India needs to be militarily better prepared against China — Mohan Bhagwat

New Delhi, Oct 25 (IANS): Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) supremo Mohan Bhagwat in his Vijay Dashami speech, the organisation’s biggest annual event, said on Sunday that India needed to be militarily better prepared against China.

Bhagwat also called the dragon ‘expansionist’, while urging the government to forge an alliance against China with its immediate neighbours like Nepal, Sri Lanka and others.

“Indian defence forces, government & the people remained unfazed and responded sharply to China’s boisterous efforts to invade our territories,” he said.

However, Bhagwat warned that India needed to be cautious as it gave a befitting reply to China.

He was referring to the Indo-China border tensions between the two countries that also saw violent flare-up earlier in the Galwan Valley.

“It (China) didn’t expect this (response). So we don’t know how it will react. So what is the way forward? It is alertness and preparedness. We need to be more powerful than China in military preparedness, economic conditions, international relations and relation with neighboring nations,” added Bhagwat.

The RSS supremo however asserted that the message sent by Indian leaders was with a sense of self-respect.

He also mentioned the “indomitable ethical-patience of our citizens”, which he added must compel China to reform its attitude.

“But if push comes to shove we will not fall short of alertness, firmness and readiness.

“We intend to be friendly with all. This is our nature. But mistaking our benevolence for weakness and attempts to disintegrate or weaken us by sheer brute force is unacceptable. Our reckless detractors should know this by now,” was Bhagwat’s clear message on the occasion of Vijaya Dashami.

These statements coming from the head of RSS, the ideological mentor of the ruling BJP assumes huge significance in the current scenario of Indo-China tension.

Bhagwat dubs CAA protests ‘organised violence’

Asserting that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act was not against any particular religious minority, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat on sunday hit out at “opportunists” who unleashed “organised violence” on the pretext of CAA opposition.

Speaking at RSS’s Vijaya Dashami event, he also made references to abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and the Supreme Court’s Ram Mandir verdict.

“The CAA does not oppose any particular religious community. But those who wanted to oppose this new law misled our Muslim brothers by propagating a false notion that it was aimed at restricting the Muslim population,” Bhagwat said.

“Using the CAA, Opportunists unleashed organised violence in the name of protests. Even before something could be thought out, coronavirus pandemic crept in. In this background, the efforts by rioters and opportunists to reignite the conflict still continue.”

He was referring to anti-CAA protests across the country, including in Shaheen Bagh here, and subsequent Delhi riots in February 2020.

The RSS chief acknowledged the restraint shown by people at large in the aftermath of the Ram Mandir verdict last year as well as the August 5 decision to abrogate Article 370.

He said that while healthy political competition was always welcome, if it morphed into hatred, bitterness and animosity, it weakened the social fabric.

“Those misaligned with or opposed to our socio-cultural values have, while professing to be the champions of democracy and secularism, continued to befool and confuse people. Dr BR Ambedkar used the phrase ‘grammar of anarchy’ for such situation,” added Bhagwat.