RSS Mohan Bhagwat (IMAGE: X)
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat didn’t mince words on Sunday when he spoke about the tough times Hindus are facing in Bangladesh.
If Bangladesh’s Hindu community chooses to stand up and defend their rights, Bhagwat said, Hindus worldwide will back them.
“There are about 1.25 crore Hindus in Bangladesh. If they decide to stay and fight, every Hindu around the world will support them,” Bhagwat told the audience in Mumbai during the second day of an RSS lecture series.
He was speaking at Vyakhyanmala, a two-day event called ‘100 Years of Sangh Journey: New Horizons,’ held at the Nehru Centre in Worli to mark the RSS centenary.
Lately, Bangladesh has seen a wave of mob violence against minorities, especially Hindus. This unrest picked up after anti-India student leader Sharif Osman Hadi died, and things really boiled over following exiled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, which happened after the so-called ‘July Uprising’ led by students on August 5, 2024.
Amid all this chaos, violent mobs have gone after Hindu citizens businessmen, labourers, students killing several people. What started as street protests quickly turned into organised attacks on minorities.
Switching gears to India, Bhagwat pointed out that past governments hadn’t done much to address changes in the country’s population. He blamed this on birth rates and illegal immigration. “Earlier, the government didn’t do enough on population changes. Birth rate and illegal immigration are the reasons. Now that the government has started taking action, it will succeed,” he said.
He sounded confident about India’s future. “India can’t be broken now. Anyone who tries to break India will break themselves,” he insisted.
On the question of funding, Bhagwat said the RSS doesn’t depend on big corporations or institutions. “People wonder where RSS gets its funds. We raise money from our own workers. When we travel, we ask for tiffin instead of buying food, and we stay at workers’ homes not hotels,” he explained.
When it comes to leadership and caste, Bhagwat made it clear that the RSS doesn’t discriminate. “Anyone from any caste can become RSS chief. SC-ST is no disqualification, Brahmin is no qualification. We work for all castes, even though RSS started with Brahmins,” he said.
Talking about their work in Muslim-majority areas, Bhagwat said the Sangh avoids fights. “We handle challenges in Muslim areas by not reacting. They might use bad language, but we don’t respond. That keeps conflict from growing,” he explained.
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