Public protests against current regime are democratic, not anarchy, says Shiv Sena(UBT) in ‘Samaana’
Mumbai, Oct 22 (IANS) The Shiv Sena Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray on Thursday condemned Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Chief Mohan Bhagwat’s recent remarks expressing concern over global and domestic public agitations.
The Thackeray camp in an editorial in the party’s mouthpiece, ‘Samaana’, argued that public movements against the Modi-Shah regime were entirely democratic, and accused the RSS leadership of inadvertently bolstering a rule that has become a “crisis for India”.
The editorial questioned Bhagwat’s statements made during the Vijayadashami rally, where he claimed that protests can become tools of political selfishness and breed societal division. It pointed out that while Bhagwat criticised agitations globally — citing unrest in France, Italy, Belgium, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh — he overlooked the justification of public anger against authoritarian governance.
The editorial interpreted Bhagwat’s assertion that merely changing regimes does not solve fundamental problems as an implicit admission that the 2014 political transition under Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a wasted effort.
The editorial questioned whether the Sangh now regrets altering the political landscape, recalling how the RSS family actively participated in regime shifts historically, such as in 1977.
Blaming the RSS-backed dispensation for “pushing the country into distress”, the editorial highlighted severe national issues over the past 12 years, including soaring inflation, rising unemployment, growing youth depression, commercialisation, “corporate favouritism, and handing national wealth to favoured industrialists”. In addition, “there has been erosion of democratic institutions, the subjugation of the judiciary and the Election Commission, and the undermining of Parliament and incidents related to national security, student protests over paper leaks, and agrarian distress,” it said.
The Thackeray camp raised fundamental questions about the legitimacy of popular struggles. “Would India have gained freedom or republic status if the masses had not joined the independence struggle? Were the agitation for the Ram Mandir or the RSS-inspired Anna Hazare movement considered acts of anarchy? Should the Sangh apologise to the nation for bringing an allegedly ruinous regime to power?” it asked.
Concluding the sharp commentary, the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena asserted that protests are vital in a democracy to check the unbridled power of rulers. It called upon the RSS chief not to lend strength to a governance model that it terms a “threat to India’s democratic fabric”, emphasising that “public movements against oppressive governance are firmly rooted in democratic principles”.
–IANS
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