Talking to Muslim groups to 'erase differences': Bhagwat

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on Saturday called for national unity, describing diversities as decorations.

Addressing the influencers’ dialogue in Bengaluru, as part of the RSS’ four-city programme to disseminate knowledge about the organisation, Bhagwat said the Sangh was talking to different groups of Muslims to “erase differences” and spoke of how in the first war of Independence in 1857, Hindus and Muslims fought on the same side until the British arrived and sowed divisions.

He reiterated that India was a Hindu rashtra and went on to frame the word Hindu in a civilisational rather than a religious context.

“Every person residing in India has common ancestors. Christians and Muslims also have common ancestors as us. Many Christians and Muslims have told me about their gotra. They have preserved that memory,” Sangh chief said, adding that the first Indian saint to utter the word Hindu was Guru Nanak Dev when he was recording the atrocities perpetrated by Babar.

“Guru Nanak Dev was the first Bharatiya saint to utter the word Hindu. He described Babar’s Saidpur massacre and mentioned two words — Muslims to denote those who follow only Allah and Hindus to denote all other groups who believe in respect for all paths and in the philosophy of staying on your path without the need to quarrel,” said the RSS chief.

Bhagwat said Sangh’s goal was to organise the Hindu society as one.

“The whole society has to become RSS. Sangh is the organisation of society not one organisation in the society,” said Bhagwat.

Speaking to influencers —former ISRO chairpersons S Somanath and K Radhakrishnan and senior ISRO scientist V Narayanan, Bhagwat said the reason India was enslaved by Mughals and later the British despite being wealthier than them was because people had forgotten a sense of oneness.

“We were repeatedly conquered by a handful of aggressors...We were wealthy, brave and had to fight them on our turf. Yet we lost. Because we forgot who we are as Bharat,” said Bhagwat.

“We have been one nation for centuries. When we forget who we are, we forget who is ours. We started to treat a section of society worse than animals. We forgot they are our own. Our diversities became divisions. We have to make everyone remember who we are, remove differences and create unity without disturbing diversity,” the RSS chief said.

“The west thinks uniformity is needed for unity. But Indian tradition thinks diversity is a decoration of unity,” he said.