Open Letter to the RSS on Quit India Day: Take Action, Fix Accountability for Obnoxious Comments of T.G. Mohandas
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From: All India Feminist Alliance - ALIFA NAPM <nariva...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 9 Aug, 2026, 11:07 am
Subject: Open Letter to the RSS on Quit India Day: Take Action, Fix Accountability for Obnoxious Comments of T.G. Mohandas
To: <cont...@rss.org>
Cc: <bjp...@gmail.com>, <bjpo...@gmail.com>, <jpn...@gmail.com>, <Nitin...@bjp.org>, <bjpk...@gmail.com>, <bjpkera...@gmail.com>, <chiefm...@kerala.gov.in>, <chie...@kerala.gov.in>, <sshome...@gmail.com>, <acs....@kerala.gov.in>, <k...@kerala.gov.in>, <chairpe...@gmail.com>, <direc...@yahoo.com>, <chairpe...@nic.in>, <complain...@nic.in>, Member Secretary <ms-...@nic.in>
An Open Letter to the RSS on T.G. Mohandas, who said student protesters should be shot and that the women among them “like rape”
Issued on Quit India Day:
Demanding Action and Accountability by Independence Day
9th August, 2026
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To, Mohan Bhagwat, Sarsanghchalak, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Dr. Hedgewar Bhavan, Nagpur |
To, Dattatreya Hosabale, Sarkaryavah, (General Secretary) Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Dr. Hedgewar Bhavan, Nagpur
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Mr. Mohan Bhagwat and Mr. Dattatreya Hosabale,
On this 9th August, we the members of the All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA) of NAPM remember the historic Quit India Movement - a moment when lakhs of ordinary Indians collectively refused to accept authoritarian rule and asserted the right to dissent. We issue this letter today, because democracy demands not only freedom from colonial rule, but also freedom from the language of hatred and violence that seeks to silence citizens, including young people, who speak out. As a platform that brings together women, transgender and non-binary persons from democratic movements across this country, we write to you about T.G. Mohandas; a man your ‘movement’ trained. We want to see if his most obnoxious, vile and violent public utterances last month about the students, youth and women of our country, moves RSS into ensuring actual accountability, beyond merely ‘distancing itself; from his comments.
What T.G. Mohandas said on Camera:
As you are well-aware, between 24th and 26th July, 2026, T.G. Mohandas published a series of videos on his YouTube channel Pathrika. In the video of 26th July he set out, step by step, what he would do to the students then gathered at Jantar Mantar, Delhi; if he were ‘in charge’:
“I would impose curfew over about a 4-square-kilometre area around Jantar Mantar. I would announce over loudspeakers, asking the crowd to disperse. I would make the announcement three times. Then I would open fire. People would scatter and run. Some people would die, some would survive, and some would be left permanently disabled. Within about four hours, the situation would be under control. The bodies would be collected and taken to hospitals… This is a solution. Clean.”
Of the women among those students, he said:
“Rapes will happen, mass rapes… there are girls who like rape… there are people who like rapes, especially, leftist, secular, democratic, proletarian class of people… When mass rapes happen there won't be any complaints, because these are the people who like rape.” (We are told there are more such outrageous comments in the original video).
The quotations are English translations of his Malayalam, as carried by The South First and The News Minute on 27th July, 2026. The videos remain online as we write. Mr Mohandas has not denied speaking these words. He calls them ‘satire’, and complains that a minute and a half was clipped from a thirty-one-minute video. We have read the fuller renderings. Length does not launder them. A man who takes thirty-one minutes to arrive at “the bodies would be collected” has had time to think.
The man in question, groomed by the RSS over four decades:
The BJP's Kerala unit has distanced itself from Mr Mohandas and his statements. That said, he served as state convener of the BJP's ‘Intellectual Cell’ in Kerala and as the party's television spokesperson. He was General Secretary, and later Vice-President, of Bharatiya Vichara Kendram, the ‘think tank’ the Sangh built in Kerala under P. Parameswaran. He managed Ayodhya Printers, and for a period Janmabhumi. RSS has groomed this man, and given him numerous platforms for forty years. These are facts on record. Even if he does not hold any ‘position’ in the RSS, you cannot escape institutional responsibility for his violent, aggressive and obnoxious words and actions.
The Sangh knows how to act, if it ‘matters’:
We are routinely told that the Sangh does not ‘interfere’, and that opinions belong to individuals alone. The country has seen otherwise. On 5th June 2022, within a single day of diplomatic protests from Qatar, Kuwait, Iran and countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation for the Islamophobic insults, the BJP suspended its national spokesperson Nupur Sharma for six years and expelled its Delhi media head Naveen Kumar Jindal. The party's statement that day said it “does not promote such people or philosophy.” So, the machinery exists. It moved within hours when there was a political expediency to act; in this case, the relationship with oil and gas supplying nations. The students, youth and women of this country are waiting to know whether they and their cause of rehauling the education system on which the future of this country rests, matter as much.
Remember your own words:
This year, your organisation entered its second century, describing women as ‘Matru Shakti’. At Vijayadashami in 2024, the Sarsanghchalak condemned the rape and murder of a young doctor at R.G. Kar Hospital; your centenary literature promises a ‘disciplined society’ built on ‘character’. We also remember Silchar, January 2013, days after a young woman died of her injuries in Delhi, when the same Sarsanghchalak told the country that such crimes happen in “India” and hardly in “Bharat.” Mr Mohandas has now completed that thought in the ugliest form available: the women at Jantar Mantar were, by his reckoning, of “India”, leftist, secular, Bahujan, and so what happens to their bodies will occasion no complaint, no action.
He said this in Kerala, of all places; the state where Channar women fought for half a century, from about 1813 to 1859, for the right to clothe their own bodies, and won. Where the Temple Entry Proclamation of 1936 broke a monopoly on God. Where Anna Chandy joined the High Court bench in 1959, and Fathima Beevi of Pandalam rose in 1989 to become the first woman judge of the Supreme Court of India. Where female literacy stood at 91.98 per cent in the 2011 Census, the highest in the country, and where Kudumbashree has drawn over forty lakh women into organized public life. Kerala's women have heard a century of instruction on their ‘modesty’ from men of Mr Mohandas's persuasion and resisted and risen consistently.
The women T.G. Mohandas described:
Consider who stood in his imaginary line of fire. Students who sat at Jantar Mantar for fifty days, from 6th June, after a leaked medical entrance paper forced the cancellation of an examination taken by twenty lakh candidates. Women held that site through the nights; reporting from the sit-in recorded mixed-gender night shifts without one complaint of molestation. The violence in this story ran in a single direction. On 20th July, the police met their march with lathis, tear gas, pellets and Delhi hospital records logged dozens of injured protesters. On 25th July, the Union Education Minister resigned. No stone is recorded as thrown by these students across seven weeks. The shooting fantasy, and the slander of the women, were published after the thousands of students and youth had already won. Public order needed no ‘defending’ by then. What remained was contempt, aimed at young people, in particular women who had just shown the country that non-violence and determination works.
As a forum committed to gender justice, constitutional values and democratic rights, we feel Mr TG Mohandas must face full accountability for his obnoxious and life-threatening utterances. And that the RSS and BJP should not escape institutional accountability, either.
Our demands:
We place four demands before you, seeking action before 14th August, 2026:
1. A written and public condemnation of T.G. Mohandas's statements, by name, from the RSS and the BJP, together with the full and immediate severance of every remaining platform and courtesy extended to him by Sangh Parivar organisations and publications.
2. Sarsanghchalak's office must note that women, youth, citizens who protest against any government, of any party, are entitled to dignity, agency and constitutional rights; whatever their political ideology.
3. Pro-active support for the legal and criminal process against T.G. Mohandas, instead of obstruction. Complaints by SFI, AIYF and AISF are before the Kerala Police, whose Cyber Cell has filed an FIR and is investigating the matter. The Supreme Court's directions in Tehseen Poonawalla (2018) require registration of hate speech cases without waiting for complainants, and the conduct described attracts, on its face, Sections 196, 353, 79 and 351 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. Amish Devgan v. Union of India (2020) holds that the speaker's reach and the surrounding context aggravate such speech. A following of lakhs is an aggravation. ‘Satire’ is no defence known to the law of incitement.
4. Takedown with preservation: Removal of the videos in question, from public circulation, with certified copies preserved for the investigation.
If this 15th August passes in silence, we will read the silence as an answer, and we will say so in Kerala and across the country in these words: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was publicly asked whether it stands with a member of its ‘Parivar’ who calls for the shooting of students, and says rape is a thing some women like, and RSS chose not to reply, not to take action, not to fix accountability. Silence is Complicity.
We most certainly do not expect agreement from you on political ideology. We write because a line exists that predates every ideology in this country, and T.G. Mohandas crossed it on camera. Our members have stood in other crowds, under other lathis. Some of us are mothers, siblings and saathis of the students who sat peacefully at Jantar Mantar. When the history of your organisation’s ‘centenary year’ is written, it will be recorded as to whether you ensured full accountability and action against the man who brazenly advocated violation of the brave young women’s bodies and violence against students of India and whether you chose to use your power responsibly, when you could and should have. You have a week to act.
On this historic Quit India Day and as we move towards another significant Independence Day, we proudly proclaim that in this land of Dr. BR Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi and Bhagat Singh, we refuse to give up dissent, questioning and peaceful resistance.
Issued by the All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA)
Copy to:
1. National President, Bharatiya Janata Party
2. President, BJP Kerala
3. Chief Minister of Kerala
4. Home Minister of Kerala
5. Chairperson, National Commission for Women
6. Chairperson, Kerala Women's Commission
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