RSS: 100 years in the service of Mother India

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) celebrates 100 years of its selfless service to the nation. Over the past 100 years the organisation has faced several challenges, including the partition of the country, the ban imposed by the Nehru government, the massive crackdown by the Indira Gandhi regime during Emergency etc. Through each of these periods of crisis, the Sangh has emerged as a stronger organisation. The V.P. Singh government's espousal of the Mandal commission report threatened to divide Hindu society on casteist lines. The Sangh under the leadership of the then Sarsangchalak revived the Ramjanmabhumi movement to counter that and unify Hindu society on the Ayodhya temple issue. Interestingly, the Sangh Parivar has managed to make Hindutva ideology politically correct and mainstream. Today there is greater awareness among millions of Hindus in an unprecedented manner. Secularism is increasingly being perceived as an anti-Hindu concept. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which is widely believed to be the political arm of the RSS, is today in a commanding position on the political spectrum under the leadership of Narendra Modi, who started his career as an RSS pracharak.

- Ratan Sharda

It is very difficult to describe how RSS has impacted the national life of Bharat over 100 years. If it were so, I would not end up writing 7 books on RSS. Of these seven, three have simply talked about this impact. We can only make think of some markers that can give an indication of how Bharat would have suffered if there was no RSS. It would be no gainsaying that the very fact that RSS has survived and thrived over this century without any splits or fall outs, a hall mark of social and political organisations of Hindus.

The journey of RSS began with a few propositions - Bharat is a Hindu Rashtra, and Hindutva or Hinduness is the basis of its organic unity that thrives with such wonderful diversity, and it is a perennial civilizational nation, the only one that has survived all the onslaught and not lost its life breath. We as a nation can rise only by accepting these basic truth. To achieve all this Dr Ambedkar realized that the nation needed well trained, disciplined citizens who took pride in their civilization, history and knowledge system. To achieve the goal of creating such model citizens of Bharat, he invented the institution of Shakha. And surprisingly, this process has survived and thrived in 100 years, without any fundamental change in it. Some additions have been made, some tweaking has been done, but fundamentally, the process remains same. Replicable, expandable and proven. A better system and process is yet to be found. The secret of this recipe is selfless affection for the fellow citizens and readiness to sacrifice to make Bharat prosperous and happy.