Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday (August 16, 2025) issued a scathing statement against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of “belittling Independence Day” by praising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) during his August 15 Red Fort address.
Mr. Vijayan said the Prime Minister attempted to “gift the legacy of the freedom movement to the RSS,” an organisation that was banned after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. He also criticised the Union Petroleum Ministry’s Independence Day poster, which allegedly placed V.D. Savarkar’s image in prominence over Gandhi’s. Savarkar, an RSS ideologue, had faced trial in connection with Gandhi’s killing.
The Chief Minister alleged that the Central government was trying to distort India’s history by “fraudulently claiming the revered legacy of the freedom struggle for the pro-colonialist RSS.” He said the organisation had no role in the freedom movement and instead “remained submissive to colonial rulers while advancing their divide-and-rule strategy through a communally divisive worldview.”
RSS “feared the freedom struggle”
According to Mr. Vijayan, the RSS and its allies were attempting to recast the secular-democratic struggle for Independence into a Hindu majoritarian narrative. He argued that the people of India had set aside caste, communal, linguistic and cultural barriers to unite against colonial rule, while the RSS fundamentally opposed such unity.
He described the RSS as bearing the “indelible stigma” of collaboration with British rulers and opposing the secular-democratic aspirations of the freedom struggle. He accused the organisation of promoting the Manusmriti’s caste hierarchies and resisting the Constituent Assembly’s secular vision for India’s Constitution.
Savarkar’s role questioned
Mr. Vijayan noted that Savarkar, who led the Hindu Mahasabha, boycotted India’s first Independence Day in 1947. He said the present government was making an “extraordinary effort to elevate Savarkar’s image to the level of Gandhi’s.”
The Chief Minister also alleged that the Centre was deliberately removing the names of martyrs from Kerala’s Punnapra-Vayalar uprising and victims of the Wagon Tragedy (1921) from official lists of freedom fighters, in order to glorify the RSS.
Call for resistance
Mr. Vijayan concluded that the government was “fraudulently attempting to portray the RSS as the rightful heirs of India’s freedom struggle.” He urged citizens to resist efforts to equate humanist leaders like Bhagat Singh and Mahatma Gandhi with what he called “symbols of hate and division.”