To Zohran Mamdani: The RSS chief you may not know (Op-ed)

Why in the News

A senior advocate who served as one of three mediators in the Ayodhya-Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute has written an open letter responding to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s criticism of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, recounting Bhagwat’s role in restraining celebration after the 2019 Ayodhya settlement and in the later Gyanvapi mosque controversy in Varanasi. The piece sets Bhagwat’s public restraint against a moment when the judiciary itself, rather than the RSS, departed from the settled position on the Places of Worship Act, 1991.

What role did Bhagwat play around the Ayodhya settlement?

1. Restraint after the 2019 verdict: Bhagwat insisted there should be no celebration or jubilation over the Ayodhya outcome, since this would be provocative to the other side, and the moment passed largely without triggering wider unrest.
2. A stated limit on the RSS’s claims: Bhagwat said the RSS’s interest was confined to the Ram Mandir and that it was not seeking to reclaim any other place of worship, a statement the writer says helped temper the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s publicly stated list of other disputed mosques.

What happened in the Gyanvapi case, and how did Bhagwat respond?

1. A departure from precedent in the Gyanvapi ruling: Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, then a puisne judge who had earlier delivered part of the Ayodhya judgment, remarked in the Gyanvapi case that it remained open to the court to examine whether the site was a mosque or a temple, a position the writer characterises as a departure from the Ayodhya judgment’s own reasoning on the Places of Worship Act.
2. Bhagwat’s public intervention: Bhagwat responded the following day by saying “one cannot go looking for shivlings in every mosque,” a statement the writer frames as running counter to the direction the Court’s own remark had opened up.

Conclusion

The writer argues that Bhagwat’s recorded public positions, restraint after Ayodhya and the remark against searching for shivlings in every mosque, reflect a stated commitment to inter-community harmony that Mamdani’s criticism of the RSS chief does not account for, and proposes that the two meet and talk during Bhagwat’s visit to the United States.

What is the Places of Worship Act, 1991?

1. Statutory freeze on religious character: The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 mandates that the religious character of every place of worship, as it existed on 15 August 1947, be maintained and prohibits its conversion, with the Ayodhya dispute exempted as a case already in litigation when the law was enacted.
2. Held to embody a Basic Structure value: In the Ayodhya judgment, the Supreme Court held that the Act embodies the constitutional values of secularism and is part of the Basic Structure of the Constitution.

Matching Previous Year Question

No direct PYQ traced in the provided files (Pass 1: Places of Worship Act — no match; Pass 2: secularism, basic structure — matches found were general basic-structure statements, not specific to the Act).