Universalism has long been among the most ambitious moral projects of the modern world. Born of the European Enlightenment, it promised a vision of humanity bound together by shared reason, rights, and moral equality. Yet even within Western political thought, there has been sustained unease about how this promise has travelled. As Michael Walzer once observed with characteristic clarity, “every universalism is the universalisation of some particularity.”
This description aptly fits western universalism, which, in practice, often expanded outward as an abstract imposition, detached from cultural interiors, indifferent to civilizational plurality, and increasingly entangled with power. What was presented as morally neutral thus came to be experienced, across much of the non-Western world, as epistemically intrusive and ethically homogenising. However, this chicanery did not produce a rejection of universality itself.
Rather, it opened a more unsettling epistemological question within social sciences and political theory: whether Western universalism represents a neutral moral horizon, or globalisation of a culturally specific way of being human, often imposed upon non-Western worlds in the name of reason, progress, and emancipation? Post-colonial societies such as Bharat have long had to negotiate this tension, seeking to remain rooted in its civilizational inheritance while simultaneously engaging with a universalism that emerged from a very different historical and cultural experience.
It is in this wider intellectual context that organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have sought to preserve a sense of civilizational moral clarity. RSS Sarsanghchalak Dr Mohan Bhagwat’s recent address in Raipur, delivered at the Virat Hindu Sammelan on the occasion of the Sangh’s centenary year, precisely reflects the same. The speech merits attention because it meticulously articulates a distinct moral grammar of universality that has consistently informed the worldview of Bharat for centuries.
The Grammar of Ethical Universality
Bhagwat begins by returning to a foundational question – what does it mean to be sangathit, to be together? The idea of sangathan, as he presents it, is not merely passive tolerance of difference or management of diversity. It essentially means to achieve something meaningful together, to act meaningfully in concert, while remaining aware of differences rather than being anxious about them.
Unity is thus not achieved by erasing plurality but by cultivating a moral orientation that allows plurality to coexist without fragmentation. This thought is essentially rooted in the idea that the deepest crises facing individuals, societies, and nations today are not resolved through external strength, be it institutional, economic, or coercive, but through an inner moral orientation that looks for unity within. How, then, is such an inner moral orientation to be cultivated?
By addressing this question, Dr Bhagwat outlines the Bharatiya imagination of ethical universality. One that does not rely on coercion, conversion, or ideological expansion but rather on ethical exemplarity, something that radiates outward from a society that has learned to live well with itself. He discusses five forms of ethical practice that can be undertaken within the ordinary rhythms of life without requiring additional resources.
The first of these is samajik samarasata, social harmony understood as relational equality. He urges individuals to erase extremism and hierarchy from their gaze, to form friendships across caste, sect, and linguistic boundaries, and to inhabit the conviction that “sab apne hain”, that all are one’s own.
The second is mangal samvada, the recognition of the family as a primary site of moral dialogue. This emphasis challenges a central assumption of modern universalism: that ethical reason must detach itself from tradition to attain universality. However, in our national imagination, moral values do not gain strength by detaching themselves from tradition. They become meaningful and widely shared when they are discussed at home, remembered through family histories, and practised across generations. Universality, therefore, grows from within social life rather than being enforced from above.
The third, kutumb prabodhan, marks perhaps the most philosophically significant turn in Dr Bhagwat’s speech. Beginning with the recognition that the fate of the individual and the family is inseparable from that of the nation, Bhagwat poses a simple question: how much time and attention can one devote each day to society and the country? Responsibility, he argues, does not leap directly from the individual to an abstract humanity. It expands outward in graduated form, from the self to the family, from the family to society, from society to the nation, and finally to the world. Each layer presupposes the health of the preceding layer. This acknowledges that the world cannot be cared for meaningfully if the moral fabric of domestic life remains frayed.
Closely linked to this is the call to ecological responsibility and swabodh, ethical self-awareness. Caring for the environment is not a matter of rights and regulations but of conscious, daily practices that have been beautifully intertwined with traditions in Bharatiya culture. Swabodh extends this inward orientation further. Speaking one’s mother tongue at home, learning the language of the region one inhabits, supporting domestic industries, and sustaining traditional artisans are acts of ethical recognition that one must adopt. Language (bhasha), dress (bhusha), devotion (bhajan), dwelling (bhavan), food (bhojan), and travel (bhraman) in Hindu thought are not merely cultural markers but sites through which moral consciousness is formed in a civilised society.
And in the final dimension, Dr Bhagwat discusses issues of civic discipline. He speaks of the Constitution as a document shaped by the moral consciousness of the people of this country, and therefore, it offers guidance on how dharma may be exercised in contemporary life. Obedience to law, respect for civic norms, and adherence to unwritten codes of conduct are therefore not constraints, but expressions of active citizenship. He discusses another set of rules that do not constitute the Constitution but do constitute the essence of being a Bharatiya, and following them reflects our samskaras.Respect for elders, generosity toward the vulnerable, and humility in public life may not be legally enforceable, yet they remain indispensable to moral excellence.
Vishwa Kalyan: Recovering Manav Dharma in a Fragmented World
Evidently, this framework stands in marked contrast to Western universalism, which has historically been inseparable from relations of dominance and epistemic imposition. While the West has sought to define the human by abstracting consciousness from its cultural and civilizational locations, and then elevating that abstraction into a global norm, it has struggled to accommodate cultural plurality without flattening it.
In contrast, the Bharatiya imagination articulated here offers a different route: one that does not attempt to impose moral frameworks across societies, but allows ethical conduct, patiently cultivated at home, to speak for itself in the wider world. It is in this light that RSS Sarsanghchalak Dr Mohan Bhagwat’s much-noted assertion – that the prosperity of Bharat will bring prosperity to the world – must be read. Because if stripped of its moral context, the statement risks misinterpretation as civilizational assertion or geopolitical ambition. In Bharatiya civilisational thought, prosperity (samriddhi) is not reduced to economic growth or strategic dominance. It is moral, social, and ecological flourishing. A society that learns to live ethically with itself contributes to the world not through imposition but through demonstration.
This understanding of Vishva Kalyan – world welfare – differs fundamentally from missionary universalism. It does not seek to remake the world in its own image. Nor does it retreat into cultural relativism. Instead, it proposes that a civilisation secure in its ethical foundations can participate in global life without anxiety, coercion, or erasure. Thus, universality emerges not through convergence, but through meaningful coexistence.
It is only when seen this way that the RSS’s long-standing emphasis on social work, character formation, and civic discipline can be clearly understood not as ideological mobilisation but as civilizational preparation. If the twentieth century was shaped by universalism as an expansionist impulse, the twenty-first may yet demand universalism as an ethical restraint. In articulating such an exemplary vision of the Bharatiya worldview, Dr Mohan Bhagwat offers not a challenge to the world, but an invitation to rethink what universality can mean after the West.
