A critic who cannot concede a good sentence can’t examine a bad one.
RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, at an interfaith summit in New York on 29 August, recalled Muslims who had asked him after his Delhi lectures of 2018 whether they would be driven out of a Hindu Rashtra. He replied that expulsion would not be Hindutva at all, and that a Hindu who wants a Bharat without Muslims will not remain a Hindu.Those dismissing this statement as public relations are being lazy. Consider the domestic weather in which it lands: a decade of election seasons conducted in the vocabulary of infiltrators and graveyards, bulldozers that arrive before charge sheets, and television studios where a Muslim panellist is invited so that four others may shout at him. In this atmosphere, the head of the Sangh telling a section of his own following that they have argued themselves out of the faith they claim to defend is worth having. Indian commentators who could not bring themselves to say so should ask themselves why.
He said more that deserves recording. Diversity, he told the Madison Square Garden crowd, must be accepted, respected and protected. Those who extend protection only to the obedient, he said, conduct themselves as rakshasas (demons). Both propositions, taken seriously, indict a great deal of what is done in his name. Having said that, I have to report what three sets of Indian readers actually heard.The Muslim reading
