Has the RSS had a change of heart? No, says Shashi Tharoor.

Three one-hour lectures by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at Delhi’s Vigyan Bhavan this week, where his organisation held a conclave on the ‘Future of Bharat: An RSS Perspective’, have led many to wonder whether the RSS has modified its views on some of the key positions with which it has long been identified.

In fact, it does appear that during his lectures, the RSS sarsangchalak explained the Sangh position on some issues in a manner that distanced it from the stand associated with his predecessors, notably the RSS’ longest-serving head, M.S. Golwalkar, who led the organisation from 1940 to 1973 and has remained, even in death, its principal ideologue.

For instance, the RSS has long held the belief that the Constitution of India is fundamentally flawed: first, because it is full of imported Western ideas, written by Anglophone lawyers in the wrong language; and second, because it rests on a dangerously flawed premise, that of territorial nationalism. The Constitution, Sangh thinkers from Golwalkar to Deendayal Upadhyaya have consistently argued, wrongly defines the nation as a territory called India and all the people on it, whereas a nation is not a territory but a people – in this case, the Hindu people. The RSS has therefore strongly taken the position that the Constitution must be rewritten to create a Hindu Rashtra.

This week, Mohan Bhagwat seemed to abandon this long-held view. The Constitution, he declared in Delhi, is no longer such a flawed document. “The RSS accepts the Constitution. There is not even one example in which the RSS has done anything against the Constitution,” Bhagwat declared. “The Constitution is the consensus of our country. Following the Constitution is everyone’s duty,” he added.

From anyone else, that would be a mere statement of the obvious; coming from Bhagwat, it seems an earth-shaking affirmation.  What about Hindu Rashtra? Bhagwat did not disavow the term; he merely redefined it. “Hindu Rashtra,” he explained, “does not mean it has no place for Muslims. The day it is said that Muslims are unwanted here, the concept of Hindutva will cease to exist”.

Many in the RSS had held the view that the basis of Indian nationhood was Hinduism. This, some averred, did not exclude people of other religious affiliations; they merely had to acknowledge they were, at their core, Hindus too. “Some people know they are Hindus but they are not willing to accept it because of political correctness,” Bhagwat said. “According to us, this entire society is a Hindu society.”

From this, Bhagwat went on to argue that no exclusion of any minority group was intended. “Hum log to sarwalog-yukt Bharat waale log hain, mukt wale nahin,” he said in an uncharacteristic paean to inclusiveness. Bhagwat explained that India’s diversity – linguistic, social, cultural and religious – was inescapable. The idea was to celebrate this diversity and for the RSS to be the thread that tied together the different pearls in the Indian necklace.

If such statements were not a repudiation of much that the RSS had stood for over the previous nine decades, Bhagwat rubbed it in by scarcely bothering to mention Golwalkar, while scattering various other names through his three hours of lectures. Indeed, Golwalkar only came up in the context of a startling admission that the RSS had censored the inflammatory ideas of its erstwhile leader: “As far as Bunch of Thoughts goes,” said Bhagwat, referring to Golwalkar’s classic, a sort of RSS Little Red Book, “every statement carries a context of time and circumstance… his enduring thoughts are in a popular edition in which we have removed all remarks that have a temporary context and retained those that will endure for ages.” This editing out of ideas the RSS no longer wishes to defend is the clearest change of position imaginable. Asked about Golwalkar’s view that Muslims were “the enemy”, Bhagwat disarmingly explained that in the newly reissued and censored Bunch of Thoughts, “You won’t find the (Muslim-is-an-enemy) remark there.”

The omission of Golwalkar’s thoughts from the RSS chief’s lectures and the announcement of a censored version of Golwalkar’s book are arguably a major public signal that the RSS has been rethinking its stand on some of the key issues that have placed it beyond the pale for so many secularists and liberals.

For the RSS, India’s national culture is Hindu religious culture, and its idea of nationalism cloaks

Source: https://theprint.in/opinion/mohan-bhagwat-still-sees-other-faiths-as-inferior-to-his-own-shashi-thar