New Delhi: Just two weeks after Mohan Bhagwat claimed that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) could assemble its cadres to fight much faster than the Indian army could in a situation of war, the Sangh parivar chief offered more gems on Sunday. He has now urged the whole of India to join his organisation.

“Just one organisation is not enough to complete the entire task. The whole of (Indian) society should join the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. There’s no other option,” he said.

Bhagwat further stated that Hindus need to unite since India is their responsibility and if the country did not do well, Hindus would be questioned. According to the RSS leader, doing so is necessary for bringing a collective change to the society, Telegraph reported.

Speaking at the 25th Rashtroday Samagam (Nation-Awakening Conclave) in Meerut in western Uttar Pradesh, Bhagwat said: “All Hindus are one, say with pride we’re one. Hindus must unite, this is our duty.” Further stressing that if the country remains united, “we can cut through a lot of barriers,” the RSS chief added, “If we don’t remain united, the whole world can take advantage of that.”

The gathering on Sunday was apparently the 93-year-old RSS’s biggest ever congregation.

This, however, is not the first time that Bhagwat has urged India’s Hindus to come together. In mid-December, he asserted that the meaning of Hindutva is to unite all communities, adding that anyone living in the country is automatically a Hindu. “The Muslims in India are also Hindus,” the RSS chief had stated. Reiterating this on Sunday, Bhagwat stated: “Whoever believes that ‘Bharat Mata’ is his mother is an Indian and a Hindu. But some people don’t realise this.”

According to an Indian Express report, the Sangh chief also claimed that hardline Hindutva stands for commitment to truth and commitment to ahimsa (non-violence). “When we become hardliners we will celebrate diversity more,” he said before cautioning: “But the world has a rule that it listens to good things only when there is a power standing behind them.”

Bhagwat, praising the RSS workers, said on Sunday that more than 1,70,000 volunteers are doing social service and they are willing to lay down their lives in the service of the nation. BJP’s ideological parent, the Sangh parivar functionaries have been integral to the party’s victory in several states and at the centre.

According to Telegraph, the RSS chief had held a series of meetings with Sangh and BJP members in Varanasi between February 15 and 21 and in Agra between February 21 and 24. The BJP-led state’s chief minister, Adityanath, who will soon complete one year in the stated, met with Bhagwat for about an hour in Agra last week.

A source told the daily that several Sangh cadres were looking to back away from the upcoming general election campaign citing the “arrogance” of the party’s ministers and that the Sangh chief was “persuading them to do their assigned jobs without expecting anything in return”.

In his speech, Bhagwat asserted that being a Sangh cadre meant “attending the shakha and working selflessly for the organisation”. A shakha is a gathering of the members of a local Sangh unit.

Though the RSS more often than not claims to be nothing more than a socio-cultural organisation, the organisation’s website is explicit about its core political/ideological mission. For instance, in its section on RSS vision, the website quotes the words of its founder K.B. Hedgewar.

“The Hindu culture is the life-breath of Hindusthan. It is therefore clear that if Hindusthan is to be protected, we should first nourish the Hindu culture. If the Hindu culture perishes in Hindustan itself, and if the Hindu society ceases to exist, it will hardly be appropriate to refer to the mere geographical entity that remains as Hindusthan. Mere geographical lumps do not make a nation. The entire society should be in such a vigilant and organized condition that no one would dare to cast an evil eye on any of our points of honour,” is how Hedgewar explained the RSS’s mission.

(With agency inputs)