Hyderabad: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said on Sunday that LGBTQ+ people should not be isolated from society as they are also human beings and have the right to live.
Stating that they have been part of Indian society, he said they deserve dignity and their own space.
Speaking at an event here, he observed that Indian traditions had long recognised such communities and quietly made arrangements for them.
“LGBTQ+ and all such things are talked about extensively. Such tendencies are present in society. Some are innate, determined by nature itself; neither we nor they can do anything about it—that is simply how they were born. However, some are acquired later due to mindset, or arise from physical inclinations. Such things exist everywhere. We cannot say they did not exist in our society. We are human beings too, so they existed here as well,” he said.
“But in our society, they were dealt with quietly. It was said that such people exist, and perhaps some can be cured while some cannot. They are also human beings and have the right to live. They should not be isolated from society. In the broader social order, there is a place for them as well. Do not look down upon them,” the RSS chief said.
“Shikhandi was a king and went to fight alongside all the great warriors. So, our society had a system for such people. Even today, we see that they have their own deities, their own places of worship, and even their own Mahamandaleshwars who participate in the Kumbh Mela. Rather than making unnecessary noise or fanfare about these matters, we handled them quietly to ensure society maintained a sympathetic attitude toward them,” Mohan Bhagwat added.
He also stated that Indians began living away from traditions, generally around the time of the Mahabharata. “After that, we gradually kept forgetting them. Then invasions began. This caused society to become unstable and systems to collapse. That happened. And the last invader filled our minds with hatred towards our own things. They filled us with an inferiority complex. They made us believe that whatever was theirs was right and everything of ours was wrong. We began considering what was ours as wrong, and we did not even know what was actually right.”
According to him, based on an incomplete perspective, there is a wrong understanding that has been continuing in Western countries, due to which many problems have emerged there. “We adopted that understanding from them, but since they do not have answers to these problems, we are also not finding answers. We are still following it as a standard of proof,” he said.
(IANS)
