Break Ramzan fast with cow milk, vow not to eat cow meat’ – RSS functionary’s message for Muslims

Muslims must break their Ramzan fasts with cow milk, and pledge to not eat cow meat, senior RSS functionary Indresh Kumar said Friday, even as he asserted that Hindus and Muslims have the same ancestry.

Kumar was speaking at an event organised by the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, an RSS-affiliated organisation, of which he has been a patron for over two decades. The event was organised for the launch of a new book by the organisation called Bharatiya Mussalman: Ekta ka Aadhar (Indian Muslim: the basis of unity).

Echoing the statement made by RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat in 2021 about Hindus and Muslims having the same DNA, Indresh Kumar stated that Hindus and Muslims have the same ancestry. “We can change our religion, a Shyam may become Shahabuddin, but his ancestors remain the same – we have the same ancestors,” he said.

In 2021, Bhagwat had said that it has been “proven that we’re the descendants of the same ancestors from the last 40,000 years; people of India have the same DNA.”

While the statement is known to have created a stir within RSS ranks itself, Kumar reasserted it unequivocally Friday. “We all dream in Bharatiya languages – none of us dreams in Farsi or Turki or Roman. We all have the same faces, which come from the Aryas, we don’t have Arabi or Roman faces,” Kumar said, addressing a largely Muslim audience.

“The language of our dreams and our faces are Bharatiya,” he added.

He asked the audience to repeat slogans in several languages declaring one’s love for their motherland – Madar-e-Watan in Persian, Bharat Mata ki Jai in Hindi, Vande Mataram in Sanskrit, Ek Hind, Jai Hind in Hindustani, and Love and Salute to Mother India in English.

“Now, whose din (religion) came under threat by saying this slogan in Hindi and Sanskrit?” he asked, amid laughs from the audience.

Nationality must be the only basis of unity in the country, and we all are ultimately known to the world through our nationality, not religion, he asserted, asking the audience to repeat after him: “Hum kaun? Hindustani, Hindustani.”

Obliquely making a political pitch, Kumar said that “secular parties” have never seen Muslims as human beings or even Muslims. “They have only seen you as votes,” he said, adding that votes “can be bought and sold, human beings cannot”.

Indirectly addressing the perception that Muslims usually cast a negative vote – i.e., they vote for whoever is best placed to defeat the BJP instead of voting for a candidate or party they would actually support – Kumar said, “In life, never fight to make someone lose, fight to make yourself win.”

“This time, start a new trend,” he told the audience.

The event also saw the presence of Ram Lal, the Akhil Bharatiya Sampark Pramukh of the RSS, Imam Umer Ilyasi, the All India Imam Organization’s chief, who recently made headlines for his visit to the Ram temple for the consecration ceremony in January, and Hazrat Syed Zainul Abedin, the diwan of the Ajmer Sharif Dargah.

Both RSS functionaries stated that society must be violence-free, with Kumar making a pitch for a “danga-mukt Bharat” (riot-free India). Meanwhile, Ram Lal said that war cannot be a solution to a problem, as war is a problem itself.

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‘No confusion about who is a Bharatiya Muslim’

The book, which carries a short message from RSS Sarsangchalak Mohan Bhagwat right at the beginning, has a series of essays by Muslim intellectuals. It also carries congratulatory notes by Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan, Ilyasi, former Aligarh Muslim University vice-chancellor and BJP leader Tariq Mansoor, former NALSAR Vice-Chancellor Faizan Mustafa, among others.

The book will create a nationalistic consciousness among Muslims, Bhagwat’s message read. It added that the book will give a kind of “respite” to Muslims, who were manipulated to keep fighting with Hindus throughout the 20th Century, and will allow them to join the national mainstream.

RSS pracharak Ram Lal, who served as a general secretary of the BJP for 13 years, also sent out unequivocal messages of unity. Stating that there is no “confusion” about who a “Bharatiya Muslim” is, he said, “There could have been some confusion about who a Bharatiya Muslim was before 1947, but after 1947 there is no scope for confusion. Those who did not think of Bharat as their motherland left, those who thought they cannot live harmoniously, left.”

He said while there are some Muslims who have sought to create “confusion” about Muslim identity in India, one is free to choose which Muslims they want to see when they talk about Indian Muslims. There is a Muslim-majority village called Dhanuri in Rajasthan, in which every family has a member serving in the Army, he said.

“Eighteen people have been martyred from that village – so why don’t we see them as examples of Bharatiya Muslims?” he asked.

“At the time of the Kargil war, some of the first people who informed (Army) about the intrusions (by Pakistan) were Muslims. If not for them, they (Pakistan) could have come much deeper into the territory… Why don’t we see them as examples of Bharatiya Muslims?”

Ram Lal also went on to remind the audience of a bhajan called ‘man tarpat hai hari ke darshan ko’ which was sung by Mohammad Rafi, written by Shakeel Badayuni, and composed by Naushad.

Slogans like “Jai Hind”and “Simon, go back!” were also coined by Muslims – Abid Hasan Safrani, a close aide of Subhas Chandra Bose, and a major in his Azad Hind Fauj and Yusuf Meherally, respectively, Ram Lal said.

“We have the same soul,” he stated, as he spoke of a “colonised mindset” that Indians have inherited due to an English education.

“We fought together until 1857, but the British realised they would have to pack up and leave within a few years if this unity stayed, so they divided us as Hindus and Muslims, along caste lines, and as North and South,” he said.

“They used modern education to colonise our minds,” he added.

Echoing similar views, Ilyasi said that while he got immense flak from a few people for visiting the Ram Temple, he knew the “majority” was with him.

Stating that it is one’s national identity which is the prime identity of a person, Ilyasi said, “Even when we go out of India for Haj, the immigration officer asks which country are you from, not which religion,” he said.

“We don’t have to be Hindu or Muslim, we are Bharatiya,” he added.

Stating that there has been a shift in the perception of the RSS among Muslims, Ilyasi said that Muslims were warned of staying away from the organization’s shadow back in the day.

“We all know who did this propaganda, and what were their vested interests,” he said, without specifying any further.

It was, in fact, his father, Jameel Ilyasi who along with then RSS sarsangchalak K.C. Sudarshan decided to form the Muslim Rashtriya Manch in 2002, he added.

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