RSS reaches out to MM Kalburgi's family with condolences

BENGALURU: Amid an intolerance debate in Parliament, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has reached out to the family of Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi and expressed condolences over the killing, a full three months after he shot dead at the doorstep of his residence in Dharwad on August 30.

RSS joint secretary (North Karnataka) Sridhar Nadigar, who delivered the letter to Kalburgi's wife Umadevi, told ET: “We do our condolences in our national executive meetings. Kalburgi’s killing was condoled in the October 30 meeting at Ranchi and we handed over the letter to his family now. Similar letters were given to the families of (rationalist) Narendra Dabholkar and (activist) Govindrao Pansare, when they were killed.”

Nadigar said he had demanded a speeding-up of the probe into Kalburgi’s death and punishment of his killers. To a query on the alleged involvement of right-wing Hindu organisations in the killing, Nadigar said: “We do not know who was responsible, but we condemn it.”

Kalburgi’s family was guarded in its reaction to the reach out by the RSS. “We do not know why they came so late. They are a national organisation and they have expressed their condolences over the death. We have accepted it,” Kalburigi’s son, Srivijaya, told ET.

Writers and intellectuals who have been protesting the deaths of Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi, are not convinced that the RSS reaction is genuine. . “Why did they wait three months to make a statement or condemn the killing? They are just trying to make a distance between them and the killers,” writer Vasundhara Bhupathi, who was part of the protest demonstration against the killings, stated.