Today news agency ANI reported that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has said that use of the word ‘nationalism’ should be avoided, as it can be seen from derived from Hitler and Nazism. The ANI report was carried by several mainstream media houses.
Quoting Mohan Bhagawat during a speech in Ranchi on February 20, the report said that Mohan Bhagwat had said, “don’t use the word nationalism. Use of the words Nation or nationality is okay but don’t use nationalism because it means Hitler, Nazism.”
But this is complete misquoting, as the RSS chief didn’t ask people to stop using the word ‘nationalism’. If we hear his speech, it becomes clear that what some people in several parts of the world think about the word, and he was quoting only such people. He said, ‘intellectuals in a large geographical area think that nationalism is a dangerous thing for the world. The nationalism world is not considered as a good word in the world. Several years ago, when I had gone to the UK, I was having a discussion with some people about the Sangh. There one RSS worker told me to be careful about the meaning of words as English is not my first language’.
Mohan Bhagwat added that the worker said to him, ‘meanings of words change here during conversations. That’s why you should not use the word nationalism. You can say nation, national or nationality, but do not say nationalism. Because nationalism means Hitler, Nazism, Fascism.’
‘That’s how this word has got a bad name there, but we know that whenever India grew as a nation, the world had benefited,’ Mohan Bhagwat added.
Therefore, he was not asking people to avoid using the word nationalism, he was only telling how some intellectuals see the word outside India, and how he was asked to avoid the word in the UK as he could be misunderstood. He, in fact, rued the fact that the word ‘nationalism’ has got a bad name in the world, and talked in its support.
Moan Bhagawat also said that the world is facing the problem of fundamentalism. The problem of radicalism, the problem of environment, the problem of the thought that ‘mine is correct everything else is wrong’, these are some of the major issues due to which there is unrest in the world, he added.
Read- Fact Check: Did Mohan Bhagwat blame education for higher rates of divorce in the country?
The RSS chief said that to bring unity, uniformity is required. To maintain the country as one, something common is needed. Some countries are based on a language, some countries are based on religion – you need to belong to a particular religion to be the citizen of those countries, some countries are based on economic viewpoint, but there is nothing such in our country. But India is based on diversity, our constitution accepts diversity. Although the saying is ‘unity in diversity’, actually we say ‘diversities of unity’.
He said this is the Indian culture, which is also the Hindu culture. Despite having so much diversities, we are connected to each other by the thread of the word Hindu.
