Sangh Froid
RSS chiefs are notoriously reclusive, their speaking engagements usually confined to the annual Vijayadashami rally at the headquarters in Nagpur. Here, the chief spells out the organisation’s line on various issues. But current RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat did more than that this year. He addressed a three-day lecture series at Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi. Here, before a select audience of over 4,000 persons including diplomats and politicians, the RSS chief freely interacted with delegates and invited people to study the Sangh before making an informed opinion. He even praised the Congress for its role in the freedom struggle. It was, however, Bhagwat’s comments on M.S. Golwalkar’s 1966 book, Bunch of Thoughts, which drew the greatest interest. He said the controversial views on Indian minorities “were not eternal” and that many of them had been excised from RSS literature.
Bhagwat’s shown an inclination to change the hidebound Sangh. Two years ago, he got the RSS to shed its trademark khaki shorts for trousers. More effective than the sartorial change could be the heralding of a more acceptable organisation.
Bhagwat, who has trained as a veterinarian, completes a decade at the helm of the five million strong organisation in March 2019. He shares cordial relations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and there is certainly none of the bitter acrimony like there was during NDA-1 between K.S. Sudarshan and A.B. Vajpayee. Bhagwat, however, continues to be the government’s conscience-keeper. In 2014, he said the BJP’s Lok Sabha victory was not a “one man show”. At the lecture series, he publicly overturned Amit Shah’s ‘Congress mukt Bharat’ mission: “We want a yukt (united) Bharat, not a mukt Bharat.”
His outreach, though, does not come at the cost of the Sangh’s core agenda—the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. In November, just a month after the three-day event, the chief voiced his dismay at the slow progress. “One year ago, I myself had said, be patient,” he said, addressing a VHP rally in the capital. “Now I say patience will not work. We need to mobilise people. We must demand a law.” He knows an impatient RSS chief in an election year is not one to be trifled with.
Publicly overturning Amit Shah’s ‘Congress
mukt Bharat’ slogan, Bhagwat said, “We want a yukt (united) Bharat, not a
mukt Bharat”