Ram temple should be built soon, says RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat

NEW DELHI: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on Wednesday said that the saffron fountain-head has discarded chunks of “Bunch of Thoughts” — a compilation of speeches of its former head Guru M S Golwalkar — which was for long the lodestar for the organisation.“Bunch of Thoughts joh paristithi vash boli gai, woh shashwat nahi rahti... Sangh band sangathan nahi hai, samay badalta hai, hamari soch badalti hai, badalne ki permission Dr Hedgewar se milti hai (Bunch of Thoughts is a collection of speeches made in a particular context and cannot be eternally valid. Sangh is not dogmatic. Times change and accordingly, our thoughts transform. Dr Hedgewar, RSS founder, said we were free to adapt to times as they change),” said Bhagwat.He was replying to a question about the conflict between his statement that RSS doesn’t see Muslims as “unwanted” and Golwalkar’s views in “Bunch of Thoughts”, categorising the community along with Christians and Communists as “internal enemies”.Bhagwat said the Sangh acknowledges as valid only those parts of “Bunch of Thoughts” which remain relevant to the current circumstances and have been put together in an in-house publication, “Guruji: Vision and Mission”.Bhagwat’s statement on Golwarkar marks a big public shift in RSS’ stand. Though the Sangh would privately emphasise that “Bunch of Thoughts” was a compilation of speeches made by Golwalkar at different points in time and that the one about “internal enemies” was made in the immediate aftermath of Partition when a communist insurgency raged in Andhra Pradesh , they fought shy, given the continuing reverence for “Guruji”, of repudiating it. “This marks the beginning of a new discourse,” RSS-aligned academic Rakesh Sinha told TOI.“Bhagwat ji has spelt out the new direction for the organisation to follow,” added Sinha, who was recently nominated to Rajya Sabha . In his concluding remarks at the three-day outreach, “Future of India: RSS perspective”, the RSS chief called upon all communities to come close to the Sangh to understand its working. “You need not believe all that I have said during the last three days but I believe firmly that once you understand the Sangh, you will want to be part of it.”“We support reservation as the Constitution provides for it. Reservation should stay till those communities which get the benefits of reservation themselves decide they no longer need it. Reservation is meant to correct the inequalities that crept into our society over the last few centuries. It will take time to correct the situation and we must patiently wait for the right time-Reservation is not the problem, it is the politics of reservation that creates problems,” Bhagwat said answering questions on caste-based reservations.