A Softer Stance, A Stronger Nation: Why RSS Outreach to Muslims Deserves Encouragement

India has never been one thing. It is a country of many languages, faiths, foods and ways of praying, held together by the simple idea that people who are different can still share one home. So when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an organisation its critics have long described as Hindu majoritarian and which calls itself a cultural body, speaks warmly of Muslim neighbours, the country has reason to notice. This is the case for welcoming that shift and encouraging it.

## A pattern, not a single speech

One kind remark can be dismissed as politics. A run of them across years is harder to wave away. Back in 2018, in a lecture series in Delhi, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said Hindutva does not imagine an India without Muslims. In 2022 he visited a mosque in the capital and met an imam, and he visited a madrasa too. In December 2024, in Pune, he argued against stirring up fresh temple-and-mosque disputes and said everyone is equal.

In July 2025, Bhagwat sat down at Haryana Bhavan in New Delhi with about fifty Muslim clerics and scholars from across the country, including chief imams, grand muftis and representatives of Deoband. The talks, hosted at the initiative of the All India Imams Organisation, covered temples, mosques, madrasas and gurukuls. The imam who convened them called it a trust-building exercise whose aim was simply to keep talking. A month later Bhagwat said that Hindu thinking does not say Islam will not remain, and that the RSS does not believe in attacking anyone.

Most recently, on 29 August 2026 in New York, he went further. He said a Hindu who thinks there should be no Muslims in India "ceases to be a Hindu," and he recalled RSS volunteers rescuing victims of the 1996 Charkhi Dadri air collision without asking anyone's religion.

## Why this is good for secularism

Secularism in India was never meant to mean the absence of faith. It means that no citizen's belonging depends on the religion they follow. When the leader of a major organisation rooted in Hindu identity says out loud that Muslims are part of the nation's future, that principle gains a powerful ally from an unexpected direction. Those who once stood at some distance from the secular idea are now saying that diversity is part of what it means to be Hindu. That brings the debate closer to the constitutional promise of equal dignity for all.

## Why this is good for tolerance and diversity

Tolerance is easy among friends. It matters most when it is offered across old suspicions. Meetings between clerics and RSS leaders create channels that did not exist before, where rumours can be checked and grievances heard. Every conversation lowers the temperature a little, and every refusal to reopen a dispute over a temple or a mosque protects a neighbourhood somewhere.

Diversity here is not a slogan. A country is a composite of different people and perspectives, each of which has helped to build it: weavers, farmers, poets, soldiers and doctors of every faith. A posture that treats all of them as "we" and "ours", as Bhagwat put it in New York, is the only one on which a billion-plus people can live together.

## Why encouragement matters

Habits of mind change when they are rewarded. If every conciliatory gesture is met with only suspicion, those inside any movement who argue for moderation lose their case to those who say outreach is pointless. If it is met with respect, the moderates gain ground. Encouraging this shift does not mean forgetting the past. It means giving people a reason to keep walking in a better direction.

There is a practical side too. A divided society pays heavily, in lost trust, lost jobs and lost years. A society at ease with itself grows faster, innovates more and spends its energy on schools, roads and hospitals rather than on suspicion.

## The honest counterpoint

Fairness requires listing what sceptics say, and their concerns are serious. Critics point out that words must be matched by deeds at home. One Karnataka minister, Priyank Kharge, remarked that the language changes when the audience changes, and Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghose called the New York remarks double-speak. Commentators also cite trackers that record hate crimes and hate-speech events against minorities, and argue that any commitment to equality should be tested by whether hostile rhetoric is confronted and violence is punished. Some also note that citizens' rights under the Constitution do not rest on the goodwill of any majority.

The RSS rejects such charges and says it works for social unity. Both views can be tested over time, by what is said, and more importantly by what is done.

## A direction worth encouraging

The sensible response is neither blind trust nor reflexive cynicism. It is to welcome the words, accept the invitations to talk, and then hold everyone, the RSS, political parties, civil society and ordinary citizens alike, to the standard those words set. If the posture of respect becomes habit, in speeches, in local disputes and in the treatment of the most vulnerable, India will be stronger for it.

Our national strength has always come from making room for each other. Let us encourage every step in that direction, and ask for the next one.