NEW DELHI, July 21: A major publication associated with the RSS yesterday compared Mr Girilal Jain to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and showered encomiums on the late journalist who passed away here on Monday.
In a condolence meeting held at the office of “Panchajanya”, a pro RSS publication, speakers recalled Mr Jain’s association with the Hindi weekly and noted that his column in the weekly had become the “most important and most popular” one.
The weekly’s editor, Mr Tarun Vijay, recalled his refusal to accept honorarium for his columns, and said when he was forced to accept a cheque, he sent the amount to the Kashmir relief committee set up to help the refugees from the valley.
Due to his writings in recent years, Mr Jain might have gone away from the establishment, but in the hearts of the masses he had become a hero, who could be compared only with a man like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who too was engaged in reforming society through his writings, he said.
According to Mr Vijay, Mr Jain was the first journalist to put the Ayodhya demolition in the “proper” perspective, for which he came in for criticism from “pseudo-secularists”. In the face of a “flood of criticism” of the Hindutva movement, he stood like an “invincible rock,” he said. He successfully defeated the intentions of the pseudo-secularists, Mr Vijay added.
“In such times, Mr Jain could have adopted a neutral or anti-Ayodhya posture and become the hero of the establishment and the pseudo-secularists. But he did not do so. Instead, he had the courage to follow his conscience. He perceived the Ayodhya movement as a symbol of the struggle between the Indian civilisation and Islamic fundamentalism. For this reason he was associated with ‘Panchajanya’ and was involved in the mission of strengthening the ideological base of the pro-Hindutva masses,” Mr Vijay said.
The Times of India, 22 July 1993