Form of words:
all Conversation and political commentary these days are focused on the 2024 national elections, and what could happen after that. This nonsense is about alliance calculator of Narendra Modi, Yogi Adityanath, Prashant Kishor and Mamata Banerjee. But forget 2024, the actual year to focus on is 2025. And nobody’s talking about it. This is the year when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh will reach a century. And the election of 2024 will pale in comparison to nearly 100 years of RSS celebrations and events.
This is not unlike the grand commemoration of 100 years of the Chinese Communist Party.
The reason we are not focusing on 2025 is because there is too much national attention on the Bharatiya Janata Party, Modi and Amit Shah, and not enough on the RSS. But what is RSS for Modi, what is CCP for Xi Jinping. Change is the main objective of RSS country’s vision, And electoral power is only a useful accessory toward that goal.
Read also: RSS’s roadmap before turning 100: New debate on freedom struggle and radical Islam, detail
Vision board for 100 year old RSS
What the RSS does by 2025 and between the Vijayadashamis of 2025 and 2026 could potentially change the way the next two generations of Indians think, and how a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ organization is perceived among the youth.
Discussions have started regarding 2025, although it is still baby steps. The pandemic greatly delayed this.
Attempts have now begun to collect the institutional histories of all Sangh groups – including religious, educational, national security and tribal organizations – about 90 – and the achievements, goals and personalities associated with each of them.
Over the next five months, various Sangh organizations will hold a series of meetings across India, both at the level of geographical units and institutions, to deliberate on the question of how best to observe and celebrate RSS 2025 . By October 2022, all these inputs will be taken up by the national units. Each organization will also set development goals for 2025. For example, the RSS currently operates around 52,000 shakhas. They will probably aim to double this by 2025.
Read also: A message for BJP in new RSS team
Number From Story till
How is the RSS going to make this new country’s vision before 2025?
This has been the thinking in the RSS for some time that even if they have majority numbers, theirs still doesn’t catch on to the narrative. That the opinion makers are dominated by liberal or progressive thinking, and are easily able to establish an international narrative against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, abrogation of Article 370, the farmers’ movement, Hathras, etc. Despite ruling Delhi since 2014, Hindutva groups have not dispensed with these opinion-generating ‘blanks’.
So the run-up to 2025 will be the journey of the ‘numbers’ From Story till, And it’s a deep, long-term conceptual project.
Towards this goal, there is a move to integrate content creation through books, school curriculum, films, exhibitions, documentaries and create an ecosystem of ‘independent’ intellectuals. Mohan Bhagwat’s remarks on the OTT universe and the Adityanath government’s invitation to the film industry to come to Uttar Pradesh are all an acknowledgment of the power of capturing cultural content.
Many of these projects, which are overseen by committees sympathetic to the RSS, will come to fruition next year when India celebrates 75 years of its independence. Two museums have been planned near the Red Fort area – one on Subhas Chandra Bose and the other on Kashmir. There is also a 75-episode TV series called . is called Swarajya for television. But it would end not only the routine anti-colonial struggle seen through the roles of Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, but also the greatness and rebellion of civilization. The proposed change in history textbooks is another step.
Moreover, the media editors’ meeting with Mohan Bhagwat recently was also much talked about, but his meeting with about a dozen book publishers a few months back did not get much attention. Its goal is to publish more books on Indian history, to expose repressed history and historical personalities.
There is a constant effort to create and work with around 1,000 educated ‘organic’ Dalit influencers (not social media) in such a way that the anti-BJP narrative like Hathras does not get a basis in future.
Read also: RSS doesn’t run BJP remotely, it’s not school principal controlling BJP leaders as students
Development from Emergency to 2025
RSS has gone through many phases in its 100 year history. From the aftermath and banning of Gandhi’s assassination to the establishment of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951 to the Emergency. The period between 1975 and 1995 was one of rapid growth; Then in 1998, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the first preacher Prime minister; Then after 2014.
“Gandhi assassination threw us back 20 years, Emergency pushed us forward 20 years,” ex-sarsanghchalak Balasaheb Deoras used to say Say,
In fact, RSS leaders like to say that their philosophy can no longer be dismissed as the marginalized or alternative intellectual discourse of India. The Overton Window is already shifting the intellectual axis. Like the ‘Congress system’, the RSS will now have to make its own. The cultural and intellectual base must now combine itself with political power.
politics is about capturing intellectual spaces and discussions as winning the election. But the vast majority of Indian political commentary is essentially and chronologically steeped in party politics, intrigue and election analysis. While we look away and shed our energies, the RSS is silently thinking of its ‘Changing-India’ project.
Of course, the cumulative benefit of all this narrative-setting will go to the BJP as well. Though the RSS prefers to call itself a ‘socio-cultural organisation’, its impact on the political structure of the country is certain.
Rama Lakshmi is ThePrint’s opinion and features editor. she tweets @RamaNewDelhi, Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Srinjoy Dey)
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