“During such meets, all contemporary issues are discussed. So naturally, Udaipur and Amravati incidents were also discussed. There is anger among workers over the incidents… However, this anger has to be channelled and expressed responsibly. That is where the Sangh has a role to play,” a senior RSS functionary who attended the meeting said.
The Prant Pracharak Baithak was organised from Thursday to Saturday in Jhunjhunu. This was the first physical meeting of the regional in-charges since the onset of the Covid pandemic.
After the meeting, RSS publicity in-charge Sunil Ambekar addressed the media. In response to a question on the controversy around a film poster depicting Goddess Kaali as smoking a cigarette, Ambekar said, “While exercising freedom of expression, one must take care of public sentiments as well.”
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On the Udaipur incident, Ambekar said, “The brutal murder in Udaipur is totally condemnable. No amount of criticism of the incident would be enough. We have a democracy in our country. If one does not like what someone says, then there is a democratic way of responding to it. Civilised society will always criticise such incidents.”
Arguing that the Hindu community had responded to the incident in a peaceful and constitutional way, Ambekar said, “It is expected from the Muslim community that they condemn the incident. Some Muslim intellectuals have done that. But even the Muslim community in general must come forward and oppose such things vigorously. Such incidents are in the interest of neither society nor the country.”
According to the RSS, the meeting took stock of the work done by pracharaks during the pandemic and charted out the future course of action. Ambekar said that in the past couple of years, close to 23,000 people had participated in the RSS’s training programme called Sangh Shiksha Varg. Of these, 18,981 people were under 40 and 2,925 above 40. The RSS has 101 such training centres across the country.
Ambekar said that post-pandemic, the RSS’s focus is to restart its regular work with full vigour. At present, the RSS has 56,824 shakhas (branches). He said the RSS’s work on water management, waste management, environment protection and cleanliness was progressing well with societal participation even as the programme of kutumb prabodhan (preserving family values) received a new thrust.
As the country celebrated 75th year of Independence, unknown and unsung heroes of the freedom struggle must be remembered and promoted, it was declared in the meeting.
Ambekar said that on the basis of the discussions at the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha Baithak a few months ago, where the idea of self-employment was stressed, more than 4,000 youths had been trained for self-employment by 22 organisations. The RSS will also be organising programmes in this regard from July 15 to August 21.
As it completes 100 years in 2025, the RSS is planning to increase the number of its shakhas to 1 lakh.