Ramlila, BJP style
Delhi BJP chief and actor Manoj Tiwari was the star performer at the Nav Shri Manav Dharm Ramlila in Model Town on Wednesday. He appeared on stage after the Sita Swayamvar scene ended. Tiwari, MP from North East Delhi, played the role of Parashuram. Bollywood actor Shahbaz Khan played the role of Ravana. Dressed in a leopard skin vest, Tiwari clutched an axe during his 30-minute performance. He delivered dialogues “with modern political overtones”. Addressing Vishwamitra about the crowd gathered for Sita’s Swayamvar, Tiwari asked, “Ye sab kahan se aaye hain, ye koi videshi ghutpaithiye hain ya tumne bulaya hai (Where have they come from; are they illegal immigrants or have you called them)?”
In another scene with Lakshman, Tiwari referred angrily to “aatankvaadis (terrorists)”. “My axe has spilled rivers of blood, and in this land of the Aryans, several terrorists have been sent to the graveyard,” thundered Tiwari, who is also a good singer.
Plastic Ravana Dismantled
On the occasion of 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on Wednesday, Mother Dairy undertook an interesting way to increase awareness against the use of plastic. It erected a 25-foot effigy of Ravana on Wednesday made of plastic collected from households of Delhi-NCR. Instead of burning the effigy, it dismantled it and sent it for recycling. Mother Dairy managing director Sangram Chaudhary told The Sunday Guardian that this was done to spread the message about the irreparable damage that plastic caused to the environment. The drive was a follow up of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call against the use of single use plastic.
RSS can’t be bracketed into any book: Bhagwat
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat made some interesting observations about the organisation on Tuesday. He made it clear that the RSS could not be bound by one specific ideology, or any ideologue, nor did it believe in any particular “ism”, or doctrine. He was speaking at a function to release a book, The RSS: Roadmaps for the 21st Century by ABVP national organisation secretary Sunil Ambekar at the Dr Ambedkar International Centre.
Former Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan and FICCI president Sandip Somany, and a number of Union Ministers, Nitin Gadkari, Thaawar Chand Gehlot, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Prakash Javadekar, Prahalad Patel and Arjun Ram Meghwal were present.
“There is nothing like a Sangh ideologue…there is no need for Sangh to have an ideologue,” said Bhagwat adding that the RSS cannot be bracketed into any book, not even The Bunch of Thoughts—a compilation of speeches of the second chief of the RSS, M.S.Golwalkar, believed to be the organisation’s prime architect. Pointing out that the RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar had said that “Hindustan is a Hindu Rashtra”, Bhagwat explained: “We have inherited this fact of life. We cannot change it. This is a Hindu Rashtra so long as there is even a single person calling himself Hindu.”
Talking about Ambekar’s work, Bhagwat said that “this book will clear some misunderstanding about the RSS. It is wrong to use terms such as the Sangh Parivar and Sangh ideology. All these are incomplete. Dr Hedgewar did not ever claim that he understood the Sangh. Guruji (Golwalkar) had said he had begun to understand the Sangh after being Sarsanghchalak for long.”
According to him, there is no RSS ideologue, although some people appear on different media platforms in this capacity. “Hanuman, Maratha king Shivaji and Hedgewar are our role models.”
Dhaliwal remembered
Thousands of people turned out for the day-long ceremonies on early Wednesday to honour slain police officer Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal (42), who was shot dead on duty in the town of Cypress during a traffic stop on 27 September. Dhaliwal was the first Sikh deputy in sheriff’s office in Harris County which has a population of over 10,000 Sikhs. He had left a lucrative trucking business to join the police 10 year ago. Dhaliwal had made natSandeep Singh Dhaliwaional headlines when he was allowed to grow a beard and wear a turban on the job. At the traditional Sikh cremation, Dhaliwal, father of three, was given a 21-gun salute from fellow officers and a helicopter flyover.