One Hundred Years Of... Influencing

RSS publications are thriving at a time when the print media is facing a big circulation challenge

- R. Balashankar

IT is quite a marvel that an organisation that has eschewed publicity for almost a quarter of a century of its existence has today come to occupy the centre stage of the Indian national narrative.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar used to say that the RSS' work will speak for itself and it will not go after publicity. For almost 25 years—since its inception in 1925 on Vijayadashami Day—the RSS had no publication of its own. It never sought publicity and most of its pracharaks even today lead a low-profile, reticent lifestyle.

To begin with, the Sangh depended on word-of-mouth publicity. It was basically the organisation and network that was fulfilling the transmission of ideology and the spread of organisational methodology. As it got into the national arena as a rejuvenating, reinventing, and reimagining ideological force, the need for explicit exposition of its programmes, policies and approach came into the limelight. In the post-Partition era, the falsehoods spread around the Sangh after Mahatma Gandhi's assassination forced the RSS to define its existential values.