Thanks to the convenient gullibility of those commenting on his speeches, Mohan Bhagwat is on the verge of becoming the new Jawaharlal Nehru. His recent “celebration” of diversity is being dutifully showcased as the RSS chief effecting an important shift. Thankfully, the evidence shows what he actually said: That diversity is decoration; it is beautification of unity. This is in contrast to the notion that diversity is not only an inseparable part of what we once understood as Indianness, but diversity actually facilitates our unity. Therefore, what Bhagwat said in North America is not a real shift but a tactical positioning of the idea of Hindutva to make it acceptable to a wider audience that adopts naivety as the method of analysis.

To be fair, Bhagwat has earlier also adopted the argument that Muslims in India are not “outsiders” and that people of all religions should live amicably. So, should we be thankful to him for this concession? Should we say that he is changing the way Hindutva is understood now, or should we put his utterances in context before we jump to certify his inclusionary credentials?

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Three things provide the context. First, Bhagwat is not an individual. He is the chief of a “voluntary” organisation that supervises a vast network of individuals and organisations that stand by and for the idea of Hindutva. His statements, therefore, must resonate with all that goes in the name of Hindutva. How do we make sense of his assertion that “if a Hindu wants an India without Muslims, he is not a Hindu” when many Hindutva forces keep villainising Muslims? Didn’t he once say that there is no need to search for a shivling under every mosque (2022)? That didn’t stop Hindutva politics from doing exactly the opposite. If that is the case, what he says today about Muslims being part of India also becomes meaningless. In the 1990s, too, some naïve liberals argued that Muslims should hand over the Babri mosque and, in exchange, get an assurance that no such controversies over other places of worship would be raked up. Hindutva’s history shows two things: That it is unforgiving to those it views as its enemies, and it is unrelenting in its beliefs.

The second aspect is the convenient multi-vocal articulation of Hindutva. Leaders from its brother organisations and oftentimes even functionaries and publications of the RSS keep popularising ideas that are in contravention to the sanguine utterances of the RSS chief. That explains the insistence of many from the current regime to exclude references to Mughals from history textbooks; it explains how those steeped in RSS training refer to communities as Aurangzeb’s aulad and an officer of the armed forces as sister of terrorists; it explains the constant confusion created by the interchangeable use of Hindu as religion (faith) and civilisation; how Lakshmi and Saraswati are argued to be cultural symbols but at the same time, Muslims are barricaded from “Hindu” festivals. Both in propagation of ideas and in practice, this slippery multi-vocality frustrates the supposed olive branch Bhagwat wants to hold out to critics of Hindutva.

The third dimension is the continuity from the time M S Golwalkar was RSS chief. Almost every single idea of organising Indian society upheld in Golwalkar’s time is back in fashion. Tactics and expressions have changed, and the RSS leadership has certainly advanced in terms of savvy media presence and the political use of institutional power. But the question students of Hindutva must ask is this: Has Hindutva as an ideology changed? In the absence of any substantive change, it will be a mistake to pick up some statements and be satisfied that Hindutva (or the RSS) is changing.

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In its century-long history, the RSS has undergone many “transformations”. The early transformation was under Golwalkar. The second was when M D Deoras became the RSS chief. He defrocked the RSS of its upper-caste limitations and opened the floodgates of Hindutva to the larger social pool of backward castes. Deoras also realised that in the post-Nehru era, there was space for intervention in the formal political arena, and encouraged a more active presence of Hindutva cadres there.

Building on that, Modi and Bhagwat have brought about the third transformation: A close partnership between the state and the Hindutva cultural behemoth. This has facilitated extraordinary opportunities for Hindutva to both become hegemonic and also crush its ideological adversaries using the state apparatus. Bhagwat can afford to sound magnanimous because his politics already enjoys hegemony, not because it needs to become more acceptable or inclusive. Most importantly, those eager to find virtue in his utterances must remember that we are not dealing with Bhagwat the person, howsoever soft spoken and accommodating he might sound. We are dealing with politics in a deeper sense: Of combining a mammoth project of hegemony that seeks to strengthen itself with the unforgiving authority of the state.

The writer, based in Pune, taught Political Science