New Delhi:A senior RSS leader today hailed “patriotic” BR Ambedkar who fought for ensuring country’s fundamental unity with belief that its people belonged to one race and pitched for working towards realising the latter’s ideology focusing on equality.
Without referring to any current issue, RSS joint general secretary Krishna Gopal said that Ambedkar never spoke against the country even though he had to face insults and worked to ensure unity “without malice on his mind”.
“Ambedkar had said India has fundamental unity in its diversity. He said (people of) India belonged to one race.
Some people had claimed that Aryans had come from outside.
“Ambedkar said it was a rumour spread by Britishers as part of their design to create divide. It had malafide intention. Only a patriot can say this,” Gopal said.
Gopal made the remarks while addressing an event themed “Social Harmony”, organised here to mark 125th birth anniversary of the architect of Indian constitution.
The RSS leader further lauded Ambedkar for ensuring that country’s unity remained intact even as the latter worked for upliftment of his community, “which was away from benefits of education and employment”, in a non-class struggle.
“Although Ambedkar had pain in his heart, he was insulted, he did not utter a single word against the country.
He never did,” Gopal stressed.
To drive his point, the RSS joint general secretary also referred to Ambedkar’s last speech in Constituent Assembly, in which the country’s first Law Minister had talked about “ensuring India doesn’t become a slave again”.
“He (Ambedkar) felt it was imperative that each citizen becomes patriotic to ensure the country doesn’t become slave again. That the citizen should feel he is only Indian and has no caste, creed. Can there be a bigger patriot than this?” the RSS leader asked.
Gopal showered praises on Ambedkar also for advocating uniform civil code and suggesting giving Jammu and Kashmir rights equal to other states of the country.
He said that Ambedkar was a patriotic also because the latter favoured Hindi as a national language to link states having people whose mother tongues were different.
“Ambedkar passed away 60 years ago. But have we worked on his ideology? Have we moved forward in that direction? Needless to say, we have not worked to the extent we should have had. We should work on the lines of his ideology,” Gopal added.