‘Bharat’s destiny is to make world realise unity in diversity’: Mohan Bhagwat at New York event

“For Bharat, this unity and diversity are part of the DNA,” he said. “Diversity has to be celebrated, has to be respected, has to be accepted. And at the same time, we must keep in mind this feeling of oneness. This is a real feeling.”

The event, organised by the AHEAD Forum as part of the RSS’s centenary-year global outreach, came amid a controversy in New York over the programme. Mayor Zohran Mamdani had said earlier this week that he did not support the RSS event, describing it as part of a movement he said was based on an “exclusionary vision” and questioning its compatibility with the pluralistic and secular India he had grown up with.

“I don’t support the rally, but I don’t know if the city has any jurisdiction on canceling a private event,” Mamdani had said.

The controversy had also drawn interfaith and civil rights groups, including Hindus for Human Rights, the Indian American Muslim Council and the Interfaith Centre of New York, which held a press conference outside City Hall calling for the Madison Square Garden programme to be cancelled.

Against this backdrop, Bhagwat’s address was an extended exposition of the RSS’s idea of India and its civilisational role. While the gathering was held at one of New York’s most iconic venues, the audience was largely made up of members of the Indian diaspora.

Bhagwat said the idea of oneness was not merely philosophical but had implications for how human beings treated one another. Asking the audience to imagine eating a meal while a hungry person watched them, he said a human being would find it difficult to continue eating because of the instinctive recognition of another person’s suffering.

“You will not be able to do it. Because we are human beings,” he said.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in New York on Sunday. (PTI)

He contrasted two approaches — “live and let live” and “live and let on those live who obey us”. Those who protected only people who obeyed them were “rakshasas”, he said, while those who cared for others irrespective of whether they were useful or obedient represented the “devas”.

Bhagwat said India’s civilisational understanding was that humanity was connected through the atman, like beads woven into a single thread. Differences of body, clothing and modes of worship, he said, did not alter this underlying unity.

“It tells us that you appear different but you are not. Because all these differences will fade. Your body will die, but something lives permanently. We belong to each other,” he said.

It was this understanding, he said, that India’s ancestors had sought to give to the world. They had organised the people living “south of Himalayas up to the sea” into a nation with the task of communicating this knowledge to the world.

“That is the mission Bharat has to accomplish. Not be preaching, but by practice. That is the destiny of Bharat,” he said.

Addressing the Indian diaspora, Bhagwat also said their first responsibility was towards the US, which he described as their “karmabhoomi”. If they wanted to do something for India, he said, they should first fulfil their duties towards the country where they lived.

Bhagwat said Indians abroad should live by the values they had received from India. “We take from the world and so we have to give back. How much we earn is not important. How much we distribute is,” he said.

He also spoke about humanity’s relationship with nature, citing historian Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens to argue that human beings’ rise to the top of the food chain had come at the cost of other species.

“Human being being the most intelligent and with the ego of being the master of this Srishti … has a duty to sustain others. We cannot merely let live. We have to help others live,” he said.

Bhagwat said India’s civilisational tradition did not call for the destruction of enemies. Instead, he said, the appropriate response to wickedness was to wish that the “wicked mindset” went away rather than pray for the destruction of the person.

“Even our enemies and we are one,” he said, describing enmity as “a man made thing” arising from different circumstances and situations.