Nitish can try for RSS-mukta Bharat, but is sure to fail: Vaidya

Nagpur: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has not officially reacted to last weekend’s call by Bihar chief minister for a ‘Sangh Mukta Bharat’ (or India without RSS). But its seniormost member M G Vaidya on Wednesday ridiculed the call.
“There is no harm in Nitish trying it out. In the past, the government banned in thrice. But every time, the RSS bounced back with renewed vigour.Today, the Sangh has emerged as the largest nationalist organization. Getting it out of people’s mind and hearts is difficult to imagine,” said the nonagenarian ideologue and former national spokesman of the RSS.
Nitish, while making a fervent plea for forging a non-BJP political alignment, had also stressed on need of getting the nation rid of RSS. When asked for his response, Vaidya said: “I know the end result. Nitish my well go ahead and try. The move will only help the RSS gain more popularity if we go by the past experience,” said Vaidya.
Speaking to reporters at a meet-the-press programme organized by the local journalists union, Vaidya once again renewed his call for formation of smaller states for better administration. “Today, we find a massive state like Uttar Pradesh with 20 crore population while on the other end of the spectrum in Sikkim with its 6.25 lakh people. There are eight states with less than 50 lakh population,” he said.
Vaidya added that there was a strong case for splitting Maharashtra with 11.23 crore population into two or more states. To address such demands for smaller states, the best way out is to establish the second states’ re-organisation commission (SRC). It should be a time-bound consultative exercise with set terms like population size and administrative needs.
“But to say that Vidarbha would lose its Marathi identity if made into a separate state or that Maharashtra would lose out if divided into smaller is nothing but playing on emotions and being impractical. By linguistic states norms, if the entire Hindi belt were to be one state, it would be too unwieldy. People’s developmental aspirations and convenience cannot be ignored for too long. I am even game for reconsidering or reconstituting states every thirty years,” said Vaidya. Till now, several new states including the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh and now Telangana, Haryana, Jharkhand were created after violent agitations in which people lost lives and public property was ruined. A new SRC would end this unnecessary violence, he said.
Asked about his views on Narendra Modi government’s functioning, he expressed satisfaction and said those cribbing about ‘remote controlling Modi’ were the ones who had little understanding about Sangh functioning and philosophy. “Politics has very little space in RSS which works in 35 social sectors. It’s an organization of the society in its entirety but is little understood by outsiders,” Vaidya lamented.
“I may not be part of any decision-making body today, but I can assure that the Sangh has no power or even capability to decide on its own on governing the country. So, there is no question of passing on instructions to Modi government and expecting Modi to accept all its views,” Vaidya explained.