By Shweta Desai
In a region where anti-India sentiment runs high, Majid Asif Mir, 35, is a rare Kashmiri Muslim who openly displays the Indian flag and espouses the philosophy of Akhand Bharat. He greets you on the phone with ‘namaskar’ and signs off with ‘jai Hind’. His Urdu is sprinkled more with Hindi words than Kashmiri.
He is the model Kashmiri Muslim straight out of the Hindutva imagination. Yet, his efforts at ‘integration’ with the majority Hindi-speaking Hindutva nationalists have been met with rebuffs.
Mir is the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghatna Parivar, a nationalist organisation in the Kashmir Valley inspired by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS. The two organisations are not connected, even if they share similar-sounding names. Mir asserts that the RSSP and the RSS are similar in that they follow the path of spreading nationalism. “We are like RSS’s Parivar, it’s from the same family. We do the same work as the Sangh.”
The Sangh has no official footprint in Kashmir, but Mir says he and his organisation work as their foot-soldiers. “The RSS remains hidden due to security reasons, but we work in the open and proudly say that we are Sangh members,” he says, adding that he has been following Sangh’s mission of organising the society to promote nationalism in Kashmir since joining it in 2010.
Liyaqat Ali, president of RSSP, says the organisation has tried to dilute the notion that RSS is anti-Kashmir and anti-Muslim. “We have been working in the Valley even before the BJP started its work. We don’t get funds from any organisation, but we have a lot of support on the ground.”
This story was originally published in outlookindia.com. Read the full story here.
