Secession, Struggle, and Strength

From facing abductions and killings in the Northeast to shaping peace accords today, RSS Pracharaks embody a saga of sacrifice, resilience, and the pursuit of India’s unity and self-respect

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In the villages and forests of the Northeast, RSS Pracharaks worked at the grassroots, countering separatism with service and solidarity

Wherever secessionist forces were active in India, RSS Swayamsevaks and Pracharaks faced the brunt of their hate simply because they stood for India’s cultural and geographical unity.

They spoke of her civilisational continuity, worked for social cohesion, for the empowerment of the marginalised and resisted their exploitation. In the 1980s and 1990s and for a number of years into the new millennium, India’s northeast faced a number of such challenging situations.

‘The RSS's Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS), in its resolution on Assam in 1991, analysed the situation. Condoling the death of Pracharak Omprakash Chaturvedi and the abduction and disappearance of Pracharak Murali Manohar from Kerala, it pointed at the nexus of separatist forces and terrorist organisations in trying to dismember India. The ABPS resolution observed how, “documents recovered by the army during their raids on the secret hideouts of the U.L.F.A. have clearly revealed its clandestine links with N.S.C.N. of Nagaland - a banned fundamentalist Christian Organisation, the People’ Liberation Army of Manipur, leftist secessionists of Burma, L.T.T.E. of Sri Lanka and Khalistanis of Punjab-all of which work in collusion with the international conspiracy to dismember Bharat”

Since they were at the forefront in society of trying to foil this conspiracy of dismembering Bharat, RSS Pracharaks and Swayamsevaks faced the onslaught. The communist parties or their cadres did not face such a situation. Their ideology acted as their shield. They did not believe in the fundamental and civilisational unity of India. Such an ideology suited separatists.