Meerut: Days after claiming that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh could mobilize men faster than the Army, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has courted another controversy after he said that a teen cadre activist was “martyred” while helping BSF during the 1971 India-Pakistan war.
“Back in 1971, a 15-year-old tribal boy, studying in class XI, was asked by the personnel of Border Security Force to carry cartons of gunpowder to the forward post till the rest of the battalion arrived. History is witness that the boy, who was also a Swayamsevak, was shot by an enemy bullet while helping the country during times of trouble,” RSS Sarsanghachalak Bhagwat said on Sunday while addressing nearly a lakh cadre members at the the RSS’s ‘Rashtroday Sammelan’ in Meerut.
Narrating the incident, Bhagwat said that the 15-year-old boy used to stay very close to the then-Pakistan border and informed the BSF jawans about the activities near the border.
“One day, he saw that troops had started to cross the border from East Pakistan to India. Showing his presence of mind, the teen ran to the jawans and informed them about the Pakistanis trying to enter India. There is even a ‘shaheed smarak’ in West Bengal’s Raiganj district to commemorate his efforts,” the RSS chief said.
The RSS said that to make Sunday’s event a hit, swayamsevaks had gone to each of the western UP’s 10,500 villages to request people to attend the event. The exact number of people who signed up for the event was over 3.11 lakh. However, the total number of swayamsevaks at the venue was just over a lakh.
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