patna.
The organisation accused them of political conspiracy to create an atmosphere that religious intolerance had increased after the formation of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, and added that “the reality is just the opposite”.
The RSS leader said the so-called intelligentsia are finding themselves misfit and are desperately trying to be in the news through such “politically-motivated acts”.
Mr Hosabale said the “intolerance” of such kinds has been there for the last 60 years, but such people preferred to remain quiet.
