By Sushil Kutty
The question looms, what to do with RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat and his subtle form of dictatorship? The RSS Chief with the glowing cheeks is not a pest. Far from being that, Bhagwat is a persistent scratch under the collar, somebody who wants Indians, especially the Hindus, to bend to his will, change themselves to his way of leading life, thrust down their throats.
And Mohan Bhagwat doesn’t want anybody Hindu to wear the English collar. Maybe the days of the Freedom Struggle haunt him. The RSS is allegedly guilty of associating with the British when the rest of the India was fighting the British collar!
Does Mohan Bhagwat want to make amends? The ‘collar’ is symbolic of capitulation and Mohan Bhagwat has had a long reign at the top of the RSS. Have there been moments when he felt embarrassed at the past decisions of the RSS? The RSS, too, cannot be without “warts and all” though it has largely succeeded in hiding the warts behind layers of innuendo and nationalistic fervour.
The RSS is always overstating its “Rashtravad” credentials. To this extent, ‘Rashtravad’ has become the Holy Grail for the entire ‘Sangh Parivar’. For example, out of respect to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP replaced Yogi Adityanath’s ‘Batenge to katenge’ with Prime Minister Modi’s ‘Parivarvad Nahi, Rashtravad’ in the Milkipur bypoll.
There are many ‘rashtravadi’ in the BJP and the ‘Sangh Parivar’ who keep preaching ‘Rashtravad’ to Indians and at the head of the heap is Mohan Bhagwat, giving company to the Republic’s one and only “journalist-anchor” who says his ‘Rashtravad’ ages back his days in the “Kendriya Vidyalaya” of several army cantonments.
Bhagwat is a travelogue! Mohan Bhagwat went all the way to the backwaters of Kerala to put the final touches on finishing off the tyranny of the “English Collar.” And Bhagwat doesn’t trust the Muslim of India to do his bidding, his entire focus was on the Hindu, whether the Hindu liked this or not.
“Hindus must wear traditional clothing when they attend public events, and should not speak English,” Mohan Bhagwat said while inaugurating the ‘Hindu Unity Conference’ at the annual ‘Cherukolpuzha Hindu Convention’ on the banks of the ‘Pampa’ in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district. “Dharma” is the soul of Hinduism and everyone should practice it individually.”
Mohan Bhagwat knows very well the Hindus’ Achilles Heel, pithily put across by Yogi Adityanath in ‘Batenge Toh Katenge’, the Hindu consolidation Bhagwat craves: “Every household should gather at least once a week to pray or discuss if their current lifestyle is in line with tradition.”
The RSS Chief launched a book on Sree Narayana Guru, a social reformer of Kerala. Bhagwat wants Hindu society to unite but can he do this by asking the Hindu to be a frog, which cannot jump high enough to scale free of the well’s confines? Bhagwat wants the Hindu to unite but Bhagwat is asking Hindus to forget “diversity” and “plurality”.
Mohan Bhagwat wants Hindus to be robots like in actor Will Smith’s “I, Robot”, lookalikes and think-alikes, machines on skates going round and round the ice-rink, puppets on Mohan Bhagwat’s strings, dancing to Bhagwat’s tunes.
Bhagwat’s and the RSS’ larger game is accomplishing the “Ghar Wapsi” of millions and millions of Muslims who converted to Islam. Bhagwat is convinced, like the circumstances of his own birth, that India’s Muslims share the same ‘dna’ with the Hindus. Bhagwat will go to any extent to accomplish the “homecoming” including doing away with diversity.
“The Hindu must unite for survival and strengthen the Hindu community, but at the same time, strengthening has its own fears. The strength, the way it’s used is important. It shouldn’t harm anyone else,” says Bhagwat. In Kerala, Mohan Bhagwat was speaking to the most unresponsive set of Indians, whether Muslim, Christian or Hindu Malayalis.
Only a complete ignoramus on ‘Kerala Matters’ will have advised Kerala Hindus to “wear traditional clothing when they attend public events, to not to speak English, to only eat local food.” Bhagwat is unaware that “Beef Fry” is all Kerala’s “delicacy.” Mohan Bhagwat was totally out of sync with the Kerala Way of Life!
The Malayali Hindu is the last Hindu on Earth who will listen to Hindu reasoning of the kind Mohan Bhagwat reasons with and wastes time preaching. “We should also ponder if the language we speak, the places we travel to, and our clothes are aligned with tradition. We should travel to places in our own localities and visit our own brothers who need help. We should not speak English and we should eat our local cuisine…We should stick to our own traditional clothing styles, not western outfits.” Imagine!
Bhagwat’s thinking is a post-2014 phenomenon. There are many people who believe they can dictate a way of life to the people of India and leading this pack is the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, who also seems to believe that he can dictate the kind of life Indians should lead.
Modi, by dint of his position, probably has a right to intervene. But shouldn’t Modi and Bhagwat keep their distance for the simple reason that there are too many diverse sets of Indians and not even a Prime Minister has the mandate to impose his will and his ways on the people of India.
Prime Minister Modi takes advantage of situations to make people, without them realizing, to bend to his will, using, to the full, the clout and spread of a media that kowtows to him. At the Mahakumbh tens of lakhs of “zombies” stood on the Sangam-bank and watched mesmerized Modi going through the motions of talking to Hindu gods, and Hindu goddesses.
It was mesmerizing. It was hypnotic! Modi’s crowd-pulling prowess at its zenith, in land and on water. The complete capitulation of a people to one man. Commanding even people watching the scene unfold on TV sets. This wasn’t a people’s representative. This was a dictator-like figure, doing his own ‘I, Robot’. RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are cut of the same sackcloth. (IPA Service)
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