On 5 September, Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said at an event in Pune, “If one has to rise to such a height, one should make efforts. We should not consider ourselves as god. Let people decide if there is god in you.”
The Hindu nationalist RSS is the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and was the first political home of the Indian prime minister, the BJP’s Narendra Modi. Bhagwat’s remark was perceived as a dig at Modi; during his campaign for the Indian general election earlier this year, Modi told a television channel that he had become convinced that his energy cannot come from a biological body and that he was an instrument of god.
This was the third time that Bhagwat had taken on Modi in public after the election. In June, a week after the results were announced, Bhagwat addressed RSS volunteers in Nagpur, where the organisation is headquartered. He said that a true sevak, or servant, did not have arrogance and worked without causing any hurt to others, and that “decorum was not maintained” during the election campaign. Although Bhagwat did not name anyone, his remarks were broadly perceived to be directed at Modi, and were unlikely to have gone unnoticed by the top leadership of the BJP. Modi had been sworn in as prime minister for the third consecutive time only a day earlier on 10 June.
In mid-July, Bhagwat said at a public event in Jharkhand that men aim to become supermen, then devtas or deities, then bhagwan or a god and then vishwaroop or omnipresent. This was again seen as a veiled reference to Modi’s earlier remarks about having non-biological energy. Bhagwat added that instead of such aspirations, people should work towards the welfare of humanity.