Lucknow: Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on Sunday urged the whole of India to join his outfit, saying it would otherwise be difficult for any single organisation to bring the desired changes to society.
"Just one organisation is not enough to complete the entire task. The whole of (Indian) society should join the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. There's no other option," he told the Rashtroday Samagam (Nation-Awakening Conclave), apparently the 93-year-old outfit's biggest ever congregation, in Meerut.
Sources said the event was a show of strength meant to cap Bhagwat's 11-day tour of Uttar Pradesh during which he tried to persuade Sangh cadres, put off by BJP ministers' "arrogance", not to ditch the party before next year's general election. Sangh publicity official Ajay Mittal said the conclave, held on a 2.5km x 1.5km ground, had attracted 3 lakh-odd members.
Bhagwat mouthed the old Sangh chestnut that every Indian was a "Hindu" irrespective of faith. "Whoever believes that Bharat Mata is his mother is an Indian and a Hindu. But some people don't realise this," he said.
He regretted: "We fight each other on the basis of our different ways of life and worship; so the world provokes us further against each other."
Bhagwat spoke against violence: "Many means towards the comforts of life have been invented but we couldn't invent the means to happiness. There is still violence. It is in this context that the world looks towards India with hope," he said.
However, before his arrival, the crowd chanted slogans such as " Khoon se tilak kar, goliyon se aarti/ Pukarta hai Kashmir, pukarti Ma Bharati (Blood for tilak and bullets for worship, Kashmir calls to us, Mother India calls)" and "Hindustan me rehna hoga/ Vande Mataram kehna hoga (If you have to live in India, sing Vande Mataram)".
Bhagwat had held a series of meetings with Sangh and BJP members in Varanasi between February 15 and 21 and in Agra between February 21 and 24. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath was huddled for an hour with Bhagwat in Agra on Thursday.
A source said that many Sangh cadres were looking to excuse themselves from the 2019 poll campaign citing the "arrogance" of the party's ministers, and that Bhagwat was "persuading them to do their assigned jobs without expecting anything in return".
In his speech, Bhagwat explained that being a Sangh volunteer meant "attending the shakha and working selflessly for the organisation". A shakha is a morning or evening gathering of the members of a local Sangh unit.
