Mohan Bhagwat

Mohan Madhukar Bhagwat was born in a Marathi family in Chandrapur, then Bombay State of India.[2][1][3] He comes from a family of RSS activists.[1] His father Madhukar Rao Bhagwat, was the Karyavah (secretary) for the Chandrapur zone and later a Prant Pracharak (provincial promoter) for Gujarat.[1] His mother Malati was a member of the RSS Women's Wing.[4]

Bhagwat completed his schooling from 'Lokmanya Tilak Vidyalaya' and then the first year of his BSc from the Janata College in Chandrapur. He graduated in Veterinary Sciences and Animal Husbandry from Government Veterinary College, Nagpur. He dropped out of his postgraduate course in Veterinary Sciences and became a pracharak (full-time promoter/worker) of the RSS towards the end of 1975.[1]

Bhagwat doing RSS salute

After working underground during the Emergency, Bhagwat became the 'Pracharak' of Akola in Maharashtra in 1977 and rose within the organisation responsible for Nagpur and Vidarbha regions.[1]

He became 'Akhil Bharatiya Sharirik Pramukh', (in-charge of physical training) for India, 1991 to 1999. He was further promoted as 'Akhil Bharatiya Pracharak Pramukh,' (in-charge of RSS volunteers working full-time for India).

In 2000, when Rajendra Singh and H. V. Sheshadri decided to step down as RSS Chief and general secretary respectively due to poor health, K. S. Sudarshan was nominated as the new chief and Bhagwat became 'Sarkaryavah,' (general secretary).

Bhagwat was chosen as the Sarsanghchalak (Chief Executive) of the RSS on 21 March 2009. He is one of the youngest leaders to head the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh after K. B. Hedgewar and M. S. Golwalkar.[1]

In June 2015, due to a high threat perception from various Islamic terrorist organisations,[5] the government of India ordered the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to provide Bhagwat with round-the-clock protection. At Z+ VVIP security cover, Bhagwat is one of the most protected Indians today.[6]

In 2017, Bhagwat became the first RSS Chief to be officially invited to the Rashtrapati Bhawan by then President Pranab Mukherjee.[7] In September 2018, Mohan Bhagwat presided over a 3-day session at Vigyan Bhawan in Delhi as part of reaching out to wider public. That time, he said that RSS has discarded some parts of M. S. Golwalkar’s "Bunch of Thoughts" which are no longer relevant to the current circumstances.[8]

In November 2016, while addressing a ‘Prerna Shibir’ on the 80th anniversary of Rashtra Sevika Samiti, the women's wing of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat said that Homo sapiens ate into the space of other species of genus Homo, like Homo floresiensis and Neanderthals, in the past, but even Homo sapiens could go extinct in the next thousand years.[9]

Bhagwat was quoted in September 2017 as saying "Hinduism was the only true religion in the world and other religions were just sects which emerged from Hinduism."[10]

In the Dussehra speech of 2020, he appreciated Ram Janmabhoomi verdict, and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). He expressed disapproval of those who "misled our Muslim brothers by propagating a false notion” and regretted the damage to “communal harmony” by the agitators.[11] This evoked a response from the Muslim leader Asaduddin Owaisi who said that the Muslims were not children to be misled.[12]

In 2017, the state-run Animal and Fishery Sciences University awarded Mohan Bhagwat with an honorary doctor of science (DSc) degree during its convocation ceremony in Nagpur.[13]