Training swayamsevaks

No membership rolls are kept by the RSS and insiders often complain of dwindling attendance at the 8220;shakhas8221;. But a front page report in the latest issue of Organiser, based on an interview with RSS general secretary Mohan Bhagwat

No membership rolls are kept by the RSS and insiders often complain of dwindling attendance at the 8220;shakhas8221;. But a front page report in the latest issue of Organiser, based on an interview with RSS general secretary Mohan Bhagwat, claims that the number of participants at the annual Sangh Shiksha Vargas have been growing. The RSS imparts organisational training to its cadres through these three-tier annual camps. The Prathamik Shiksa Varga camps for schoolchildren and the Dviteeya for older students are organised at the local prant level, while the Triteeya Varsha Varga or third year Officers8217; Training Camp is held only at Nagpur.

A total of 75 Sangh Shiksha Vargas were held all over the country at 55 places this year. The nature of training has also changed. According to the report: 8220;Earlier, the main focus used to be on the Sangh shakha. But now other activities like training for service activities, prachar publicity, sampark contact and yoga have also been included in the OTC curriculum.8221; The students are also acquainted 8220;with the glorious past of the country8221;, says the report, without mentioning whether the doctrine of Hindutva and Hindu rashtra still find pride of place in the curriculum.

Temple tales

This week8217;s editorial slams the chief ministers of both Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu for tampering with Hindu temples. Congress Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy has become 8220;a land shark8221; who is selling temple lands to raise money for government expenditure 8220;in the guise of protecting the temple lands from grabbers8221;. Accusing the state government of also diverting temple revenue to the state exchequer, it says, 8220;needless to add that the Chief Minister Samuel Reddy is proactive in all this8221;.

If Reddy is referred to by his Christian name, the editorial attacks the 8220;atheist8221; Karunanidhi for seeking to appoint non-Brahmins to the post of priests. The editorial notes that there is nothing 8220;revolutionary8221; about the move8212;made more than two decades ago. Jayendra Saraswati of the Kanchi mutt 8220;had begun training the socially backward classes into temple rituals8221;.

But 8220;Karunanidhi, being an atheist, has no business deciding on issues related to religion. Reforms ought to and will come from within the society. Karunanidhi can play patron, if he dares, to churches and mosques8221;.

Middle class blues

Organiser columnist Geeta, who writes on 8216;Money Matters8217;, maintains that 8220;the middle class, flaunted by the government as the backbone of the Indian economy, is under siege8221;. Signs of the siege include Arjun Singh8217;s quota move to cut into the seats for the middle class in university and professional colleges; P Chidambaram8217;s decision to complicate tax returns; the fuel price hike; and the proposal to impose a TDS on post office savings schemes.

The trouble for the middle class, she adds, 8220;is that none of the mainline political parties is bothered about them. According to political parties, this class does not have votebanks and they do not even go to poll centres8221;.

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But in a warning that appears aimed as much at the BJP as the UPA, she concludes that 8220;middle class people are opinion leaders and the opinion can trickle down fast enough to uproot a government8221;.

Jesus Christ!

Continuing his thesis on the 8216;coming clash of religions8217; between Hinduism and Christianity, Subramaniam Swamy says Hindus must be prepared for the combat 8220;by developing a new mindset of virat Hindutva and by building an armoury of counterarguments to undermine the theological self-assurance of foreign missionaries8221;. The 8220;core weapon8221; for Hindus is the new research on Christianity. This includes the theory that 8220;Jesus Christ may have indeed been a Mahayana Buddhist, i.e. de facto Hindu8221; who went from Kashmir to Jerusalem to educate the Jews in Buddhism but was crucified. 8220;However, thanks to the yogic powers he had acquired in India, he escaped and came back to Kashmir.8221;

Urging Hindus to take the 8220;war of theology to the Christian camp8221;, Swamy says, 8220;let them be on the defensive and answer all these researches including the Da Vinci Code of their own co-religionists, and leave us in peace8221;.

Compiled by Manini Chatterjee