Bhagwat says RSS prioritises Hindu unity over power
From Meerut’s 1857 flames to Hedgewar’s vision, a nation’s soul awakened.
The sprawling grounds of Madhav Kunj in Meerut were alive with an energy that had nothing to do with politics. On the manicured lawns, under the gentle February sun, nearly a thousand athletes sat in neat rows. Their bodies bore the marks of their craft—wrestlers with cauliflower ears, cricketers with calloused hands, para-athletes in wheelchairs with shoulders sculpted by years of effort. They had come from villages and cities, from modest homes and struggling families, united by a single pursuit: the pursuit of excellence in sport.
Among them sat Alka Tomar, her mind drifting back to the years of sweat and sacrifice that had earned her the Arjuna Award. She remembered the mornings when she had to convince her family that wrestling was a respectable pursuit for a girl. She remembered the dusty akharas where she trained alongside men, the whispers she ignored, the doubts she buried under sheer determination. Now, sitting here, listening to a man speak about nation-building, she felt a strange sense of validation. The struggle had never been just about medals. It had been about proving that a girl from the margins could stand tall.
A few rows ahead, Surya Pratap Mishra shifted in his seat. He was a para cricketer from Bareilly, selected to represent India in Sri Lanka. His journey had been different from Alka’s, but no less arduous. He had learned to navigate a world not designed for him, to find strength in the parts of his body that worked, to silence the pity in people’s eyes with the crack of a bat. When the RSS chief spoke about supporting para-athletes, about providing platforms for talent regardless of physical limitation, Surya felt a lump form in his throat. It was not just words. It was recognition. It was being seen.
In the back rows, a young kabaddi player from a village near Muzaffarnagar named Pintu Malik listened intently. His father was a farmer, his mother a homemaker. They had sacrificed their savings to send him to coaching camps. He had seen teammates drop out, lured by quick money in factories or fields, abandoning their dreams because the path was too hard. When Bhagwat spoke about players supporting one another, about the collective responsibility of building the nation, Pintu thought of his teammates. He thought of how they could create a network, a brotherhood, that would keep young athletes from falling through the cracks.
The man at the podium spoke for fifty minutes, but the athletes later said it felt like moments. He did not speak in the language of politics, of votes and elections, of power and opposition. He spoke in the language of values—of character, of unity, of service. He told them that the RSS was not interested in ruling, only in building. He told them that the nation was not just lines on a map but an idea carried in the hearts of its people, an idea nurtured by sages and saints, by fighters and philosophers, by every ordinary person who chose duty over despair.
When he spoke of Meerut’s role in 1857, the air seemed to thicken. This was not just history. This was ground zero of the first great uprising against colonial rule. The soil beneath their feet had once been soaked with the blood of those who dared to dream of freedom. And from that sacrifice, decades later, a man named Keshav Baliram Hedgewar had drawn inspiration to start a movement. The athletes felt the weight of that continuity. They were not just competitors. They were inheritors of a legacy.
After the formal address, the athletes were invited to ask questions. A young wrestler from Haryana stood up, his voice shaky but his eyes steady. He asked about the balance between individual ambition and national service. Bhagwat smiled, a rare softening of his usually stern countenance. He spoke of the Bhagavad Gita, of Arjuna’s dilemma on the battlefield, of the need to fight not for personal glory but for dharma. The wrestler nodded, not fully understanding the philosophy but grasping the essence—that their medals, their records, their triumphs were not just theirs alone.
A woman athlete, a sprinter from a tribal district in Madhya Pradesh, asked about the challenges faced by girls in rural areas who wanted to pursue sports. Bhagwat acknowledged the problem without evasion. He spoke of the need for societal change, for families to support their daughters, for communities to create safe spaces for women to excel. He did not offer easy solutions, but he offered something perhaps more valuable: acknowledgment that the struggle was real and that it mattered.
As the event concluded, the athletes mingled, exchanged numbers, posed for photographs. They came from different sports, different regions, different backgrounds. But in that moment, they were a community. They spoke of their training regimens, their injuries, their dreams. They spoke of the honor of being invited, of being heard, of being treated not just as performers but as contributors to something larger.
Alka Tomar found herself in conversation with a young man who had lost his leg in an accident and now competed in para-swimming. They spoke about the mental discipline required to push through pain, the loneliness of early morning training sessions, the thrill of representing the country. They spoke about how sport had saved them, given them purpose, defined their identity.
Outside the venue, the streets of Meerut carried on with their usual chaos. Auto-rickshaws honked, vendors called out their wares, children played cricket in narrow lanes. The athletes would soon disperse, returning to their villages and cities, to their coaches and families, to the grind of daily training. But something had shifted. A connection had been made. A sense of belonging had been planted.
In the quiet of the evening, as the sun set over the city that had once sparked a rebellion, a para-athlete from Bareilly sat in his room and wrote in his journal. He wrote about the day he had been seen not as a disabled person but as an athlete. He wrote about the promise of support, of platforms, of recognition. He wrote about the strange feeling of being part of something that stretched back to 1857 and forward to an India he was helping to build, one match, one race, one moment of excellence at a time.