Mohan Bhagwat

'A day after Mohan Bhagwat said he was confident of seeing the Ram Temple built in his lifetime, the RSS chief, in a series of tweets on Thursday, urged society to prepare the ground for it. “The temple will be built within my lifetime… We need to plan it carefully… (we need) a good mix of ‘josh’ and ‘hosh’,” Bhagwat had said in Kolkata on Wednesday. While he said that the Ram Temple could be built anywhere, Bhagwat added that Ayodhya was the birthplace of Ram. “Just as terrorists attacked the twin towers of World Trade Centre in the US because it was their economic centre.

'In another act of embarrassment for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat stoked controversy again on Sunday by remarking that India belongs to the Hindus. “Hindustan is our nation, a rashtra of Hindus,” the RSS Sarsanghchalak said in Meerut while addressing a meeting of several wings of the party. “But we have to expand it by uniting all Hindus. Our country would become great if we succeed in uniting the Hindus. This unity will also be a bliss for the world. The world will awaken if the Hindus are united and awakened,” he added.

"RSS chief Mohanrao Bhagwat will tomorrow launch a three-volume work in Hindi on the “Hindu” identity of India’s Dalits at a high-powered event to be chaired by Vishwa Hindu Parishad international president Ashok Singhal. Union ministers Smriti Irani and Prakash Javadekar will be special guests at the launch, signifying the Sangh parivar’s agenda to “reclaim” and “propagate” the “Hindu roots” of Scheduled Castes.

"...The Sangh's rapid growth in Bengal - 25% in 12 months since March 2013 - explains Bhagwat's focus on a state where the BJP and its ideological guardian, the RSS, had always been virtually non-existent. "Our daily sakhas increased from 820 in March 2013 to 1,010 by March this year," Jishnu Basu, publicity head of the RSS' south Bengal unit, told HT. The RSS deems a sakha or a unit 'daily' if it functions continuously for 15 days. By July, the RSS had 30 more sakhas in place. It also organised some 100 'exposure' camps to educate people about the Sangh's activities.