Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has strongly criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi for praising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) during his Independence Day address, calling it an “insult to history.” According to Vijayan, attributing India’s freedom to RSS and V D Savarkar disregards the true struggle for independence.
In his statement, Vijayan said it was deeply inappropriate for the Prime Minister to glorify “those who bowed before the British” on the very day India celebrates liberation from colonial rule. He reminded that the RSS was banned for its links to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, while Savarkar faced conspiracy charges in the same case. “No attempt to whitewash RSS will succeed,” he asserted.
Highlighting a recent controversy, Vijayan pointed to a Union petroleum ministry poster where Savarkar was depicted above Gandhi, describing it as proof of the ruling party’s fear of India’s real freedom history. He noted that the independence movement was a mass struggle uniting people across caste, religion, and language, while the RSS remained spectators, opposing its core principles. Instead of embracing “unity in diversity,” he said, the RSS promoted Hindutva rooted in majoritarianism.
Vijayan also recalled that the RSS’s magazine Organizer rejected the Constitution in 1949, advocating Manusmriti instead, and that Savarkar himself boycotted the first Independence Day celebrations. “It is ironic that the Sangh Parivar now projects him as a freedom leader,” he remarked.
Concluding, Vijayan urged the nation to resist any attempts to distort history with communal narratives that replace harmony with hatred.