Home > Profiles > Mohan Bhagwat
Mohan Bhagwat
Mohan Bhagwat is the current sarsanghchalak or the chief of the Hindu supremacist and paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is responsible for organizing many anti-Muslim and anti-Christian massacres in India.
Established in 1925, the RSS (also known as the Sangh) has been banned three times in post-Independence India. The first ban came after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 – the organization was accused of plotting the murder of the national icon.
The RSS has been directly involved in orchestrating anti-Christian and anti-Muslim pogroms and instigating terror attacks as part of a relentless campaign to subvert India’s secular moorings and turn it into a Hindu authoritarian state where minorities are relegated to the status of second-class citizens. Its members and affiliated organizations have been implicated in countless acts of massacres, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, forced conversions and other forms of violence against religious minorities in India. RSS leaders openly declare plans of “wiping off” Christianity and Islam from India and advocate for denying Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism a separate religious identity, and insist that these religions are simply branches of Hinduism.
Though Bhagwat started his career as a veterinarian, within six months, he returned to his RSS-family aristocracy. He became the district pracharak of Akola in Maharashtra. He later worked in Vidharbha and Bihar to build his strong network within the RSS and earned himself the reputation of being easily accessible by the RSS fraternity.
In his quest for a Hindu nation, Bhagwat has repeatedly denied the existence of Muslims in India and has often tried to paint them as Hindus.
“It has been proven that we’re descendants of the same ancestors from the last 40,000 years. People of India have same DNA. Hindu & Musilm are not two groups, there is nothing to unite, they’re already together,” he said.
In a 2013 speech, the RSS sarsanghchalak exposed the misogynist character of the Sangh as he announced that women could be disowned if they violate the contract of marriage. Moreover, he dismissed rapes and sexual crimes against women in rural India and opined that gang rapes happen in some urban belts supposedly of women not following Indian traditions.
He drew flak for his comment that the RSS can raise an army faster than the Indian national army. He said in RSS worker gathering in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur that Sangh could prepare the military within three days, which the Army would do in 6-7 months.
Like other RSS cadres, Bhagwat questioned the workings of Nobel Laureate Mother Teresa in 2015. In sync with RSS’s thoughts towards missionaries, Bhagwat said Mother Teresa’s social work had the ulterior motive of converting Hindus to Christians.
Some of his controversial statements:
“Everyone born in the country is a Hindu – of these some are idol-worshipers and some are not. Even Muslims are Hindus by nationality, they are Muslims by faith only. Just as the English live in England, Americans in America and Germans in Germany, Hindus live in Hindustan”
“Such crimes hardly take place in ‘Bharat’, but they occur frequently in ‘India’. You go to villages and forests of the country and there will be no such incidents of gang-rape or sex crimes. They are prevalent in some urban belts. Besides new legislations, Indian ethos and attitude towards women should be revisited in the context of ancient Indian values.”
“India has no option other than a Hindu society and Hindu society has no option but to behave like a family.”
References:
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/who-is-mohan-bhagwat/article18311643.ece