Not even the air that touches RSS should touch us: Priyank Kharge
Minister lashes out at the organisation soon after DCM D.K. Shivakumar sang an RSS song
Bengaluru: Karnataka Rural Development Minister Priyank Kharge has launched a sharp attack on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), declaring that “not even the air that touches the RSS should touch us” if India is to truly become enlightened and prosperous.
Speaking shortly after Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar was seen singing an RSS song, Kharge accused the organisation of spreading communal hatred and upholding casteist, Manu-centric, and Nazi-like ideologies. “The Congress will always view RSS as an enemy because it is an enemy of the Constitution, of unity, of the national flag, and of the national anthem,” he asserted.
Citing warnings issued decades ago by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Kharge reminded that Patel had once imposed a ban on the RSS in 1948, calling it a threat to national integration. He added that despite later having the ban lifted by pledging loyalty to the Constitution and the tricolour, the organisation continued its “anti-constitutional activities.”
Kharge further challenged the BJP and Sangh Parivar to list ten positive contributions of the RSS in its hundred-year history, claiming instead that the outfit has only endangered the nation. He accused it of disrespecting the Constitution, burning its draft, dishonouring the national flag, and treating women and marginalised groups as “third-class citizens.”
“The RSS is not a helper of India but a danger to it. Every patriot must remember this,” Kharge wrote in his post on X.
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Robert Duvall, Oscar-winning actor and 'Godfather' mainstay, dead at 95
Los Angeles (AP): Robert Duvall, the Oscar-winning actor of matchless versatility and dedication whose classic roles included the intrepid consigliere of the first two "Godfather" movies and the over-the-hill country music singer in "Tender Mercies," has died at age 95.
Duvall died “peacefully” at his home Sunday in Middleburg, Virginia, according to an announcement from his publicist and from a statement posted on his Facebook page by his wife, Luciana Duvall.
“To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything,” Luciana Duvall wrote. “His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court. For each of his many roles, Bob gave everything to his characters and to the truth of the human spirit they represented."
The bald, wiry Duvall didn't have leading man looks, but few "character actors" enjoyed such a long, rewarding and unpredictable career, in leading and supporting roles, from an itinerant preacher to Josef Stalin.
Beginning with his 1962 film debut as Boo Radley, the reclusive neighbor in "To Kill a Mockingbird," Duvall created a gallery of unforgettable portrayals.
They earned him seven Academy Award nominations and the best actor prize for "Tender Mercies," which came out in 1983. He also won four Golden Globes, including one for playing the philosophical cattle-drive boss in the 1989 miniseries "Lonesome Dove," a role he often cited as his favorite.
In 2005, Duvall was awarded a National Medal of Arts.
He had been acting for some 20 years when "The Godfather," released in 1972, established him as one of the most in-demand performers of Hollywood. He had made a previous film, "The Rain People," with Francis Coppola, and the director chose him to play Tom Hagen in the mafia epic that featured Al Pacino and Marlon Brando among others.
Duvall was a master of subtlety as an Irishman among Italians, rarely at the centre of a scene, but often listening and advising in the background, an irreplaceable thread through the saga of the Corleone crime family.
“Stars and Italians alike depend on his efficiency, his tidying up around their grand gestures, his being the perfect shortstop on a team of personality sluggers,” wrote the critic David Thomson. “Was there ever a role better designed for its actor than that of Tom Hagen in both parts of The Godfather?'”
In another Coppola film, "Apocalypse Now," Duvall was wildly out front, the embodiment of deranged masculinity as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, who with equal vigour enjoyed surfing and bombing raids on the Viet Cong. Duvall required few takes for one of the most famous passages in movie history, barked out on the battlefield by a bare-chested, cavalry-hatted Kilgore: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of em, not one stinkin' dink body.
"The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like — victory.”
Coppola once commented about Duvall: "Actors click into character at different times — the first week, third week. Bobby's hot after one or two takes."
