Perceptions matter. However big or small an entity is, its essential nature determines how it gathers friends, its place under the sun. The three-day RSS conclave at Vigyan Bhawan—otherwise a venue for official conferences—was pegged as a session for clarification. An open ventilation of doubts regarding what the Sangh really stands for, oriented towards erasing or alleviating them.
An outreach to those who may see it in a malevolent light, a nod at its many critics. Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat took it upon himself to proffer a retuned Hindutva worldview. His most striking statement was that the Sangh does not seek a Hindu rashtra without Muslims, because that would defeat the idea of Hindutva. Also the averment that the RSS respects the Constitution, even its Preamble, as an emblem of the freedom the country had earned after a struggle. In that struggle, he acknowledged that the Congress played a crucial role and threw up extraordinary leaders.
He also sought to mitigate doubts on the RSS’s imputed ambivalence towards the tricolour, on how it instead gave precedence to the bhagwa dhaj. That was a lot of ground covered. But who was the intended audience? As much as critics, it could have been those within its loose, unmarked ambit of influence—those who seem to have taken the BJP’s overwhelming mandate in 2014 as a licence to attack anyone beyond the pale, anyone who dares disagree, the minorities, women, Dalits, the vulnerable groups.
Theirs has been a bitter harvest—perpetrators of crime are feted, and collective anxiety is great. In this light, it’s indeed a balmy message in times of social strife and civic distress—at face value, a message from an elder to political delinquents not to violate maryada. Does it also offer signs of an internal evolution? Quite some nuance would be called for before adjudicating on that. Bhagwat held up tokens of change, but India needs more than semantic play of emphases. For, his solution is still for everyone to affirm to a Hindu identity. A convergence of diversity in that unity, not the celebration of diversity itself.