RSS chief Bhagwat’s annual sermon: Said and unsaid?

In his customary annual Vijayadashmi sermon to his adherents, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, spoke on a range of issues from incidents of lynching to the state of the Indian economy while defending the record of the BJP-led Modi government on several fronts.

Bhagwat, emboldened by the return of the BJP to power second time in succession and that too with a huge and improved mandate, made Sangh’s vision of India categorically clear. The vision states that it is Bharat that is Hindustan—a Hindu Rashtra — thereby leaving no scope for confusion either for followers or opponents.

Meanwhile, his address made media headlines on the issue of criminal incidents of lynching in the last few years because the RSS chief chose to belittle the gravity of the gory crime by resorting to semantics, saying it was a western idea and thus alien to Bharat that is India. However, there are significant departures from Sangh’s traditional stand on various other issues of national importance.

Since the words of the RSS chief are taken seriously and treated as gospel truth by all RSS  followers. As this 94 year -old outfit t acts as a mentor to the BJP, it is imperative to take a closer look at the customary address. Bhagwat’s stand on lynching, that created a kind of controversy, reflects an ongoing conflict that appears to have torn him rather than the entire Sangh parivar (family), but at the same time has also created serious dilemmas.

While Bhagwat, on the one hand, sounded and also came across as condemning the crime, saying that “it must be accepted that these tendencies of violence have somehow or the other crossed the limits of law and order and wreaked havoc by eroding mutual relations in society”, but on the other, he was not ready to outrightly condemn the issue. This was because he possibly feared that it may result in the desertion of the hard core Hindutva constituency that may adversely impact the electoral fortunes of the BJP. Therefore, he opted to exit the situation through wordplay and by focusing on the term lynching and declaring it to be non-Indian.

To make his point, Bhagwat seems to have laboured hard when he observed that “words like lynching” are not Indian and went to the extent of referring to a story from the Bible, in which a mob attacking a woman was questioned by Jesus, who asked if there was one among them who had not sinned in life, thus suggesting that violence is not one-sided.

There is more than necessary evidence in his speech that Bhagwat wants to strongly disapprove of the recent trend in which, according to Reuters, 63 cow vigilante attacks had occurred in the country between 2011 and 2017, mostly since Narendra Modi became the prime minister in 2014. But he is unable to do it because it may be interpreted as an admission of guilt.

In any case apart from lynching, Bhagwat dwelt upon the nosediving economy in the country wherein he purposefully held slowing down of the world economy being chiefly responsible for adversely impacting India among other countries. “Many countries including Bharat have to suffer the result of the ongoing global trade war between the US and China”, he stressed so that RSS ordinary workers did not hold the Modi government responsible for the economic downturn.

In his effort to boost the sagging morale of the BJP and Sangh cadres, while tacitly admitting that the poor state of economy, the RSS supremo said “we will definitely come out of this cycle of this so-called recession”. For that he sought to defend the Modi government’s recent announcements for attracting FDI by advising Sangh outfits like c, who are opposed to foreign investments, that the same is necessary to “strengthen the economy, the government is compelled to take steps such as allowing Foreign Direct Investment and disinvestment of industries”.

“The RSS believes in swadeshi”, Bhagwat reassured the Sangh-BJP’s core constituency and made a somersault going back on its own long-standing commitments to defend the Modi government’s policies by saying that “it does not mean divorcing the world since our swadeshi also believes in integrating with the world on our terms”.

In a convoluted manner, Bhagwat sought to redefine swadeshi by trying to convince the adherents that the country “must be self-dependent and then integrate with the global economy” and that there was no cause of worry since “personalities leading our economy are competent enough”.

In the backdrop of the controversy on the proposed education policy of the Modi government whose draft was recently submitted, the Sangh chief while defending the intended step, called for an education system that will “increase self-respect”. Without directly pitching for Hindi, Bhagwat extended support saying that the real education system is one that teaches us to honour our own language.

He also praised the recent Chandrayaan Mission saying that it has earned kudos from the world for showing the courage to land on the Moon’s South Pole, where no nation has ever tried to land. Though the mission did not attain full success as expected, achieving so much in the first attempt was no mean feat.

In short, Bhagwat, unlike in his Vijayadashmi address in 2017 and 2018, did not rap the Modi government for the woes that continue to plague different sectors of economy and did not even mention the unprecedented unemployment.

In fact, the RSS’s top boss emitted positive signals by displaying that there was greater synergy between the BJP, the Modi government and the Sangh family than ever before.

• Domestic Politics and Governance
• National Politics
• India
• Hindu Rashtra
• Mohan Bhagwat
• Narendra Modi
• Swadeshi
• Vijayadashmi Address

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