Pranab visit inspired RSS exercise to spruce up image: Observer

  • | Saturday | 22nd September, 2018

Nagpur: It was former President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit here in the first week of June that inspired the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s current impetus to change public perception about it, according to RSS observer Dileep Deodhar. “Pranab is believed to have told Bhagwat that the public need to know that Sangh is not anti-Muslim or anti-Dalit and not against following the Constitution. Even Congress president Rahul Gandhi attacked the RSS,” said Deodhar.Deodhar also recounts an incident when an outsider induced a change in the RSS thought-process. “Riding on this grey areas, detractors then put the RSS in the dock and even invented tags like ‘Hindu terror organisation’. “It was a meeting in early 1977 at Nagpur airport’s VIP enclosure between the then RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras and Janata Party stalwart Chandrashekhar.

Nagpur: It was former President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit here in the first week of June that inspired the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s current impetus to change public perception about it, according to RSS observer Dileep Deodhar. It culminated in RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat delivering a three-day lecture at the Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi on Sangh’s philosophy and world view earlier this week.Deodhar is also firm that even though Bhagwat may have sounded as distancing the RSS from the Narendra Modi government, it should “not be construed as a falling apart of the two as both the party and Sangh are gaining much from the synergies”.During his two-day stay in Nagpur, Mukherjee had “heart-to-heart” talks with RSS top bosses, including Sarsanghachalak Bhagwat. He also visited the ancestral house of RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and wrote the remark “greatest son of India” in the visitor book.Deodhar, who claims to have inside links and insights into Sangh’s functioning, said Bhagwat took Mukherjee’s advice seriously. “Pranab is believed to have told Bhagwat that the public need to know that Sangh is not anti-Muslim or anti-Dalit and not against following the Constitution. These issues need to be resolved if the RSS wants to increase its acceptability,” said Deodhar.The matter was subsequently discussed in July’s Pracharak meeting at Somnath and more recently in the RSS conclave at Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh.Deodhar said Pranab hammered home the biggest lacunae of RSS keeping itself “in a closet” that gave rise to misgivings. “Riding on this grey areas, detractors then put the RSS in the dock and even invented tags like ‘Hindu terror organisation’. Even Congress president Rahul Gandhi attacked the RSS,” said Deodhar.Deodhar also recounts an incident when an outsider induced a change in the RSS thought-process. “It was a meeting in early 1977 at Nagpur airport’s VIP enclosure between the then RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras and Janata Party stalwart Chandrashekhar. The latter told him about the offensive launched by Madhu Limaye over the dual-membership issue which threatened to break the Janata Party that had formed the first non-Congress government in the country,” he said.On Chandrashekhar’s advice, Deoras apparently agreed to go slow on use of ‘Hindutva’ term in RSS activities for two years. “This move was endorsed by the Akhil Bhartiya Pratinidhi Sabha in March that year. The diluting of the Hindutva agenda drew much flak from many Sangh stalwarts at that time,” Deodhar noted.

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