Formation | 24 December 2002 |
---|---|
Headquarters | DDA Flats, 14-B MIG, Motia Khan, Sadar Bazaar, New Delhi, Delhi 110055 |
Region | India |
Key people | Indresh Kumar |
Parent organisation | Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh |
Affiliations | Bharatiya Janata Party Sangh Parivar |
Volunteers | 10,000+ [1] |
Website | www |
The Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM; translation: Muslim National Forum) is a Muslim organisation in India, inspired by the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Established under the guidance of the RSS's then-Supreme Commander K. S. Sudarshan, the MRM presents itself as an independent Muslim body aligned with nationalist ideals. [2] [1]
MRM was formally established on December 24, 2002, in a meeting held at the residence of journalist Muzaffer Hussain and his wife Nafisa Husain. Its formation came shortly after the 2002 Gujarat riots. Key figures in attendance included K. S. Sudarshan, the then-Supreme Commander of the RSS, along with prominent RSS leaders such as M. G. Vaidya, Indresh Kumar, and Madan Das. Muslim religious leaders and intellectuals also participated in the meeting. Indresh Kumar, protege of Sudarshan, assumed a leading role in shaping the organization's direction. [2]
The MRM was founded with the stated aim of bringing Muslim communities close to Hindus in India. It states that Muslim suspicions of the RSS and its affiliates are misplaced, and that the Indian National Congress is responsible for leadership within the Muslim community. [1] The MRM has also expressed support for many of the causes espoused by the RSS, including the banning of cow-slaughter. [1] Its national convener, Mohammed Afzal, stated that the organisation faced significant resistance in the days following the Godhra train burning and the 2002 Gujarat riots. [3]
In November 2009 the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, one of the largest Islamic organisations in India, passed a resolution describing Vande Mataram as an un-Islamic song. The MRM expressed opposition to the resolution. Afzal stated "Our Muslim brothers should not follow the fatwa as Vande Mataram is the national song of the country and every Indian citizen should respect and recite it." The MRM stated further that Muslims who refused to sing it were opponents of both Islam and India. [4] [5] In August 2008, MRM organised a Paigham-e-Aman (message of peace) yatra from the Red Fort in Delhi to Kashmir in support of land allocation for the Amarnath pilgrimage. Led by the Jharkhand Shahee-Imam Moulana Hizb Rehman Merthi, the 50 activists of the yatra were initially stopped at the border of Jammu & Kashmir. They were later allowed to go to Jammu where they held meetings with the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti. [6] [7] [8] In November 2009, the MRM organised a tiranga yatra (march in honour of the national flag) leading to the Gateway of India in Mumbai, protesting against terrorism. One thousand volunteers took a pledge against terror and vowed to campaign against it in their home districts. [8] In September 2012, the MRM organised a signature campaign to revoke Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which grants limited autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and claimed to have collected 700,000 signatures. [9]
In the 2014 general election, the MRM campaigned for Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Narendra Modi. Afzal stated that the MRM would attempt to reach out to 50 million Muslims before the election. [3] When questioned about Modi's involvement in the Gujarat riots, Afzal stated:
"Had Mr. Modi been involved in the riots, his police would not have fired 1,200 rounds and killed over 200 rioters. Every court has acquitted him. And there is not a single incident of communal violence in Gujarat in the past 12 years.” [3]
The Manch expressed its views that 'Yoga' does not have anything to do with religion, further stating that "Namaaz is one sort of Yoga asana". The move was supported by the Union Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) but Hindu groups expressed reservations. [10]
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist volunteer paramilitary organisation. It is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar, which has developed a presence in all facets of Indian society and includes the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling political party under Narendra Modi, the 14th prime minister of India. Mohan Bhagwat has served as the Sarsanghchalak of the RSS since March 2009.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is a political party in India and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP is aligned with right-wing politics and has close ideological and organisational links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a far-right paramilitary organisation. Its policies adhere to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology. As of January 2024, it is the country's biggest political party in terms of representation in the Parliament of India as well as state legislatures.
The Sangh Parivar refers, as an umbrella term, to the collection of Hindutva organisations spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which remain affiliated to it. These include the political party Bharatiya Janata Party, religious organisation Vishva Hindu Parishad, students union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), religious militant organisation Bajrang Dal that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the worker's union Bharatiya Kisan Sangh. It is also often taken to include allied organisations such as the Shiv Sena, which share the ideology of the RSS.
Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, also known by his moniker Doctorji was a Hindutva activist, physician and the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Hedgewar founded the RSS in Nagpur in 1925, based on the ideology of Hindu nationalism.
Akhand Bharat, also known as Akhand Hindustan, is a term for the concept of a unified Greater India. It asserts that modern-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Tibet are one nation.
Pravin Togadia is an Indian doctor, cancer surgeon and an advocate for Hindu nationalism, coming from the state of Gujarat. He was the former International Working President of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and a cancer surgeon by qualification. He is Founder and Current President of Antarashtriya Hindu Parishad. He had a falling out with the Sangh Parivar and is a vocal critic of Narendra Modi.
Sudarshan may refer to:
Balraj Madhok was an Indian political activist and politician from Jammu. Originally an activist of the nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), he later worked as a politician in the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS).
The Rashtriya Sikh Sangat is an India-based Sikh affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
Vidya Bharati is the educational wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It runs one of the largest private network of schools in India, operating 12,000 schools with over 3.2 Million students, as of 2016 and has its registered headquarters in Lucknow with a functional headquarters in Delhi and a sub-office in Kurukshetra. In the year 2020, the million lives club selected Vidya Bharati as an official member of Vanguard cohort for its contribution to school education.
The Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) is an Indian farmers' organization that is politically linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. BKS was founded by Dattopant Thengadi in 1978. As of 2000, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh claimed BKS had a quarter million members, organized in 11,000 villages and 301 districts across the country. The organization is dominated by landed gentry.
Hindu terrorism, sometimes called Hindutva terror or, metonymically, saffron terror, refer to terrorist acts carried out on the basis of motivations in broad association with Hindu nationalism or Hindutva.
Amit Anil Chandra Shah is an Indian politician who is currently serving as the 32nd Minister of Home Affairs since May 2019 and the first Minister of Co-operation since July 2021. He is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Gandhinagar. He served as the 10th President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from 2014 to 2020. He has also served as chairman of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) since 2014. He had been elected as a member of the upper house of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, from Gujarat from 2017 to 2019.
The Ajmer Dargah bombing occurred on 11 October 2007, in the courtyard of Sufi maulana Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer, Rajasthan, India, after the Iftar period had started. On 22 March 2017 a Special NIA Court convicted three Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharaks Devendra Gupta, Bhavesh Patel and Sunil Joshi. Sunil Joshi and Devendra Gupta were found guilty on charges of conspiracy and Bhavesh Bhai Patel was found guilty of planting the explosive on the blast site. Gupta and Patel were awarded life imprisonment. Sunil Joshi had been found shot dead in mysterious circumstances soon after the blast in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh.
Sanjay Vinayak Joshi is an Indian politician belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was a long-time member of the Gujarat BJP and was a member of the BJP national executive until he was forced to resign after public pressure from Narendra Modi. During his 2001-2005 tenure as National General Secretary (Organization), he led the organization that enabled BJP to win the Assembly elections in nine states.
Hindu Jagran Manch also Called as H.J.M is an Indian Hindu activist group affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It focuses on activism against religious conversion and works for the reconversion of Muslims and Christians to Hinduism. It is said to have been founded by Vinay Katiyar in 1982. It first came to public attention for its activism and religious violence in the tribal areas of the Dangs district of Gujarat in 1998. It and other similar affiliates Hindu Jagran Samiti, Hindu Jagran Samaj and Dharm Jagran Samiti have been implicated in the aggressive Ghar Wapsi programmes in 2014–2015.
These are the references for further information regarding the Sangh Parivar.
The Jammu Praja Parishad was a political party active in the Jammu Division of the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. It was founded in November 1947 by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist Balraj Madhok, and served as the main opposition party in the state. It maintained close ties with Bharatiya Jana Sangh during its lifetime and merged with the latter in 1963. Its main activity was to campaign for the close integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India and oppose the special status granted to the state under the Article 370 of the Indian constitution. After its merger with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the precursor of the present day Bharatiya Janata Party, the party gradually rose in stature. As an integral part of the Bharatiya Janata Party, it was a partner in the ruling coalition led by the People's Democratic Party.