RSS meet in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj to focus on Dalit outreach

However, the RSS brand of 'inclusive Hindutva' faces resistance from within

With the influence of Dalit-led political parties at an ebb in the Hindi heartland, the top leadership of the RSS will congregate from Sunday in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj to discuss ways to reinforce the Sangh Parivar's Dalit outreach.

The four-day meeting will also review the Sangh's preparations to celebrate the centenary of its founding in 2025, especially its three-year plan, put in place in 2021, to expand its shakha network from 55,000 to one lakh by 2024, which incidentally coincides with the year of the next Lok Sabha polls. The RSS will further discuss some of the issues its chief, Mohan Bhagwat, flagged in his Vijayadashami address in Nagpur on October 5. These are - integrating women's participation in the mainstream of RSS activities, push for education in the mother tongue, and dialogue with Muslim intellectuals and clergy, its publicity chief Sunil Ambekar said in Prayagraj on Saturday.

The venue of the consultations is significant since the BJP, on the back of the work of its ideological parent, the RSS, made substantial inroads into UP's Scheduled Caste voter base in the February-March Assembly polls and would like to bolster it in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

Also Read | Bengal RSS camps see 60% rise in trainees in 2022

However, the RSS brand of "inclusive Hindutva", which speaks of 'one well, one temple and one cremation ground' for all Hindus, faces resistance from within. The Karnataka government, run by its ideological offspring, the BJP, has unveiled a plan to develop separate Dalit burial grounds in all gram panchayats in the state. In UP, another BJP-ruled state, the atrocities on Dalits, particularly Dalit women, continue unabated.

If earlier the RSS defined its Dalit outreach within the contours of samajik samarasta, or social harmony, its chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has of late been more strident on the subject, calling for samata, or equality, and annihilation of caste. The Sangh Parivar believes it has, with its efforts to appropriate Dalit icon B R Ambedkar, blunted the radical edge of Ambedkarite politics but needs to convince the rest of the Hindu society. In his Vijayadashami address, Bhagwat appealed to upper-caste Hindus for the need to do their bit in demolishing caste.

The Prayagraj meeting is of the Sangh's Akhil Bharatiya Karyakari Mandal, or the All India Executive Board, which meets once a year before Diwali. Apart from Bhagwat, Dattatreya Hosabale, the top functionaries of its 45 regional units and all affiliates will attend.