'Bhagwat is your mentor, listen to him': Dipke hints at BJP-RSS divide over Gen Z

Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) chief Abhijeet Dipke has alleged the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has stopped heeding to the advice of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), suggesting a rift between the ruling party at the Centre and its ideological parent.Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke. (File Photo/Reuters)“Somewhere, the BJP has stopped listening to (RSS chief) Mohan Bhagwat and the RSS. On one hand, Mohan Bhagwat says the Gen Z are not anti-national and their concerns are genuine but on the other, BJP president Nitin Nabin, who was appointed just a few months ago, says we are a virus,” Dipke said.“Mohan Bhagwat is your mentor, you should listen to him first. It will be good for you,” he added.The CJP founder was speaking at an event hosted by News24 when he made the remarks.Without naming anyone but in an apparent reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 12th-year in office, Dipke said: “You have become so big that you aren’t listening to the RSS? You have just finished 12 years and Nitin Nabin has just come one or two years ago. You lost a crucial seat.”He was referring to the BJP’s recent poll defeat in Bihar’s Bankipur to Jan Suraaj Party’s Prashant Kishor.On August 6, Bhagwat heaped praises on the Gen Z community – a term used broadly to describe people born between 1997 and 2012. The community left everyone in awe and shock with a mass movement against the scrapping of the NEET-UG paper this year over alleged irregularities. The protest that initially began at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar before spreading to other cities ultimately saw the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as education minister.“You were calling us anti-nationals, parasites and viruses. You say that we are the B team of terrorists. What is this happening in the country?” Dipke said, in an apparent attack on the BJP.“Do you think that only when we follow you will it mean that we love our country? This is my country and I have my own views, who are you to tell me anything? The government is yours but not the country. The country is ours,” he added.Earlier this month, Bhagwat said Gen Z protesters are “not anti-national”. “If Gen Z is protesting, they are not anti-nationals. They are our own people, our next generation,” he said, adding that the “new generation, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, is more honest than the existing generation” and that an “honest appeal of patriotism and service” resonates with them.