New Delhi: RSS on Wednesday blamed dams on rivers for natural disasters in the Himalayan region and said the government's move to rejuvenate Ganga should not be confined to photo-ops but become a national campaign.
RSS Joint General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale said the nature was taking revenge for developmental policies driven by "greed of consumption".
"We should see the role of the mankind in what we call natural disasters. Dams are being constructed. Electricity is being generated. The kind of policies we are formulating for this is causing various kinds of disaster. We will have to think about it," he said.
Speaking at a function to mark the second anniversary of Uttarakhand floods and landslides, which had left thousands dead, Hosabale said people will have to pay if they exploit nature as he also referred to recent Nepal quakes where he was sent by the Hindutva organisation to coordinate relief work.
"The message of Kedar Nath is this...if we protect nature, then it will nurse us. Nature says you will pay if you exploit me," he said, referring to the Uttarakhand calamity and added that the natural resources were being exploited indiscriminately.
Speaking about the Modi government's ambitious exercise to clean Ganga, the senior RSS functionary said it should be taken up as a national campaign.
"It should not be mere about some government programmes for clicking photos or spending budget money. This is a campaign to protect the nation's religious, cultural heritage," he said.
If the nature was neglected, then neither life nor religious, cultural and traditional heritage could be saved,
Hosabale said, terming such exploitation of the nature as "sin".
BJP MP Ashwini Kumar Choubey, who along his family was caught in the floods and lost some members of his entourage, urged for the Centre's intervention to provide relief to the kin of victims, saying thousands of them continued to be denied compensation due to callousness of state governments.
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