One has to respect every entity, every society, every identity, every individual

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RSS Sarkaryavah Shri Mohan Bhagwat in Shillong India has to give a unifying principle—Mohan Bhagwat

“The RSS is helping everything and everyone who tries to protect his own identity and loves other identities at the same time. RSS is always with all those efforts. The concept of one identity being against other identity itself is not our concept. All identities live together peacefully with some discipline, with good intensions. They can help each other and humanity in general. That sort of society has to be created first, which will demonstrate before the world that we are Bharatiya, we have so many languages, so many castes and creeds and yet we live in peace and harmony,” said RSS Sarkaryavah Shri Mohan Bhagwat. He was addressing a gathering of eminent people at Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, on December 24.

Shri Bhagwat said we all are inheritors of the glorious hoary culture. “Though the world calls it a Hindu culture, it is not a monopoly of the Hindus, it is for all human beings. It is actually manavata (humanitarian view of life). We might have all the power in the world but we are not to use it to crush the smaller or poorer nations. We are creating a world order in such a way that all nations can benefit from it and every nation becomes fit to contribute for good of the humanity. This view itself is our national view and that is why though we profess to organise Hindus we have termed our organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh because it is our nationality. The term Hindu does not apply to any religion or particular people living in particular land. The term applies to this ancient glorious tradition, to this world-view. This will become a panacea for the whole world in modern times and therefore, I exhort you all to join hands in this endeavour and become instrumental in this yeomen and God given responsibility of bringing peace and sanity in the world and not to remain as silent spectators,” he added.

Shri Bhagwat quoted a Vedic shloka—Janam Vibhrati Bahudha Vibhajasam, nana Dharmanam Prithavim Yathoukasam, which means people of many languages and many creeds live together on this earth. “That is the gist of Hindu tradition—living together with each other, living together with nature and realising the unifying principle. That is the gift Bharat has to give to the world—a unifying principle—perceiving the same in our own way of recognising God and at the same time respecting others of their ways but never converting one to another faith. The conversion is then unnecessary. If it is the same truth I am perceiving in my way and you are preserving in your way then what is the need of conversion. If there is no conversion, there is no irritation and there is then peace. This is what the world needs and this is our God has given duty to contribute this gift to the human race, to the world but we have to prepare ourselves. We cannot give to the world we do not have. We have to earn our tradition, earn our world view, we have to shape our life according to that. We have to unite and we have to create an example of model life in our nation, first in Bharat. For that we have to prepare each individual and unite each individual together so that there will be atmosphere of striving for common good of humanity for world peace. A new world order that various leaders of humanity dream is something of this kind but they cannot outline it exactly because they don’t have that heritage, the tradition that is bestowed upon us. It is our duty to expound it for the benefit of world and we should be fit for that,” he added.

Talking about diversity he said diversity is a must in this world but diversity is there to realise the indebt unity—there is unity in diversity and if you realise that then unity is possible with diversity and unity must speak diversity. “One has to respect every entity, every society, every identity, every individual—that is a fact. Everybody has to be respected—everything is created by God, nothing should be destroyed. We can lead life without conflict. We can progress and at the same time preserve the nature. We can propagate the natural surroundings around and at the same time progress can be achieved. This is the tradition of our land—Bharat. This is not a theory,” he added.

He further said the same truth has been expounded in every walk of life, in every type of society in this world. Once whole life was based on this principle and at that time all societies/communities in the world lived together in peace, harmony and satisfaction at that time and yet progressed. “We have to translate this according to modern times and prepare a model but for that we have to know our heritage, we have to know our ancestors, we have to know our traditions. We have to find a way as to how to express them in modern living so we have to analyse all this. We have to take to live like this,” he said. (FOC)