Rekindling national consciousness

The centenary year of the RSS marks its mission to unify and awaken India's civilisational pride, self-renewal, and strength through dedicated action and cultural cohesion

- ANIRBAN GANGULY

RSS Sarsanghchalak Dr Mohan Bhagwat's Vijaya Dashami address this year heralded the start of a new era for the RSS and the achievement of a historic milestone. It was a watershed moment; the RSS had entered its centenary year.

Each year the Vijaya Dashami address proffers a new dimension of thought and action and leaves most with a sense of renewed vigour and commitment for dedication to causes that are beyond the routine self. RSS at hundred, the essence of this year's address, was also a moment for a deeper and a more lasting self-renewal.

Through challenging decades, the RSS often faced inveterate hatred and opposition, undisguised odium. These invectives and attacks primarily came from forces, ideologies and movements for whom the term 'glorious Bharat' is a red rag, civilisational India just another imagined space and for whom the RSS was worthy of being decimated since it espoused these among many other ideas and narratives. The Sangh has persisted, survived, expanded and ultimately triumphed.

For an organization and a movement as wide and varied as RSS, a self-renewing existence and expansion through a ceaselessly multifaceted action for societal transformation, empowerment and equity and for the recovery of the civilisational and cultural fundamentals of Bharat, the persistence of a century is, in itself, the indication of its resilient spirit and transformative objective.

One of the RSS stalwarts, HVSeshadri, who made seminal contributions in later years, in articulating the Sangh's world-view, writes on how Dr Hedgewar's - Doctorji's - thoughts, when he was in the thick of the struggle for freedom, also 'went much farther than the immediate objective of achieving freedom.