New Delhi: The stance of various nations in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack revealed the nature and extent of their friendship with India, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat said Thursday, delivering his Vijayadashami address from the Nagpur headquarters of the outfit which is also marking 100 years of its foundation.
He stressed that when it comes to national security, India needs to be more careful, vigilant and strong even as it maintains friendship with other nations.
According to Bhagwat, the Pahalgam episode highlighted that while maintaining friendship with everyone, India must remain as vigilant as possible and develop its security capabilities.
“The responses of other countries around the world to this entire episode, who our friends are in the global arena and to what extent they are willing to stand by us, was also tested,” the RSS chief said.
Bhagwat went on to hail the Modi government’s action against terror infrastructure in Pakistan after terrorists killed 26 in Jammu & Kashmir’s Pahalgam this April.
“On 22 April, in Pahalgam, cross-border terrorists killed 26 civilian tourists after asking them about their faith. The attack led to a wave of grief, sadness and anger across Bharat. After careful planning, the government of Bharat gave a fitting response to this attack in the month of May,” Bhagwat said, referring to Operation Sindoor.
Expressing satisfaction with the response of the government, he added that during the period of conflict with Pakistan in May, one witnessed “heartening scenes of the firmness of the country’s leadership, the valour and war-readiness of our armed forces, as well as the determination and unity of our society”.
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‘Dependence mustn’t turn into helplessness’
The RSS chief also laid stress on the need to adopt swadeshi or indigenous products and embrace self-reliance amid US President Donald Trump’s hefty tariffs on Indian goods.
Bhagwat said that in an interconnected world, India’s dependence on trading partners should not turn into helplessness and that India must focus on indigenous production. He asserted that there was no substitute for swadeshi and swavalamban (self-reliance).
“The world operates through mutual interdependence. By becoming aatmanirbhar (self-reliant) and being cognisant of global unity, we must ensure that this global interdependence does not become a compulsion for us, and we are able to act according to our own will. There is no substitute for swadeshi and swavalamban,” he said.
This is not the first time that Bhagwat has spoken on Trump’s tariff and the need to promote swadeshi goods. In August, on the day the US tariffs on Indian imports were hiked to 50 percent, the RSS chief had said trade should be done voluntarily and not under any pressure and then made a strong pitch for swadeshi.
Trump had first announced a tariff rate of 25 percent for India, before imposing an additional “penalty” tariff of 25 percent due to New Delhi’s purchase of Russian energy products. India now faces 50 percent tariff, one of the highest rates for any trading partner of the US.
Bhagwat said Thursday that in the economic sphere, one could say India’s situation has been improving according to the prevailing indicators.
“The enthusiasm among ordinary citizens to make our nation a global leader is clearly visible, especially among the younger generation”.
But he also pointed out flaws of the prevailing economic system, such as widening gap between the rich and poor, concentration of economic power, strengthening of new mechanisms that enable easier exploitation, degradation of the environment and the rise of transactionalism and inhumanity instead of genuine interpersonal relationships. These, he said, have been exposed globally.
“We will need to reconsider our approach on some issues to ensure that these flaws and the tariff policy adopted by America, based solely on its self-interest, do not pose a challenge for us,” the RSS chief said.
Earlier in the day, Bhagwat performed ‘Shastra Puja’ on the occasion of Vijayadashami in Nagpur.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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