Some "fascist" you are. There is nothing wrong in being proud of one's faith and RSS has done nothing of that sort so far. If that was the case, India would have by now become a Hindu country with brute force of 15 million karsevaks acting up as revolutionaries like Communist countries do. RSS has done a lot of relief work not just for publicity but for genuine people help here in northeast when so-called secular losers left us for dead.
You might also want to know that Fascism exists EVERYWHERE and hence we don't need to be specifically apologetic about it. You won't be able to bat an eyelash in a Muslim country if you are not them at a national stage compared to the freedom all minorities enjoy in India. RSS is there as a counter-balance to pseudo-secularism that is there in our country. Its ideologies would have been limited to social welfare had pseudo-secularism not crossed its limits.
I don't understand what pleasure do people like Javed Akhtar get in criticizing Hindu organizations among Pakistanis under the garb of "freedom of speech". Muslim organizations have also issued some of the most ridiculous "fatwas" and goodness knows what else silly comments in the past few years and raising aggressive slogans for unreasonable talk. If these people indeed want to distinguish rational from irrational then they should criticize such moves publicly too. RSS has by the way, not done one irrational rubbish like this so far and as a Buddhist I say this. Just because a bunch of orange-media Con- party sold journalists portray them as "deranged lunatics" doesn't mean that they are.
RSS has done enough work without asking publicity from people, that would put most wannabe "aam aadmi ki sarkar" to shame. And since the true middle and lower middle class of India knows of RSS credentials and work, pseudo-secular wannabe parties want to use media to defame them rather than defeat them in genuine work towards the country. Rahul and Chidambaram's comments are indicative enough of the sorry knowledge they have about day to day happenings and way of life of India.
Javed Akhtar should not have mentioned such a statement.
Pleasee, you need to revisit your definition of "fascism" too.
The RSS doesn't need to 'do' more than it has already, its ideology preaches a usurpment of minority values and ideals and a subsumption of these under one 'majority Hindu' culture. Are you going to argue with that? I bet you've never read the RSS official ideology.
M.S. Golwalkar (1906–1973) who succeeded Hedgewar found inspiration in Hitler. The most comprehensive statement of this exclusionary idea was made in Mr. Golwalkar's book "We or Our Nationhood Defined" published in 1938:
"The minorities
may live at the mercy of the "national race (Aryan Hindus) as long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race. That is the only sound view on the minorities' problem. That is the only logical and correct solution."
And no, that 'majority Hindu culture' is not geographic-based, as is often claimed in dichotomous discourse. It is purely vedic and tantric, as in religious.
That is and has been the guiding ideology of the RSS since decades. How do I know this? Because I have uncles in the RSS.
The RSS may have done "charity work", but so does the SIMI have claim to doing "charity work". Are you going to brand them an inclusionist organization based on that?
I am sorry to hear your condition in the north east. And as a secular, not "sickular, suckular, sucular" or whatever kinds of pseudonyms people can come up with, I am truly sorry to hear that. But that does not justify the fact that the RSS is an integrationist organization.
Our standard for democracy, is not the Middle east.