Mohan Bhagwat’s confusing oracular statements are better ignored

Hindutva militants’ are unlikely to forgo their agenda to ‘discover’ shivlings and remnants of temple architecture under mosques. Nor will a majority of Indians accept the proposed shift of India’s Independence Day

Mohan Bhagwat will go down in history as one of the most voluble chiefs of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He speaks out in public more than may be good for him or the RSS.

His latest public statement that India gained its “real independence” on the day of the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, on January 22, 2024, is a clear affront to the freedom movement which led to Indian Independence. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has described Bhagwat’s statement as “treason” and an insult to every Indian.

Bhagwat’s emotional perorations may appear to most as nothing more than the prejudiced prattle of an uneducated mind. However, they in fact signalled a course correction.

Only a month earlier, on December 19, 2024 at Pune, Bhagwat had said that no one would become a “leader of Hindus” by fanning a communal divide in the country. His statement was seen as a response to Right-wing groups who had moved courts in several parts of the country demanding demolition/excavation of centuries-old mosques on the grounds that they had been built over the remains of destroyed temples. Whereas some liberals welcomed the statement his core constituency was left confused.

The conciliatory tone of his statement in effect delegitimised one of the key objectives for which the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) was created by the RSS. Its objective was “to organise and consolidate the Hindu society and to serve, protect the Hindu Dharma”. A corollary of that was “to construct and renovate Hindu temples”. It also went on reclaim disputed Hindu sites.

That is why it was the VHP that spear-headed the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple movement. Bhagwat’s Pune statement was an affront by the Hindutva activists of the VHP, its ancillary militant organisations, and the core constituency of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Neither the RSS nor the BJP can afford to upset these organisations as they are needed for electoral mobilisation.

The rip in the Hindutva universe had to be repaired. Bhagwat’s declaration that the anniversary of the consecration of the Ram temple, its ‘Pratishtha Dwadashi’ be celebrated as the “real” Independence Day of India, tried to do just that.

To rationalise this preposterous claim, he dismissed the events of August 15, 1947, as “only as political independence”. A spiralling chain of logic led him to a confused attack even on the Constitution of India.

Bhagwat is neither an intellectual or thinker, nor a historian, social scientist, or politician. He has degree in veterinary sciences and animal husbandry. He gave up a postgraduate course in veterinary sciences to become a pracharak (full-time promoter/worker) of the RSS towards the end of 1975, and was only exposed to the RSS ideology which seems to informs his world-view.

His first big assignment in the RSS, moreover, was of all-India ‘Sharirik Pramukh’ or in-charge of physical training — building physical muscle rather than exercising the intellect.

Bhagwat has in effect been thrust into the position of the intellectual and ideological head of the RSS by circumstances that are hardly public, given the fact that the RSS functions much like a secret society. The strictly hierarchical organisation he runs is unaccountable to anyone. It is a virtually closed and self-selecting institution that has taken upon itself the task of running Hindu society. The RSS chief behaves as if he were the Pope and Nagpur the Vatican of Hinduism.

Conventionally, the head of the RSS — the Sarsanghchalak — made only one major public statement a year, on the occasion of Dusshera at the RSS headquarters in Nagpur. It was viewed as setting the annual agenda of the organisation.

The RSS chiefs till recently also used to keep a relatively low profile. Bhagwat, however, has taken his role to another level — issuing almost a sermon a day. By doing so, he has undermined his position — from being exclusive and unusual, his statements have been reduced to commonplace and routine.

The disproportionate publicity and column inches that Bhagwat’s half-baked ideas get is because the political arm of the RSS, the BJP, happens to be in power. The oxygen of publicity incites Bhagwat to further expound on all sorts of issues.

One can be fairly certain that neither Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor his government’s ministers go to Bhagwat for day-to-day advice.

However, his statements create anxiety among Hindutva activists who find him dishing out advice contrary to their ideological training and beliefs. More so, when they see their mascot Modi’s picture, across the media presenting a ceremonial ‘chadar’ through one of his ministers, in respectful obeisance to the mausoleum of Sufi Muslim mystic, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, at Ajmer Sharif.

Further, Modi who once said that unruly elements "can be identified by their clothes" (read Muslims), subsequently sent his foreign secretary to negotiate terms of co-operation with a Taliban leader recognisable a mile off by his clothes — Amir Khan Muttaqi, foreign minister of Afghanistan. Add to this BJP leaders’ claims that their government at the Centre has done more for Muslims than any other party whereas the Congress has only “cheated” them. Hindutva’s core constituency may be left wondering: which party is ‘appeasing minorities’?

The Modi government may need to project itself globally as an inclusive and non-discriminatory government, even if the statements seem to conflict with its electoral and ideological compulsions of religious polarisation. Hence the overtures to Sufi saints and even Pasmanda or backward class Muslims.

The outreach to the Taliban administration is also aimed at taking on a common adversary Pakistan and containing China’s sphere of influence. It may be no accident that India chose to condemn Pakistan’s December 24 airstrike against Afghanistan almost two weeks later on the day that outgoing US National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan was in India. Geopolitics seems to be at play in India making formal diplomatic overtures to the Taliban on January 8, two days after the Sullivan visit.

However, Bhagwat’s blow hot and cold shenanigans seem to be a result of a self-assumed role as oracle of the Hindu community. Hindutva militants’ are unlikely to forgo their agenda to ‘discover’ shivlings and remnants of temple architecture under mosques. Nor will a majority of Indians accept the proposed shift of India’s day of Independence.

The Congress and the Opposition may engage with him polemically but for the rest Bhagwat is better ignored.

(Bharat Bhushan is a New Delhi-based journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.