Mohan Bhagwat projects a conciliatory, reassuring RSS to global audience

New Delhi: By asserting that does not mean excluding Muslims from India, chief has reinforced the Sangh’s bid to project a more benign and reassuring image in its centenary year, as it remains at the centre of India’s political discourse through the BJP at the Centre and in several states.

The messaging is less about changing the RSS’s ideology and more about changing the perception of that ideology-making Hindutva appear less confrontational, more civilisational and socially harmonious, particularly before a global audience. Taken together with his recent centenary lecture series across the country, Bhagwat’s interventions point to a clear Sangh communication strategy aimed at broadening the organisation’s appeal without altering its ideological core.

At the ‘One World: One Humanity’ summit in New York, Bhagwat asserted that “if any Hindu thinks that there should be no Muslims in Bharat, he will not remain Hindu,” while describing unity in diversity as being “in Bharat’s DNA”. He urged the to remain loyal to their karmabhoomi and portrayed the RSS as an organisation committed to service, coexistence and global harmony.

Bhagwat’s overseas outreach will also take him to Canada and the UK. The same themes were evident during the RSS centenary lecture series in New Delhi last month, where Bhagwat asserted that “Islam will always have a place in India”, rejected suggestions that Muslims had no future in a Hindu Rashtra and presented the RSS’s idea of nationalism as one that accommodates religious diversity.