The Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the scrapping of Article 370 are not measures in isolation of the Narendra Modi government but a culmination of the RSS tradition of refusing to accept the Constitution as it is, CPM leader from Kashmir Mohd Yousuf Tarigami said here on Friday.

“Some people feel surprised today. (They wonder) how the NRC has arrived, why CAA has happened? It has not come suddenly. It was the part and parcel of the RSS from the day it was born. It is nothing new. What is new is that what they once used to hide has been brought out in the open,” he said.

Tarigami was speaking at a programme, “Abaruddho Kashmir” (Occupied Kashmir) that CPM mouthpiece Ganashakti organised here to mark the 54th anniversary of the publication.

The CPM leader and four-time MLA from Kashmir was put under house arrest immediately after the Centre had ended Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under Article 370 and Article 35A of the Constitution on August 5. The CPM general secretary, Sitaram Yechuri, had to move the Supreme Court to allow Tarigami to fly to New Delhi for treatment in September.

“Kabhi chupkar karte hain, khabi parda utha karte hain (At times, they do it under cover, sometimes they do it by lifting the veil),” Tarigami said, alluding to the

RSS’s dislike for the Constitution and the Sangh parivar’s penchant to distort its key provisions that the founding fathers of the nation had incorporated to keep the country together.

Tarigami asked the people to delve into history and revisit the writings of RSS ideologue M.S. Golwalkar. He said Golwalkar’s writings made it amply clear that the Sangh, the BJP’s ideological fountainhead, had serious disdain for the Constitution as a document that laid down the future course of the nation.

“Golwalkar had advocated an India based on Manusamhita (also Manu-smriti, the ancient Hindu code that divides a society into four social classes depending on the caste they are born into) and not the Republican Constitution.”

He said the habit of trying to hide behind a veil of “deceit” refused to leave the BJP but the people did not have any wrong notion its real face.

Tarigami attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah for trying to confuse the people on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act by making contradictory statements.

He, however, said their effort had been left undone and the people had seen through their “hidden agenda”.

Describing Kashmir as a large prison, the CPM leader criticised Shah’s claim that not a single bullet had been fired since Article 370 had been revoked and the state of Jammu and Kashmir bifurcated.

“I would want to ask Amit Shah, ‘do you need to fire bullets in a graveyard?’,” Tarigami said. “The paradise is being destroyed today.”

Criticising the BJP government’s policies that aim to alienate Kashmir and its people, he said though the division of states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh were debated at legislative forums and on the streets, it took Modi and Shah only the stroke of a pen to bifurcate the Valley.

Asserting the belief of Kashmiris in the idea of India, Tarigami said: “However much they (the Centre) want to throw us into darkness, Kashmir will march with you.

The revolutionary tradition of Bengal will continue to inspire us.”