RSS and the Idea of Instruction

History is  humanity’s perpetual  memoir whose plot carries a subtext of irony. The indignation of New York’s anti-Semitic mayor Zohran Mamdani towards Mohan Madhukar Bhagwat, the sixth and current Sarsanghchalak of the RSS addressing Indian-Americans is imbued with deep irony. This resentment of Mamdani, a practising Muslim, duplicated a profound dislike of the RSS, which the global liberal-left apparatus casts as the embodiment of exclusion. Bhagawat’s New York script does not fit into this framework: he declared any Hindu who believes Muslims are not Indians, are not Hindus. This is bound to generate discomfort in India’s opposing ideologies. His formulation is not bound to be accepted by every BJP politician, Hindutva activist, or voices invoking Hindu nationalism. Nor will it convince career wackadoodles that Bhagawat was serious. Across decades, the Congress and much of the Indian Left have treated the RSS less as an organisation and more of a vision synonymous with majoritarianism, anti-Muslim animus and the Hindu Rashtra vision which is opposed to the constitutional secularism of the country’s Nehruvian inheritance.

            But India persists in its indefinite complexity, as most civilisations tend to do. Its tradition carries within itself ideas, practices, and philosophical positions that modern sensibilities find both magnificent and troubling. Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism too have accumulated this paradox. The correct response to history is neither to venerate it uncritically nor to expunge it from textbooks—it is to understand its contradictions with mature discernment. This principle echoes the true significance of Bhagwat’s New York address, which transcends the familiar Congress-RSS polemics that have calcified into ritual. Here gurudakshina enters the picture. Karnataka minister Priyank Kharge’s campaign against the RSS is a relevant test case. There is nothing amiss in demanding that an organisation account for its finances. Yet, the ancient practice of Guru Dakshina was not a fee paid by a student to the guru. The gift of knowledge cannot be reduced to chartered accountancy. When RSS adopted this metaphor in its Guru Dakshina tradition, the symbolic guruship it offered to the Bhagwa Dhwaj flag rather than to an individual was its cultural motif. Tax rules mandate audit of any organisation’s funds. But the intellectual laziness infecting Indian political discourse to critique institutions without understanding their civilisational vocabulary prevents genuine engagement without which the argument of opacity collapses into circularity: the RSS is dangerous because it is exclusionary; Bhagwat says exclusion of Muslims contradicts Hindu principle; therefore, Bhagwat harbours exclusionary intent. This is not reasoning but a pre-decided conclusion looking for supporting evidence. 

            If ‘secular’ Mamdani allows demonstrations by protesters openly chanting “We support Hamas,” and “Globalize the intifada,” shouldn’t he be judged by the identical moral yardstick that defines a Hindu organisation as anti-Muslim? Genuine pluralism cannot function as selective anthropology. The larger irony is that Bhagwat himself did not espouse the chest-thumping nationalism attributed to Hindutva rhetoric. His compelling message from New York did not imitate BJPs populist stance of India as the “Vishwaguru” in the usual bombastic sense. His proposition suggests India itself can be the guru to the world because it is a civilisation that has spent millennia in conversation with itself by arguing about gods and faiths, truth and identity, caste and philosophy, invasion and coexistence and the contradictions these generate. Bhagawat indirectly presents the concept of Vishwaguru as different from definitions by Leftist politicians and activists who have invested in reducing the RSS to nationalist caricature. If India truly aspires to be a viswaguru, it must teach through example. A Hindu India in which Bhagawat can declare publicly that desiring Muslim expulsion negates a citizen’s claim to Hinduism merits serious debate rather than reflexive denunciation. Consider its global implication. If Mamdani’s idea of diversity genuinely aspires to universality, should it not be welcomed rather than be suspect?  Hamas is not just another grievance within the political catalogue. The fanatics who chant support for massacres by its idols are not merely dissenters of Israeli policies. Bhagwat’s formulation that human dignity is universal, and requires protection, and that no group possesses the right to declare entire communities beyond the national identity extends far beyond Hindu-Muslim relations. 

            This column is a neither a tribute to the RSS nor is it a condemnation of the liberal Left. It is a nuanced attempt to reconcile antithetical ideologies of India and Bharat. It does not pursue the liberal projection of Bhagwat as a villain or Zohran Mamdani as a saint, or whether the Congress party can offer additional historical indictments against the RSS. The significant question is, can India truthfully embody the viswaguru role it claims for itself? A guru who speaks only to disciples is merely a preacher. A guru who perpetually teaches himself is an altogether different philosopher, acutely moral and infinitely powerful than the idea itself.