An attempt to hardsell RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s annual Vijaya Dashami speech, coming against the backdrop of his outreach towards Muslims, is part of a deliberate push by the BJP’s parent outfit to prevent its identity from being eclipsed by the domineering Modi brand, sources have said.
Ideologically, the RSS abhors the personality cult of Narendra Modi but finds itself helpless in restraining one of its own as his government has been delivering on multiple pet themes of the core Hindutva agenda that the Sangh has been pursuing for decades, RSS insiders said.
The RSS has been known to work silently and avoid publicity but in recent times it seems to have chosen to follow somewhat in the footsteps of Modi by seeking to amplify its activities. The media department of the RSS has turned unusually active in pushing the activities of the organisation, particularly that of Bhagwat.
Apart from an official Twitter handle @RSSorg, another handle — @friendsofrss, “an independent initiative by Sawayamsevaks” — regularly tweets the activities of the Sangh.
Bhagwat’s Vijaya Dashami speech, termed as an “ideological statement”, was put out on Wednesday in several tweets. The Hindi version, along with the English translation of the speech, and footage were promptly sent to reporters.
“Modiji is one of us. He was a pracharak (RSS propagandist) before he moved on to active politics. We have no complaints against him but at the same time we want to assert the importance of the Sangh,” an RSS pracharak said.
Bhagwat’s recent meeting with members of the Muslim community, followed by his visit to a mosque and a madrasa in Delhi, came as demonstrative efforts by the Sangh chief to underline its political interventions. Officially, the Sangh claims to be a cultural organisation.
The RSS feels that Bhagwat’s meeting with the Muslim community members, who included former chief election commissioner S.Y. Quarishi and former Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung, served well in underlining the importance of the organisation in managing the current dispensation.
“The choice of the Muslim intellectuals to seek a meeting with Sarsanghchalakji went on to underline that the RSS was the parent organisation,” an RSS leader claimed. The members of the Muslim community had approached Bhagwat to air their concerns over the rising atmosphere of hate and fear among the minority community, an issue that comes under the ambit of the government.
After this meeting, Bhagwat went to a mosque in Delhi to meet Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, the head of the All India Imam Organisation, and then drove to a madrasa to interact with the students. This was the first visit by a Sangh chief to a mosque.
Although the RSS sought to claim that Bhagwat did not go to a mosque but to the office of Ilyasi located on the premises of a mosque, the choice of the venue was seen as a significant messaging to assert the pre-eminence of the RSS.
RSS insiders said that Bhagwat’s outreach towards the Muslim community should not be seen as a separate activity but as a part of a strategy crafted at the top in discussion with the BJP leadership.
They claimed that Modi’s appeal to party leaders at the BJP national executive in Hyderabad recently to reach out to the backward sections among Muslims was a follow-up of the feedback from the RSS.
“Our frontal outfits on the ground have been working for a long time to woo the pasmanda (the backward sections) Muslims, who have benefited from the welfare schemes of the Modi government,” an RSS leader said.
He hinted at a strategy to divide the Muslim community to minimise its strength in influencing electoral outcomes. “With Bhagwat’s outreach, the message has gone out that the move to engage with the Muslim community is being driven by the RSS,” the leader added.
