Nagpur: Agitation is natural when a system is flawed, Mohan Bhagwat said on Tuesday, but it has to look for answers, not for political profit. Speaking at the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's Vijayadashami gathering at Reshimbagh ground, the RSS chief closed out the Sangh's centenary year with a warning aimed at the countrywide protests against the Election Commission.
"Experience shows that it is neither the government alone that can resolve all the problems of society, nor is it true that problems can be resolved only through agitations," he said. Solutions, he added, can emerge from society's own participation and from dialogue among its members.
Bhagwat drew the line where a movement turns political. "When a movement becomes a tool of politics, driven by hostility and antagonism towards an individual, a group, or an ideology, forces seeking to undermine Bharat take advantage of the situation," he said. He asked both the administration and protesters to stay within the Constitution and the law, and told officials that steps to keep order must not leave people bitter.
The bigger target was outside India. A "storm has swept in from the West", he said, driven by a "demonic resolve" to destroy all that is decent, auspicious and rooted in cultural and human values. France, Albania, Nepal and Bangladesh, he said, are what such interference looks like. "They want to make similar attempts in Bharat as well. But a change of regime does not change anything," Bhagwat said. Some powers, he claimed, are content to see India develop but not to see it strong enough to challenge their dominance.
He also returned to Vande Mataram, recalling how the song had undone Lord Curzon's partition of Bengal. There should be "no hesitation or objection" to singing it in full, he said. He opened his address with tributes to Sant Ravidas and Swami Shraddhanand.
Among those at the venue were former vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar, Israel's consul general for India's Mid-West region, Yanish Revach, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union minister Nitin Gadkari. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the address "highly inspirational", saying Bhagwat had spoken on national progress, social unity and self-reliance. The Sangh's founder, Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, set it up in Nagpur in 1925.