Dear Rahul Dravid,

Namaskar!

You, presently, lead the cricket team of India
and wear the National Flag, Tri-colour while
playing for India in different parts of the
globe. You must be well aware of the fact that
this Tri-colour represents a Secular-Democratic
India and team led by you which includes players
from different religions and regions of the
country, undoubtedly, symbolize the same reality.
I hope you are familiar with the glorious
heritage which the National Flag and a
Secular-Democratic polity represent. These are
the products of great anti-colonial struggle and
ruthless fight against theocratic politics
represented by organizations like the Muslim
League, the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha. Despite
the partition of India on the basis of religion
mainly forced by Muslim League and dastardly
killing of Father of the Nation by persons
affiliated to the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS,
India chose to remain a non-theocratic state.
That is the significance of the Nation which you
and your team represent and the Flag which you
display on your costumes.

I am sorry to write that by participating in the
birth centenary programme of M. S. Golwalkar
(Guruji), the ideologue of the RSS, in Nagpur on
January 20, 2007, you have not only violated the
trust which this country has put in you but also
saddened large sections of your fans who love and
adore you because you and your team represent a
Secular-Democratic India. According to a report
which appeared in the Hindi organ of the RSS,
Panchjanya (February 4, 2007, p.11), ’Indian
cricket captain inaugurated the Surya Namaskar
Mahayagya programme in the Vidarbh region (of
Masharashtra)’. This campaign was organized by
RSS ’to commemorate the birth centenary of Shri
Guruji’ who happened to be the second chief and
the most prominent ideologue of the RSS.The cover
page of Panchjanya also shows you lightening the
lamp before the garlanded photograph of Golwalkar.

I do not know who led you to join this programme
of the RSS but I feel duty-bound to bring to your
notice few crucial facts about the RSS and Guruji
who led it from 1940 to 1973.

The first Home Minister of independent India,
Sardar Patel, held the RSS responsible for the
assassination of Gandhiji. He in a letter to
Golwalkar, dated 11 September 1948, clearly
stated that it was communal poison spread by the
RSS which was responsible for this tragedy.
Without mincing words he wrote: ’As a final
result of the poison, the country had to suffer
the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji.
Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government,
or of the people, no more remained for the RSS.
In fact opposition grew. Opposition turned more
severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and
distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.’ I
hope you know that consequently the RSS was
banned for its role in the assassination.

Dear Rahul Saheb! Golwalkar whose birthday
centenary programme you inaugurated was a
die-hard fascist who rejected any talk of a
democratic-secular India. In 1939 he penned a
terrible book We or Our Nationhood Defined which
ousted minorities like Muslims and Christians
from the Indian nationhood. Even after
Independence, in another book his Bunch of
Thoughts, Golwalkar declared Muslims as enemy
number one and Christians as enemy number two of
the country. I wish you had
boycotted such a programme as you can vouch to
the fact that many Muslim and Christian players
playing cricket with you have done proud to the
nation.

Golwalkar also glorified dictators like Mussolini
and Hitler and insisted on adopting their methods
for cleansing minorities in India. In his 1939
book while eulogizing Hitler he wrote: ’German
race pride has now become the topic of the day.
To keep up the purity of the Race and its
culture,Germany shocked the world by her purging
the country of the Semitic Races - the Jews. Race
pride at its highest has been manifested here.
Germany has also shown how wellnigh impossible it
is for Races and cultures, having differences
going to the root, to be assimilated into one
united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan
to learn and profit by.’ It is really astonishing
that a renowned sportsperson like you went to be
part of programmes dedicated to such a nasty
person.

I also would like to draw your attention to what
RSS thinks about the Tri-colour which you so
proudly wear. When the Indian Parliament decided
to have Tri-colour as the National Flag, the
English organ of the RSS, Organizer, (’Mystery
behind the Bhagwa Dhawaj’, August 14, 1947)
denigrated this great choice in the following
words: ’The people who have come to power by the
kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour
but it never [sic] be respected and owned by
Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and
a flag having three colours will certainly
produce a very bad psychological effect and is
injurious to a country’. The RSS has been
demanding the adoption of saffron flag as the
National Flag of the country. It also needs to be
known that when the Constituent Assembly of India
finally passed the Constitution on 26 November
1949, the RSS demanded that it should be replaced
by the Codes of Manu (Organizer November 30,
1949) which openly glorified Casteism, upheld
persecution of Untouchables and denigrated women.

Dear Mr. Rahul! You went to commemorate the birth
centenary of a RSS leader who hated democracy and
declared (while addressing the top cadres of the
RSS at its Reshambagh headquarters, Nagpur in
1940) that Hindu India of his dreams needed only
’one flag (saffron), one leader and one ideology’.

Let me end with the hope that a great cricketer
like you who stands as a symbol of
Democratic-Secular India will not betray the
trust the country has shown in you and fall prey
to the designs of Hindu Separatism.

Wishing you all the best.

Shamsul Islam.
February 6, 2007