No Heir to Golwalkar Can Brand India’s Freedom Leaders Anti National

M K Faizy, National President of the Social Democratic Party of India, strongly condemned Union Home Minister Amit Shah for branding the 1937 Vande Mataram resolution as “anti national” and an act of “Muslim appeasement.” That historic resolution was shaped by Subhas Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Acharya Narendra Dev, guided by Rabindranath Tagore’s counsel and upheld by Mahatma Gandhi to preserve national unity. By branding that collective decision anti national, Amit Shah has, in effect, branded these towering leaders of India’s freedom movement anti national.

Faizy said no Home Minister has the authority to rewrite history or insult the architects of India’s freedom struggle. It is profoundly ironic that a leader from the RSS now seeks to question their patriotism when the RSS’s own second chief, M. S. Golwalkar, declared that “Hindus, don’t waste your energy fighting the British. Save your energy to fight our internal enemies that are Muslims, Christians and Communists.” Those who inherit such a legacy have no moral authority to lecture India’s freedom fighters on patriotism.