RSS’s ‘technical’ problem: Saffron organisation needs change in mindset

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The major problem with the RSS is its mindset. When there are meetings of senior RSS functionaries, journalists gathered outside the venue find it difficult to learn about the agenda or the participants, etc.

In the late nineties, when MG Vaidya was appointed spokesperson, there was a proper channel of communication and it was easier, but when the leadership realized that his successor Ram Madhav spoke to the media more than RSS wanted him to, it withdrew him and abolished the post of spokesperson. It said that Prachar Pramukh Manmohan Vaidya would speak to media when required. This is clearly out of step with the times when instant communication is so necessary.

Even the armed forces have changed in the last two decades. Now serving officers meet the media and media persons have access to their activities. The RSS, its activities are still out of bounds to the media and often it doesn’t even reveal the bare facts of its programmes. It is not that they have some secret activities going on, it is just an entrenched mindset.

The RSS, which is virtually running the BJP’s first majority government (though it denies this), is still to realize that its activities can’t remain unscrutinised by the media or ordinary citizens. Its pracharaks and several leaders are often seen virtually dictating to ministers and officers but they refuse to be accountable – rather like the case of 10, Janpath in the UPA governments

So, if one of the prominent publications an article as it did, the RSS ought to have stood by that. And if it felt that it was wrong to publish such article, it should have fixed responsibility for that. The problem with the RSS, however, is that it will not do so, it will always distance itself from its organs – on technical grounds.