In India, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is often judged politically. The outfit's main identity is often discussed as one which had "orchestrated the fall of the Mahatma". The secularists find the RSS a major threat to India's democracy and target it along with the ruling NDA whenever they carry out an act of opposition. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's jibe at the RSS is almost as regular as his rolling up his shirt's sleeves.
But is the RSS's identity really limited to the political? True, whether the outfit's ideology fits a pluralistic India is a topic of debate but it certainly cannot be judged only in terms of its political stance.
The RSS in western Maharashtra
When IB Times, India, spoke to Manoj Zavar, district prachar pramukh of the RSS in Ahmednagar district of western Maharashtra, he said the RSS works on several projects on the ground. "We work on ground-water conservation; 10-15 projects are currently underway in five districts of western Maharashtra as part of the RSS's initiative. We also work for the pilgrims who come to Pandharpur from various parts of the country every year. We help the guests with accommodation and sanitation facilities. We also provide them with medical help," Zavar said.
The saffron camp is often accused of targeting people who do not belong to the upper castes but in Ahmednagar, the RSS sets up hostel for tribal students. The RSS has also accomplished a water-conservation project in Eknathwadi which has resolved the crisis of drinking water in the region. Zavar also did not forget to mention the name of Suresh Khanapurkar, the RSS messiah who has completely transformed the drought-hit Shirpur taluka of Dhule district in north-western Maharashtra.
"Other parts of Maharashtra are following what Khanapurkar has accomplished in Dhule," said Zavar in a tone of pride.
But is the RSS obsessed with protecting and every other thing related with the cow, as it is often projected in the mainstream media?
Zavar hinted that the RSS doesn't work for cow protection as it is projected in the media. "We have gaushalas and we work for the cows' welfare," he said.
The RSS in Konkan
Abhijit Gokhale, a RSS leader based in Konkan, also echoed the same. "We stress on self-employment by encouraging self-help groups and also provide medical assistance," he said. The RSS also engages in rural welfare for the villages and tribals in the Konkan districts like Palghar, Thane and Raigad.
"We work to give social training to farmers besides promoting educational projects and setting up gaushalas for cow welfare. We educate people on how the cow is useful in more than one way," Gokhale told IB Times, India.
That the RSS is deeply involved in social services became evident from Gokhale's words as well as he said they had launched a social service project in 1989, the birth centenary year of the organisation's founder – Keshav Baliram Hedgewar.
"Currently, 1.5 lakh works are underway under this project in different areas," he said.
The RSS's spread in Bengal
The RSS's network in not limited to regions fertile for the Hindutva ideology, however. IBT spoke to its representatives in West Bengal, where the BJP has been a fringe player throughout but is putting in a lot of effort nowadays to make a mark, and they said that the intensity is no less there as well.
"Our shakhas (branches) have grown to 1,800 now from just 700-plus in 2013 and we are doing a lot of work on the ground level. From providing coaching to poor students to medical assistance and training to self-help groups, the RSS is committed in a lot of social service," Jishnu Basu, general secretary of the RSS, South Bengal, told IB Times India.
He said the RSS also takes a special interest in providing bio-based agricultural training in an agriculture-based state like Bengal. "We provide training on using agricultural products and relying on bio-based fertiliser and shun pesticides," he said.
Basu also mentioned about the Friends of Tribals Society, the body associated with the RSS which works in various states of the country for improving the tribals' literacy and health standards. Working since 1989, the society now has branches in 30 cities and nearly 8 lakh students enrolled in almost 30,000 schools. What also needs to be mentioned is that the society's schools have more girls (4.18 lakh) than boys (3.7 lakh).
The RSS has not lost sight of the IT sector
That the RSS has not limited itself to traditional means is also evident from the fact that it has IT Milans – weekly gatherings of RSS members who work in the information technology sector. These gatherings see a blend of the RSS's traditional methods like yogas and asanas with discussions on events of national and international importance as well as technical issues. Yong techies are drawn to the IT Milans that are held in various big cities and the RSS aim to broaden its base through influencing the workforce which constitutes India's face today: the IT personnel.
IBT analysis:
The RSS is being only politically fought by the secularists but the latter ignore the fact that the outfit has made deep inroads into the minds of several Indians not because of any polarisation but their sheer discipline and social work.
The cadre-based organisation of the saffron camp is something other parties, including the decadent Congress, can only wish to match and irrespective of the charges of forcing the Hindutva agenda on India's pluralistic society, one cannot really underestimate the impact that RSS has on the Indian society today.
Only the Left has some semblance with the saffron camp in terms of the cadre-based functioning but the former's ideological paralysis and lack of apolitical grounding have seriously dented its chances to succeed like the RSS.
The secularists need to think more than the political to effectively deal with the RSS. The centralised power model of India's most political parties has seriously limited their chances to win the battle against the RSS, which has a sound decentralised functioning which has fed the saffron brigade's well-oiled machinery which has in turn served the cause of the top leadership including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah.
