Create locally the world we want: Bhagwat

New York, Aug 30 (IANS) Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Chief Mohan Bhagwat has urged religious leaders to create local models of unity and selfless service, saying global change must begin in communities and be sustained through dialogue at every level.

Addressing the “One World, One Humanity” programme in New York, Bhagwat said participants should carry their common resolve back to their countries and turn it into visible action.

“Whatever we decide to do today, we should start in our own country and create pockets of such selfless service, such atmosphere of unity,” he added.

Bhagwat said that religious leaders should demonstrate through local initiatives how people from different communities could work together.

Successful projects could then be connected across regions and countries, he added.

“We should create at our own place the models of the world we want,” he said.

“And we should connect. We should keep on this dialogue.”

The RSS Chief called for interfaith engagement to move beyond international conferences and senior religious figures.

Dialogue, he said, should reach people in provinces, districts and smaller administrative blocks.

“This dialogue also we should take to the lower level,” Bhagwat added.

“If we start at this level and start instructing our own people and then try to have this dialogue in all the countries, in the provinces of those countries, district level, block level, if you go like that, then the atmosphere will change,” he said.

Bhagwat added that the RSS had gained practical experience through its dialogue with Muslim and Christian communities in India.

The engagement began after his 2018 address in Delhi and had continued despite frustration over the slow pace of results.

“So we started that dialogue. Mainly with Muslims and Christians of Bharat,” he said.

“And step by step we are going ahead.”

He cautioned that changing social attitudes would require patience.

People might understand the principles of goodness and love but still struggle to translate that knowledge into behaviour, he added.

“But now we have to create a situation wherein this knowledge prevails. And this knowledge rules the human behaviour,” Bhagwat said.

He added that intellectual understanding alone was not enough.

“Good conduct had to become a habit strong enough to resist the attractions of material gain, power and superiority.”

“We have to instill the practice,” he said.

“Habit should be changed so radically and new habit should be so strong that it should fight this deflection of the lure of material happiness.”

Bhagwat acknowledged that some participants in the continuing interfaith dialogue had questioned whether it was producing results.

“We have sat for seven times, nothing has happened,” he quoted participants as telling him.

His response, he said, was: “Okay, continuously, something will happen.”

The RSS Chief urged religious leaders not to abandon the effort because results were slow.

He said the work would be laborious and time-consuming but must continue without despair.

“We have to add one more resolve there. That we will pursue this code untiringly for the time it takes,” he added.

Bhagwat has served as Sarsanghchalak (Chief) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh since 2009. The position is the highest office in the organisation and carries responsibility for its broad ideological and organisational direction.

The RSS was established in Nagpur in 1925 by K.B. Hedgewar and completed 100 years in 2025.

–IANS

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