Mohan Bhagwat shared his Mann Ki Baat with top officials and corporates

NEW DELHI: Last Friday, about two dozen serving and retired bureaucrats, and some corporates, had an interesting invite — a meeting with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in Delhi. The RSS chief wanted to share some fine points of his Dussehra speech with them. A 12-point brief on the salient points of the speech was circulated among the select guests, touching upon key issues raised by Bhagwat earlier this month –– Rohingya Muslim refugees, cow protection, the situation in Bengal, Kerala and Jammu & Kashmir. ET has learnt that serving and retired IAS, IPS & IRS officers listened to Bhagwat’s views and offered suggestions.

“It was a productive and a development oriented session aimed at eliciting certain points from the audience for gaining and expanding the perspective of the RSS. The suggestions made by the officers were appreciated by the RSS chief,” a source in the RSS told ET. Bhagwat is said to have highlighted the traits of Indian culture and heritage, stressing everything, including shistachar (etiquettes), need not be borrowed blindly from abroad.

An officer is said to have highlighted the situation in Kerala, saying the Church there needed to evolve from the Vatican Age to the present times.

The points stressed by Bhagwat in a pre-circulated note were how India’s intellectuals and thinkers need to get rid of colonial thinking and mindset to awaken the society towards national ethos, how a “constructive connect from society and reshaping the public mind” are required for complete integration of J&K with India and how West Bengal and Kerala governments were lending a helping hand to antinational forces for petty interests.

Bhagwat also stressed that security forces should be complimented for their work and citizens should induct their families into the Army to take up the responsibility of securing India.

On the economy, Bhagwat’s note said, India should find its own way. “We should not try to copy and graft any technology or economic idea as is; though we should be open to adopting new ideas from anywhere in the world based on our own social experience,” it said.

Bhagwat also termed it unfair to link cow protection with violent incidents or communal feelings without knowing or neglecting the facts. “Entire society needs to imbibe the virtues of cognate and egalitarian behaviour to achieve the desired results,” Bhagwat said in his note for the guests.