Swami Suvirananda, general secretary of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, responded at a media conference to questions on the Prime Minister’s speech.

In his introductory speech, Swami Suvirananda had described Narendra Modi as “one of the best Prime Ministers of our country”.

The following are excerpts from the media conference that took place after Modi had left Belur Math:

Q: Your reaction to the Prime Minister referring to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and Pakistan in his speech?

Swami Suvirananda: We don’t want to comment on this because we have left our families to respond to an eternal call. Things that you are referring to must have been said responding to an ephemeral call. We don’t respond to an ephemeral call. We don’t respond to a worldly call. We have left our homes to respond to an eternal call. Something that is called Shaswata Chirantan Ahabaan. We believe that the only objective of human life is to realise God. This is our motto. We are living with this belief. We will leave this world as well with this belief.

Q: Has the political speech caused any embarrassment for Belur Math?

Swami Suvirananda: He has come to Belur Math. It is like the return of the son of the soil to his home. But he is our Prime Minister and our honoured guest. It is a matter of pride for any organisation that a Prime Minister of 120 crore people says that I want to go to that institution and want to spend the night there. If he says something, the host should not say anything negative on the content of his speech. This is the tradition of India.

Q: Was it a politically loaded speech?

Swami Suvirananda: When you have a guest, Atithi Devo Bhava is the Indian culture and you must extend all kinds of courtesies and decencies to him…. And if something you feel ought not have been told, the onus lies with the person who tells it…. By no logic does the onus lie with the person who plays the host.

We are strictly an apolitical organisation. The Ramakrishna order is an apolitical organisation. It’s the mandate of Ramakrishna to remain apolitical. Number 1.

Number 2, we are apolitical to the extent that our monks do not vote.

Number 3, we are inclusive as an organisation. This is the only organisation in the world, only order in the world, which has monks from Hindu sects, which has monks from Islam, Islamic people from Iran and Iraq. Ours is the only organisation and order of monks in the world which also has Christian monks, hundreds in numbers, which has Buddhist monks. What more inclusiveness do you want? And we live like brothers, more brotherly than the brothers born of the same parents. What more inclusiveness do you want from us? We are saffron already, but that does not give you the connotation of any political flavour. It does not in any way give the message of any political connotation. We are above politics. You must be seeing that our presence in Belur is for more than 120 years now.