Nagpur: Hinting at its secular side, the RSS appears to come with an all-inclusive strategy at the Vijayadashami function to be organised at RSS headquarters on Thursday. The RSS has made it a point to include classical singer Ustad Rashid Khan among the special invitees in the function to mark the organization’s foundation day. The chief guest will be child rights activist and Nobel laureate Kailash Sathyarthi who will be sharing the dais with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. The choice of chief guest too is a departure from RSS tradition of generally inviting former army officials or spiritual leaders. The tradition broke with RSS inviting former President and Congressman Pranab Mukherjee at the valedictory function of its third year officers’ training course. This year’s Vijayadashami also holds importance due to the recent speeches by Bhagwat projecting a more moderate stance. In the latest speech at New Delhi, Bhagwat had gone to the extent of saying some contents in book ‘Bunch of Thoughts’ by RSS’ second chief M S Gowalkar were no longer relevant in the present times. He had also dismissed the idea of RSS backing a Congress-free country and that it thought Muslims to be aliens. This year an activist, Mohnish Jablapure had moved the court against RSS’s practice of displaying weapons as part of its ritual shastra puja ceremony. Jablapure has claimed to have filed a complaint with the police asking it to prevent RSS from displaying weapons as it did not have licence to possess them. RSS senior leaders said tradition would continue and so far they had not received any order from the police or the court to discontinue it. Meanwhile DCP Zone 3 Rahul Maknikar said if there was a complaint the police would carry out a verification under the provisions of the Arms Act to find if any prohibited weapons were being put on display.

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