'Sane' Muslim Leaders Should Stand Against Fundamentalists: Mohan Bhagwat

 'Sane' Muslim Leaders Should Stand Against Fundamentalists: Mohan Bhagwat

Bhagwat did not, however, say anything about right-wing Hindu extremists in India.

'Sane' Muslim Leaders Should Stand Against Fundamentalists: Mohan Bhagwat

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. Photo: PTI/Files

The Wire Staff

The Wire Staff

COMMUNALISM

18 HOURS AGO

New Delhi: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat on Monday said Hindus and Muslims share the same ancestry and every Indian citizen is a “Hindu”.

Speaking at an event organised by the Pune-based Global Strategic Policy Foundation, he said “sane” Muslim leaders should stand firmly against fundamentalists.

“The word Hindu was equivalent to motherland, ancestors and Indian culture. This is not disrespecting other views. We have to think in terms of gaining Indian dominance and not Muslim dominance,” he said.

Bhagwat said for all-round development of India, everyone should work together.

“Islam came to India with invaders. This is history and should be told in that manner. Sane Muslim leaders should oppose unnecessary issues and stand firmly against fundamentalists and hardliners. The more we do this at the earliest, the less damage it will cause to our society,” he said.

India, as a superpower, will not scare anyone, the RSS leader said.

“The word Hindu is equivalent to the rich heritage of our motherland, ancestors and culture, and every Indian is a Hindu,” he said at a seminar titled “Nation First, Nation Supreme”.

Hindus and Muslims share the same ancestry, Bhagwat said.

Also read: The World Must Pay Attention to the Violence Against Muslims in India

While speaking of Islamist extremism, however, Bhagwat made no mention of right-wing Hindu extremists operating in India, even though such groups have now been accused of several assassinations, including of journalist Gauri Lankesh and rationalist thinkers like Govind Pansare, Narendra Dabholkar and M.M. Kalaburgi. Smaller Hindutva groups that fall under the larger Sangh parivar have also been accused of unleashing violence against minorities in India.

Recently, writer and lyricist Javed Akhtar had drawn the ire of right-wing Hindu groups by saying that the RSS was not too different from the Taliban. “Those who support organisations like RSS and Bajrang Dal need to do some introspection. How are they any different from them (Taliban)?” Akhtar had said in an interview to NDTV.

Leaders of the BJP and Shiv Sena hit out at Akhtar after this remark, saying that he should be boycotted and was “disrespecting Hindu culture”.

Opinion: Mohan Bhagwat's Muslim Outreach Is Big - But Will It Matter?

Ashutosh

OpinionUpdated: September 07, 2021 5:17 pm IST

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Mohan Bhagwat is the most 'political' RSS chief after Balasaheb Deoras. If Keshav Baliram Hedgewar was quintessentially an organisation man, M S Golwalkar was more of a missionary; Balasaheb Deoras was a rebel within the Hindutva fold: a non-practicing Swayam Sewak who left the RSS for eight years due to differences with Golwalkar, and a hard-core political individual. It was Deoras who saw potential in the Ram Janmabhoomi Movement, aggressively pursued with the full might of the RSS, at a time when BJP was oscillating between the Gandhian Socialism of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Integral Humanism of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. Without the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the BJP would not have accomplished what it has.

Not many people outside the RSS know that Deoras, after becoming chief of the organisation, advocated that the RSS should open its doors to the followers of the other religions like Islam and Christianity. He was told by the top leadership of the RSS "This is not what Hedgewar envisioned when he founded the RSS; if he feels so strongly about that, he should start his own RSS". Many years later, the RSS did open its membership for Muslims and others; much later, it also sponsored the Rashtriya Muslim Manch to reach out to Muslims and neutralise their apprehensions that the RSS is anti-Islam. Therefore, in that context, what Bhagwat is preaching today is not new, it is in continuation with the Deoras line of thinking. 

But Bhagwat has walked a few steps further than Deoras. At an event in Mumbai yesterday, attended by Muslim intellectuals, he said,"Hindus and Muslims in India share the same ancestry. In our view, the word Hindu means motherland, and the culture that we have inherited from ancient times. The term Hindu... denotes every person irrespective of their language, community or religion. Everyone is a Hindu, and it is in this context that we see every Indian citizen as a Hindu. The faith of another will not be disrespected here, but for that we should be thinking not of Muslim dominance but of India's dominance. For the country to progress, all have to work together." On the surface, it appears that Bhagwat, in a way, is trying to redefine Hindutva; theoretically, he is challenging Golwalkar's basic premise and pushing Hindutva away from Savarkar's interpretation of history. His definition of Hindutva is much closer to Swami Vivekanand's who talked about a cohesive, strong and organised Hindu society but one that should live in complete harmony with Muslims in India. Bhagwat, in 2018, had said, "Hindu Rashtra does not mean there is no place for Muslims. The day it becomes so, it won't be Hindutva. Hindutva talks about one world family."

Bhagwat's insistence that there is place for Muslims in the Hindu Rashtra is antagonistic to the Hindu Rashtra as envisaged by Savarkar, Golwalkar and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, the three sources of RSS ideology. Savarkar, like Jinnah, advocated the two-nation theory. In 1937, Savarkar declared, "India can't be assumed to be a unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary, there are two nations in the main: the Hindus and the Muslims, in India." On this issue, Babasaheb Ambedkar found no difference between him and Jinnah. He said, "Strange as it may appear, Mr. Savarkar and Mr. Jinnah instead of being opposed to each other on the one nation versus two nations issue are in complete agreement about it. Both agree and not only agree but insist that there are two nations in India - one the Muslim nation and the other Hindu nation."

Golwalkar, like Savarkar, was not an original thinker, he was inspired by the Hitler's ideology of fascism. In 1939, he wrote in his book, We, or Our Nationhood Defined, (this book was later disowned by the RSS) "...there are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race. That is the only sound view on the minority problem." This statement very clearly underlines the fact that Golwalkar was contemplating throwing Muslims out of the country. Deen Dayal Upadhyay did not disagree much with his ideological mentor except on one point and that is that seven crore Muslims (that was the population of Muslims then) living in India is a reality and they can't be removed. So, a formula for the co-existence must be evolved. 

Bhagwat goes much further to say that without Muslims, Hindutva can't be imagined. By this logic, he negates the basic premise of the "Two-Nation Theory". In his opinion, Hindus and Muslims are not the foundation of two distinct nations but one. They have the 'same ancestry'. Unlike him, Savarkar had declared Islam and Christianity foreign religions, whose holy lands existed outside India, and so their loyalty to the nation was suspect. He acknowledged that most of the Muslims and Christians were at one time Hindus, but..."since their adoption of the new cult they had ceased to own Hindu sanskriti as a whole...their heroes and their hero worship, their fairs and their festivals, their ideals and their outlook on life, have ceased to be common with others."

One can argue and object that Bhagwat's is a much-nuanced position as he says that everyone living in India is 'Hindu' irrespective of religion. But let's not forget that unlike Golwalkar, he has not uttered a word which can be interpreted to mean that he wants Muslims to be thrown out of the country or treated as second-class citizens without any civil rights as Golwalkar says in his famously-disowned book; rather, Bhagwat recognises the fact that Muslims have a role to play in the nation-building process. He said in Mumbai, "The faith of the another will not be disrespected here. For the country to progress, all have to work together."

These are bold words at a time when Muslims are termed 'termites' by the second-most powerful leader in the country, Amit Shah. Hindutva leaders are calling Muslims "anti-nationals" and "pro-Pakistan" every day. Their patriotism is questioned in every discourse. Bhagwat is speaking on these lines at a time when the process of the 'otherisation' of Muslims has reached an industry-level, when there is an attempt to remove and erase every symbol and memory of Islam.

Now the moot question is if the RSS chief is opposed to the 'otherization' of Muslims, then why is so much venom spread by the followers of RSS ideology? I am not talking about foot soldiers, I am more upset about the role played by the BJP MPs and MLAs, their Chief Ministers and ministers in states and at the Centre. Cabinet ministers exhort people to shoot Muslims, MPs call them rapists and abductors of Hindu girls; in the garb of restraining "Love Jihad", anti-Muslim laws are being made and Muslims are booked mercilessly under sedition and UAPA (anti-terror) laws. If Bhagwat is out to correct the mistakes of the past and is trying to reposition the ideological foundation of Hindutva, why are such incidents on the rise? Every election brings with itself more poison. His own government at the centre does not seem to make any serious effort to restrain such tendencies. 

It is ironical that on one hand, Bhagwat talks about Hindu-Muslim unity, and at the same time, the RSS supports leaders like Yogi Adityanath. If Yogi is the poster boy of the RSS, Bhagwat should forget about being taken seriously by the Muslim community. I give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that he might be serious in his endeavour and he is seriously trying to change the theoretical boundaries of Hindutva, but for that to happen, he has to control his army, which at the moment appears unrelenting. I won't risk saying that the RSS has changed, and that it no longer follows its leader i.e. Mohan Bhagwat. This can only happen if somebody else has taken over the organisation and he is just the titular head. 

RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat To Meet Muslim Intellectuals In Mumbai Tomorrow

In July, Mohan Bhagwat had addressed an event organised by Muslim Rashtriya Manch in Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad.

All IndiaAsian News InternationalUpdated: September 05, 2021 6:40 pm IST

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RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat To Meet Muslim Intellectuals In Mumbai Tomorrow

RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat To Meet Muslim Intellectuals In Mumbai Tomorrow (FILE)

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Mumbai: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat will meet intellectuals from the Muslim community at a five-star hotel in Mumbai on Monday.

Notably, in July, Mr Bhagwat had addressed an event organised by Muslim Rashtriya Manch in Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad.

Speaking at that event, the RSS chief had said, "The concept of Hindu-Muslim unity is misquoted because there is no difference between them as it has been proven that we are the descendants of the same ancestors from the last 40,000 years. People of India have the same DNA."

Mr Bhagwat had said there can never be any dominance of either Hindus or Muslims. "There can only be the dominance of Indians," he added.

Meanwhile, the three-day coordination meeting that started on September 3 in Nagpur will conclude today.