‘It will be a mistake’: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat defends ‘paramilitary’ like training- what he said | India News

NEW DELHI: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on Friday said that Sangh needed to train, but it wasn’t a paramilitary organisation.“We wear a uniform, take out marches, and do stick exercise. (But) If someone thinks it is a paramilitary organisation, it will be a mistake,” he said, adding that the organisation only imbued necessary qualities and virtues to ensure that India didn’t not fall into the clutches of a foreign power again.According to him, small groups of invaders from distant lands whom he described as neither wealthier nor more virtuous than Indians, had managed to defeat the country despite being unfamiliar with its terrain and society. Bhagat said this had happened several times in the past, with the British being the eighth such invasion.

When he said Sangh was faster than army

Notably, the RSS chief has previously said that the organisation had the ability to prepare an “army” to fight for the country within three days, if such a situation arises.Speaking in Bihar in 2018, he had said, “Sangh will prepare military personnel within three days which the Army would do in 6-7 months. This is our capability. Swayamsewak will be ready to take on the front if the country faces such a situation and Constitution permits to do so.”The statement caused an uproar with the opposition asking Bhagwat to apologise for comparing the RSS with the army.Congress president Rahul Gandhi said, “The RSS chief ’s speech is an insult to every Indian, because it disrespects those who have died for our nation. It is an insult to our flag because it insults every soldier who ever saluted it.”

BJP not RSS offshoot

Bhagwat on Friday reiterarted that it would be a mistake to try to understand the RSS through the prism of the BJP. While the Sangh is widely regarded as the parent organisation of the Jana Sangh and its successor, the BJP, he said its identity and purpose were often wrongly interpreted.“There is a common feeling that the Sangh was born as a reaction or opposition (to the prevailing forces). This is not the case. The Sangh is not a reaction or opposition to anything. The Sangh is not competing with anyone as well,” the RSS chief said.The BJP’s roots lie in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, founded in 1951 by RSS leader Syama Prasad Mukherjee. The Jana Sangh and later the BJP drew heavily from the Sangh’s worldview, with many of its leaders emerging from the RSS ecosystem and sharing its Hindu nationalist orientation.