Riddles of Mr Bhagwat
Savera
IN a breathtaking display of doublespeak, RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat devoted three days (August 26-28, 2025) to painting his organisation with a nationalist, liberal, inclusive and serene outlook that only wants India to lead the whole humanity into an era of peace and prosperity. The occasion was a lecture organised in New Delhi to mark the completion of 100 years of RSS next month. The large, carefully selected audience comprised pliant members of the capital’s intelligentsia – journalists, academics, ex-bureaucrats, some invitees from the diplomatic corps etc.
He made some startling claims – India is already a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation); it is also already Akhand Bharat (undivided India); all residents of India are ‘Hindus’, irrespective of their mode of worship, provided they have reverence for motherland, the culture and the ancestors; and, that religious leaders had declared as far back as in 1972, in Udupi conference, that caste based discrimination has no place in Hindu Dharma, and the people are all opposed to it. All this was imbued with a flavour of inclusiveness, tolerance and humanity.
Was Bhagwat heralding a new RSS vision or “New Horizons” as written in the title of the lecture? Or was it some kind of ploy to influence the large sections of Indians – including Hindus – who do not support the RSS even after a century of “service” and “sacrifice”? Or was it just confused thinking of the RSS top brass that is trying to help perpetuate the Modi-led reign hiding the bigoted principles that it has espoused for so long? Answers to this can be found partly in the proceedings of the third day which was a curated Q&A session, and in Bhagwat’s speeches elsewhere, and indeed, in the actions of the Sangh Parivar. Let us try to unravel these riddles.
PUNCTURING HIS OWN NARRATIVE
In the third day’s question answer session, Bhagwat had to leave the rarified plane of civilizational aspirations and get his hands dirty in the day-to-day affairs of the country. In the process, the truth came out.
For example, when asked about the Sangh’s approach towards the demands for ‘liberating’ Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi and the Krishna Janmbhoomi site in Mathura, Bhagwat declared open season for launching agitations to achieve this. He said that while RSS itself will not get involved in these agitations (like it did in the Ram Janmbhoomi movement), its members are free to do so.
“The Ram Mandir was our demand and we supported that movement, but the Sangh will not take part in other movements now. Still, in the Hindu mind, Kashi, Mathura, and Ayodhya have deep significance - two are birthplaces, one is a place of residence. It is natural for Hindu society to express that urge,” he said.
In one fell stroke, he destroyed all the talk of being committed to the Constitution, the laws of the land and the inclusive-tolerant-humanity of not only the organisation he heads but also of the whole Hindu community that he mistakenly thinks the RSS represents. The Places of Worship Act, 1991, explicitly prohibits reopening the ownership question of religious places which must remain as at the time of Independence. Yet Bhagwat trots out the old argument that if Hindus want something, their desires must be satisfied. He even carefully allows RSS members to go ahead with the agitations. It is well known – and acknowledged by the RSS – that various associated organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad are practically run on RSS diktats, through some of its members in leading positions of such associated organisations. In fact, every year, a coordination meeting takes place attended by representatives of all 32 associated organisations and the full RSS leadership to review their activities and chalk out future actions. This year, the meeting is taking place in Jodhpur even as you read this. In attendance are VHP leaders, along with others. So, Bhagwat is basically giving a green signal to these organisations.
On population control he made the bizarre claim that three children per couple is the desired norm to maintain balance but asserted that conversion and infiltration are creating demographic imbalances. What’s the rationale behind this? It is again a sign of the 100 years old trope that Muslim population will overtake Hindu population. This has led the RSS to always be vary of population control measures because it thinks that Hindus will meekly adopt control while Muslims won’t. To be fair, Bhagwat acknowledged that currently, even Muslim fertility rate is falling just like in other communities, and falling faster, but he was unable to give up the deep seated and baseless fear drummed into the heads of RSS members that Muslims are going to overtake Hindus. On the infiltration question, it was asked that if the “DNA” of all those living in “Akhand Bharat” is the same – as he had claimed earlier – then why stop immigrants? Bhagwat had to fall back on the “uphold the law of the land” principle to counter this, saying that they shouldn’t come illegally. (Remember: in other cases, like Kashi and Mathura, there is no call to uphold the law!) Of course, he had nothing to say about the fact that recently Bengalis have been harassed and hounded in dozens of places across the country, by people inspired by RSS propaganda, in the name of being Rohingyas or Bangladeshis. He also didn’t mention that the Citizenship Amendment Act brought in by the Modi government fast tracks citizenship for all immigrants from neighboring countries except Muslims. The veil that Bhagwat is trying to put on the anti-Muslim nature of all this wears thinner and thinner.
Asked about involvement of RSS cadres in violence against minority community, Bhagwat asserted that this was factually incorrect, but qualified it by saying that because of “anguish” if some Hindus do indulge in this kind of actions, then it is wrong. So again, Hindus can understandably feel anguish or anger and give vent to it by demolishing mosques or indulge in other bestial violence like mob lynching on the basis of some unfounded rumour about beef eating – it will just draw a slap on the wrist by the RSS. Incidentally, to a question about meat eating, Bhagwat said that what someone eats should not give offense but added that “The need is for both sides to respect each other’s feelings; then there will be no need for the law to intervene”. This means that Muslims should respect so called Hindu feelings – otherwise a law and order issue will arise.
Here is another example of smuggling in the RSS thinking on a gamut of specific issues even while asserting that RSS upholds inclusiveness and has no intolerance towards anybody: asked about education, he said that the purpose of education is to “cultivate values and to make a person truly human. Everywhere, our (meaning Hindu) values and sanskriti (culture) must be taught….whether in missionary schools or madrasas.” So, in the name of ‘values’ and ‘humanity’ what will be taught is Hindu ‘culture’. He praised the National Education Policy of the Modi government for following this path.
In this way, Bhagwat’s thoughts themselves exposed the truth – all the grand talk of ‘dharma’ and love for the country, etc., were just empty talk – the harsh reality is that the RSS will continue to push ahead with its century-old agenda based on a medieval and regressive understanding of nation, faith and people. The lofty talk was just to assuage criticism and fool the more credulous. But there is more that needs attention.
UNRESOLVED DILLEMAS
One of the biggest riddles that neither Bhagwat nor his predecessors have been able to resolve is the caste system. Why is it an unresolved problem and why does one often see RSS leaders stumbling and groping their way around it?
The raison d’etre of RSS is to unite Hindus, inculcate a sense of “confidence” among them and build a society that runs on ancient Hindu principles that are also called Sanatan Dharma. However, in real life, this runs into the hopeless divisions of castes and sub-castes that Hindu society is rife with. The RSS has fruitlessly tried to ride both boats and failed incessantly. If there is a communal issue they may succeed in forging some kind of unity in an area, usually with the riskier activities left to the so-called lower castes. But suddenly a caste discrimination issue crops up – it will surely happen – and unity goes out of the window; the social groups are at logger heads. With the advent of Modi and BJP in power, there has been growing reliance on propping up leaders of various caste-based parties in order to increase the vote share of BJP led alliances. In fact, Bhagwat himself lauded this as a method of encouraging leaders of different castes to emerge. But invariably, these caste alliances do not stand up on RSS backed causes of Hindu supremacy. Ideologically, RSS leaders often swing between the two poles – sometimes criticising reservations, for example, and then having to spend several months fighting the backlash.
This contradiction is amplified because the RSS has no real answer to caste-based discrimination. It still holds that initially, the ‘varna vyavastha’ arose as a natural division of labour and it was helpful for society. With passage of time, distortions arose, according to them. It has still not accepted the brutal truth that the varna vyavastha was practically a system of slavery and barbaric oppression that was founded on exploitation, violence and oppression. Concepts of purity and its transgressions were inherent. Fighting against caste oppression has to keep as its objective not reform but annihilation of the system. Merely having a meal once in a while in a dalit household or accepting a glass of water from a dalit person is not sufficient, indeed it is a deflection, a sleight of hand. The RSS never demands annihilation, it never comes out forcefully against atrocities, its governments don’t even spend the funds allocated for SC/ST communities. Hence, it will never be able to draw dalits into its fold.
So, Bhagwat’s assertions about not accepting caste prejudices and the need to fight them, as also the Sangh’s commitment to the same are all useless and diversionary. In real life, RSS continues to behave and be seen as an upper caste organisation. So deep is this suspicion – and so grounded in reality – that even the BJP/RSS attempts to talk about Constitutional changes were rejected by voters in the 2024 elections because it was seen as an insult of Babasaheb Ambedkar, the founding father of the Constitution.
Bhagwat’s ideas expressed in the lectures do not measure up to the challenges facing India in the 21st century. He has the most naïve solutions to economic problems like unemployment (hard work to become an entrepreneur), and remains blind to the extent his colleague Modi has compromised the country’s economic sovereignty to multinational capital. Swadeshi and self reliance are mere words when the country is being pushed around by foreign capital and its domestic cronies. His social ideas, like saying that every Indian is a Hindu, are at best, ludicrous, and might portend an evil dream for the future.
