Explained: Behind the 'bonhomie' between RSS and Muslim leaders

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat’s recent visit to a madrasa and his meeting with the head of an organisation of imams at a mosque in Delhi is being seen as the Sangh Parivar’s latest push to its outreach to the Muslim community. The development comes in the midst of a political controversy over the decision of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in Uttar Pradesh to hold surveys of unrecognised madrasas.

The overture of the RSS, the ideological mentor of the ruling BJP (that has been critical about the functioning of madrasas, and the growing bonhomie between the RSS chief and Muslim leaders in recent months), has triggered speculation that the saffron brigade is softening its stance towards the largest minority. Analysts, however, wonder whether the RSS is shedding its hardliner image and changing its thinking about Muslims or whether it is, after all, mere tokenism.

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It has struck some experts as “duplicitous and double-faced” that the Sangh has increased its Muslim outreach at a time when several contentious issues such as the row over Gyanvapi mosque, the Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura and the Bengaluru Idgah Maidan dispute, among others, have gained momentum.

Why did Bhagwat meet the Imam?

The RSS sarsanghchalak (chief) met the chief imam of All India Imam Organisation (AIIO) Dr Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, who later called the RSS chief ‘rashtrapita’ (the father of the nation), at a mosque in central Delhi’s Kasturba Gandhi Marg. After holding closed-door discussions with Ilyasi, Bhagwat followed it up with a visit to the Madrasa Tajweedul Quran in north Delhi’s Azadpur. Bhagwat was accompanied by senior Sangh functionaries Krishna Gopal, Ram Lal and Indresh Kumar. While the meeting lasted for more than an hour, both sides remained tight-lipped about the agenda, refusing to divulge the details of what transpired in the meeting.

“We had only one intention behind the meeting — to encourage love and harmony, and strengthen the relationship between both communities. Our methods of worship may differ, and so may our religion, but the biggest religion of all is that we are all Indians. He brought the message of love — not just for imams or Muslims, but for all Indians,” Ilyasi, who became the chief imam of AIIO in 2009, said. The AIIO claims to be the “largest Muslim organisation in India,” representing half-a-million imams across three lakh mosques in the country.

“With this visit of Bhagwat, a message should go out that all of us want to work towards strengthening India. For all of us, the country comes first. Our DNA is the same, it is just that our religion and methods of worshipping the god are different,” Ilyasi told the media, echoing the RSS chief’s words. “Dialogues must continue because that is the only way to address misunderstandings and misconceptions about each other. I don’t know about the others, but I believe Bhagwat ji is our rashtrapita and it is in everyone’s interest to keep the dialogue going,” Ilyasi said.

Also read: Mohan Bhagwat meets Jamiat head Madani, discusses host of issues

Sangh functionaries, however, dubbed the meeting as “routine”. Underlining that the RSS chief has been holding discussions with Muslim intellectuals for strengthening communal harmony, RSS prachar pramukh (communications head) Sunil Ambekar said in a statement: “The sarsanghachalak meets people from all walks of life. It is a part of the continuous general samvad (dialogue) process.”

Why that venue?

The meeting between Bhagwat and the Imam at the latter’s residence within the mosque piqued curiosity about the outreach, especially considering the fact that the RSS top boss visited the Imam instead of the other way round. Bhagwat’s mosque visit is not isolated incident; the RSS functionaries themselves have termed it as part of a “systematic outreach,” which has been in motion for the past one year with an aim to “fight Muslim fanatics, separatists and protect the nation.” They have described Bhagwat’s mosque and madrasa visits as a step towards ending “conflicts between communities” and a call to Muslims “to feel and act like Indians”.

Political experts underlined that the Modi government’s “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” slogan and Bhagwat’s “same DNA” statement should be reflected in the actions of the RSS cadre and the fringe Hindutva elements.

What did Bhagwat’s madrasa visit entail?

During his first-ever visit to a madrasa, according to an RSS official accompanying him, Bhagwat interacted with children and heard them reciting the Quran. The children raised the slogans of “Vande Mataram” and “Jai Hind,” the Sangh functionary told a news agency. He said the RSS chief told the children about the need to know more about the country and stressed that while the modes of worship could be different, all religions must be respected.

Bhagwat had a “fruitful interaction” as students at the madrasa asked questions and heard him speak, Ilyasi said. “Some of the students told him that they had only seen him on TV and for them it was a special moment to interact with him. He gave them good advice on how to become good citizens and be able to contribute to nation building,” he said. Curiously, Ilyasi declined to comment on the Uttar Pradesh government’s stance on madrasas and raids at Popular Front of India (PFI) centres across the country on Thursday.

Is there a Bharat Jodo Yatra connect?

Reacting to the Sangh overture, the Congress claimed on Thursday that Bhagwat’s meeting with Ilyasi was due to the impact of the party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra and requested Bhagwat to walk with Rahul Gandhi in uniting the country “with a tricolour in hand’.

Congress media department head Pawan Khera said results of the party’s foot march have become evident in just a few days. Echoing similar sentiments, Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said: “Only 15 days have passed for the Bharat Jodo Yatra and the results are showing. A BJP spokesperson has said ‘Godse Murdabad’ on television. Mohan Bhagwat is going to the house of a member of another religion. Under whose impact is this happening? This is the impact of the Bharat Jodo Yatra,” Vallabh said.

Addressing a public meeting in Ahmedabad, Aaduddin Owaisi, the leader of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), hit out at the BJP and RSS on Saturday (September 24) for “doing new drama” amid the current dispute over surveys of madrasas and their demolition. Owaisi described Bhagwat’s visit to the madrasa as a reflection of the “duality” of the RSS leader.

“BJP-RSS is now doing a new drama. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat went to a madrasa in Delhi but madrasas are being demolished in Assam, and a survey is being done in Uttar Pradesh,” Owaisi told news agencies. The AIMIM chief also slammed the BJP and said, “The BJP doesn’t have anything to show. They will only show Hindus-Muslims fighting with each other.”

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati said she wonders whether the negative attitude of the BJP towards Muslims will change after Bhagwat’s visit to the mosque and madrasa. “After RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat visited mosque/madrassa in Delhi yesterday and met the Ulemas and then got himself called the ‘father of the nation’ and ‘rishi of the nation,’ will there be a change in the negative attitude and behaviour of BJP and its governments towards the Muslim society and their masjid-madrasas?” she wrote on Twitter.

Samajwadi Party (SP) MP Shafiqur Rahman Barq condemned the use of ‘rashtrapita’ for Bhagwat and said the imam chief might have used those words out of fear. “Ilyasi may have respect for Bhagwat but the words should not have been used,” he said.

Why did Muslim delegation meet Bhagwat in August?

Bhagwat’s meeting with the Imam comes a month after his interaction with five eminent personalities from the Muslim community, who have proposed to work with the RSS on a strategy to build communal amity. Though it was scheduled for half-an-hour, the meeting held at the RSS’s makeshift Delhi office, Udaseen Ashram, stretched for 75 minutes.

Besides Bhagwat, Sah Sarkaryavah Krishna Gopal of the Sangh was present at the meeting. The five personalities from the minority community were former chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi, ex-Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung, former AMU vice-chancellor and Lt Gen (retd) Zameer Uddin Shah, RLD leader Shahid Siddiqui, and businessman Saeed Shervani.

Sidddiqui, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) national vice-president, said they had first sought a meeting with the RSS when the Nupur Sharma incident took place (the former BJP spokesperson passed remarks against Prophet Mohammed, leading to her suspension from the party and violence at several places).

Also read: Bhagwat meeting imams no deviation from Sangh’s line: RSS leader

“We felt a toxic atmosphere had been created due to the incident, within the Muslim community as well. However, by the time we received a date for meeting Bhagwat, it was already a month since the Nupur Sharma incident, and it had died down quite a bit. So we discussed matters of communal disharmony between the two communities,” he was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

The Muslim representatives told Bhagwat that they wanted to keep in touch over such issues, and the RSS chief advised them to be in contact with Krishna Gopal, Indresh Kumar and Ramlal. The BJP had organised an inter-faith conference in July to defuse religious tensions in wake of the controversy over Nupur Sharma’s remarks and the extreme reaction from a section of Sufi Barelvi Muslims.

A person privy to Bhagwat’s meeting with Muslim intellectuals said that while the five representatives objected to Muslims being called Pakistani and terrorists, RSS leaders pointed out that Hindus find it offensive to be referred to as ‘kafir’ or non-believers. The five who met Bhagwat on behalf of the Muslim community had come together a year ago to launch an Alliance for Education and Economic Development of Underprivileged — an organisation that has been working in education, particularly on bringing madrasas into mainstream modern education.

Experts argue that the delegation of Muslim intellectuals and the imams who met Bhagwat do not represent the whole of Indian Muslims. They say that the community is far from homogenous in nature and these five intellectuals have been criticised by other members of the Muslim intelligentsia.

Will the RSS change its stance on Muslims?

The key question to ask with regard to the RSS Muslim overtures, political experts say, is whether either side has altered its position or stance after the meeting. In his first remarks on the row over the Gyanvapi mosque, Bhagwat had questioned the need to “look for a Shivling in every mosque (har masjid mein Shivling kyun dekhna)” and had said the RSS was not in favour of launching any other movement on these issues. Bhagwat’s comment was welcomed by some sections of Muslims who saw it as a ‘reconciliatory’ stance of the RSS aimed at avoiding the needless friction between the two communities.

Political experts warn that we should not read too much into such statements by Bhagwat and his Muslim outreach because the RSS is likely to keep ‘baring its fangs’, and keep revealing its ‘Muslim hatred,’ every now and then. To substantiate their argument, they cite the RSS annual report of 2022, which was released on March 15. It talks of religious fanaticism growing in the guise of “Constitution and religious freedom”. It also talks of “elaborate plans” by “a particular community to enter the government machinery,” which has been seen as a reference to minorities.