New Delhi: Everyone should respect the way another community worships, said Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat Friday. He was speaking at a function organised at Red Fort ground to launch the first-ever Urdu translation of Samaveda, one of the four Vedas.
Evoking Swami Vivekananda, he added that their paths may be different but the destination of all Indians is the same.
The event saw participation of members of Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu communities. Flanked by Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, chief Imam of All India Imam Organization (AIIO) and Iqbal Durrani, who has translated Samaveda, Bhagwat said, “We keep saying that the other person’s path is wrong, while only ours is the correct one. But it is not true. Our aatma is one, and so is our destination. We should change from inside to realise this.”
Later, Durrani and Bhagwat read a few lines from the scriptures. While Bhagwat chanted the lines in Sanskrit, Durrani followed him in Urdu.
Addressing the gathering, Durrani said, “This is the time that my community should wake up. They should see the history. Dara Shikoh is the only author who attempted to translate Samaveda in Urdu. But under Shahjahan’s rule, who built the Red Fort, Aurangzeb executed him.”
“Today at the Red Fort ground under Narendra Modi’s rule, I completed his unfinished work for our people to read the ancient Vedas and understand them,” he added.
Apart from Hindu seers and Muslim clerics, celebrities like singer Anup Jalota and actor Sunil Shetty were also in attendance.
Even though senior RSS functionaries said there is no special attempt to make any Muslim outreach, they see the series of meetings between Bhagwat and Muslim intellectuals, clerics followed by his visit to the AIIO office housed inside a mosque and the adjacent madrasa as a ‘systemic outreach’ to the community.
Outreach or response to ‘positive approach’
At the event, Bhagwat mentioned that he was invited by Durrani to attend the launch and release his book. In September 2022, senior Muslim intellectuals including former election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi and former Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung met him. Since then, there have been a series of meetings between senior RSS functionaries and Muslim intellectuals.
After the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS) that concluded Tuesday, talking about the Sangh’s Muslim outreach programme, Dattatreya Hosabale, RSS general secretary said to reporters, “We are getting invitations from them, and are responding . It is not about making any new outreach but responding to some positive approach taken by their (Muslim) organisations and communities.”
A senior RSS functionary said to ThePrint that there was nothing much about the semantics, but about the ‘positive approach’. “Do not look at it in the way of who calls first. For Sangh, the most important part is that a dialogue has been initiated and it is continuing. RSS did not make any special effort for an outreach. They have always welcomed everyone, including Muslims and Christians.”
“Though there were misconceptions (initially) we are seeing a positive approach now. Rather, the outreach is systemically happening from the other side and we are responding to it,” he added.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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