India: RSS ideologue calls for shooting student protesters at point-blank range
Trivandrum: A senior ideologue of the Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has sparked widespread outrage after calling on police to shoot student protesters “at point-blank range” during the recent nation-wide demonstrations that forced the resignation of India’s Education Minister. The RSS is the ideological parent of the BJP led by Narendera Modi.
According to Kashmir Media Service, T.G. Mohandas, a prominent RSS commentator from the southern Indian state of Kerala, made the incendiary remarks during an interview on the YouTube channel Pathrika.
Mohandas said that if he were in authority, he would impose a curfew within a four-square-kilometer radius of New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar protest site, issue three warnings to disperse and then order police to open fire onthe demonstrators.
“If I were in charge, I would impose curfew within a four-square-kilometre radius of Jantar Mantar. I would ask people to disperse three times. Then I would shoot,” he said, adding that some protesters would die while others would lose their limbs before authorities collected the bodies.
He further branded the protesters as “criminals”, alleging that they would commit murder and rape if Indian forces were withdrawn from the protest site.
In another controversial remark, widely condemned as misogynistic, Mohandas described women participating in the protests as “rape-loving women”, specifically targeting those associated with left-wing, secular and Dalit groups.
His remarks came in the wake of India’s largest youth-led protest movement in years, during which tens of thousands of students demonstrated in New Delhi and other cities against repeated examination paper leaks, unemployment and the government’s handling of the education system.
The movement ended after the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, one of the protesters’ principal demands, making it one of the most significant public setbacks for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government since it returned to power.
