RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat addressing the World Hindu Congress in Chicago Illinois (Source: RSS/ Facebook)
Saying that Hindus have suffered for “thousands of years” and they “never come together”, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said that even a “lion, if he is alone”, can be destroyed by “wild dogs”.
Speaking at the World Hindu Congress in Chicago Friday, Bhagwat also said that the Hindu community has no aspiration of dominance and will only prosper when it works together as a society.
“Coming together of Hindus itself is a difficult thing. In the initial days of our work, when our karyakartas used to go and talk to Hindu eminences about organising the Hindus. They used to say sher kabhi jhund mein nahi chalta (a lion never travels in a pack). But even that lion, that Royal Bengal Tiger, king of his own jungle, if he is alone, wild dogs together can invade and destroy him,” he said.
Bhagwat also said that Hindu society has the most meritorious persons in every aspect of life, “but they never come together, never stay together, they never work together.”
At the World Hindu Congress, organised on the theme drawn from the Mahabharat, ‘Think Collectively, Act Valiantly,’ Bhagwat highlighted the need for Hindus to work together. He said in Hindu dharma, even a pest is not killed, but controlled.
“Hindus don’t live to oppose anybody. We even allow the pests to live. There are people who may oppose us. You have to tackle them without harming them,” Bhagwat said.
According to Bhagwat, the Hindu community has no aspiration of dominance and will only prosper when it works together as a society. “We have to learn to work together, separately… For that we take initiative, if we enlist all good meaning people, talk to them about need of the hour, need of the time, duty of Hindu society, and the Hinduness of every one of us,” he said. “Hinduness does not mean any mode of worship or subscribing to any God. Think about the absolute truth.”
Bhagwat said a sense of idealism is good and described himself not as “anti-modern”, but as “pro-future”. “You call me anti-modern, I call myself pro-future. At the same time, we are ancient as well as post-modern. What humanity will have to think twenty years after, we are thinking today. We have to come together and stay together,” he said.
He said one of the key values to bring the whole world into a team is to control ego and learn to accept consensus. “For example, Lord Krishna and Yudhishtra never contradicted each other,” Bhagwat said. In this context, he alluded to the war and politics in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, and said politics cannot be conducted like a meditation session, and it should be politics. “To work together, we have to accept the consensus. We are in a position to work together,” he said.
Further, he said that Hindus have been suffering for thousands of years because they forgot to practice its basic principles and spiritualism. “Nothing is untouchable, everything Hindus must have their endeavour, their contribution in that, their say in that. Hindu is a dharma, so what Mr Anupam Kher was doing here, he is a cinema actor. Cinema is part and parcel of life, we must have Hindutva there also,” he said. Kher was also a speaker at the World Hindu Congress.
“We will work together, there will be so many Hindu organisation, so many individual, taking along everyone with us. Then we have to adjust our opinions and that is the biggest thing.” Bhagwat said.