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RSS to organise Hindu Conferences nationwide to mark centenary year

RSS to organise Hindu Conferences nationwide to mark centenary year

The RSS will complete 100 years of its establishment on Vijayadashami this year. To mark this milestone, celebrations will begin on August 26 with a lecture series by RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, which will take place in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata.
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The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has announced plans to organise Hindu conferences and public outreach programs across the country as part of its centenary year celebrations.The RSS will complete 100 years of its establishment on Vijayadashami this year. To mark this milestone, celebrations will begin on August 26 with a lecture series by RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, which will take place in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata.For its centenary year, the RSS has set a goal to reach every block in every state across the country. The organisation considers its local branches (shakhas) its greatest strength and aims to increase the number of shakhas to over one lakh this year.This information was shared by Anil Gupta, Delhi Prant Karyavah, Delhi RSS, during the Dev Rishi Narad Journalism Awards ceremony. He stated that the centenary year celebrations would be inaugurated on August 26 with a three-day lecture series by Mohan Bhagwat in the four major metros. Alongside this, nationwide outreach campaigns will also be conducted.Towards the end of the year, the RSS plans to organise 1,500 to 1,600 Hindu conferences across India. The organisation was founded on Vijayadashami, which falls on October 2 this year, marking its 100th anniversary.Meanwhile, on Thursday, RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, speaking at the launch of the biography of late Ayurveda Practitioner and RSS leader Dada Khadiwale in Pune, emphasised that the core principle of RSS is "belongingness.""If the RSS were to be described in one word, it would be 'belongingness'," Bhagwat said, adding that this feeling must grow stronger in society."If the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) were to be described in just one word, that word would be 'belongingness'. What does the Sangh do? It organises Hindus. And this growing sense of belongingness should be further strengthened because the entire world is sustained by it," he added.Bhagwat said that real unity comes from recognising the common thread that connects everyone. Humans, unlike animals, have the ability to rise above selfishness, he explained. "The one who understands this belongingness is truly human," he said.

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MP Upendra Kushwaha seeks fairer representation in parliament for Bihar and UP
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Hindustan Times

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  • Hindustan Times

MP Upendra Kushwaha seeks fairer representation in parliament for Bihar and UP

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Hindustan Times

timean hour ago

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Chasing the ghosts of the Emergency

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Vandita Mishra writes: Not just about the Emergency
Vandita Mishra writes: Not just about the Emergency

Indian Express

time2 hours ago

  • Indian Express

Vandita Mishra writes: Not just about the Emergency

Dear Express Reader, This has been a week of commemoration of the Emergency as a cataclysmic event in the distant past. This has been a week to acknowledge that the shadows cast by the suspension of democracy, 1975-1977, are long. Many of the challenges for a democratic politics are the same, and they have been routinised — the weaponisation of laws to shrink spaces for dissent and free expression, a politics of labelling and distrust, attempts by the Executive to undermine and subdue other institutions like the Media and the Court, demonisation of the Opposition. Other challenges are new, because in its long journey, democracy itself stands at a different milestone. 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It also propagates a politics of anti-pluralism. The week in which 50 years of Emergency were marked ended with a rising — and disquietingly anti-pluralist — clamour that seems to give the lie to the self-righteous lip service to democracy over the last few days by the BJP-led establishment. An RSS general secretary set the ball rolling, asking for a discussion on whether the words 'socialist' and 'secular', added to the Constitution's Preamble by the Indira Gandhi government during the Emergency, should be retained. He was joined by the Vice President, who said that the change to the Preamble was a 'sacrilege to the spirit of sanatan' and the words were 'nasoor', a festering wound. A BJP chief minister chimed in: 'Socialism' and 'secularism' are Western concepts, have no place in Indian civilisation, he said. And two Union ministers added the weight of their office to the argument. This, when successive post-Emergency regimes have not reversed the Preamble amendment, even as other changes have been rolled back, and the Supreme Court has upheld it. Secularism was described as a 'basic feature' in the 13-judge bench Kesavananda Bharati ruling even before the Emergency-era amendment, and the non-justiciable Directive Principles of State Policy have been invoked to recognise that 'socialism' was an ideal for those who framed a Constitution for a society of great inequalities. It is evident that the real aversion is not to 'socialist' — in fact, on the broad direction of the economy, all post-liberalisation governments have looked the same, more or less. This choreographed controversy is about 'secular'. The Narendra Modi government, now in its third term, has presided over the steady challenging of the constitutional commitment to secularism as equal respect for all religions, and a spreading Hindu-isation of public institutions and spaces. The PM's conduct of the rituals of consecration of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya in January 2024 marked a turning point. It underlined the message that, amid growing polarisation, the religion of the majority community would now be a visible marker of the life of a diverse and multi-religious nation, demanding deference, if not prostration from all. So, at the end of a week like this one, is a question: Who is responsible for ensuring that the Emergency does not come again? Who is expected to take on the burden of an anti-Emergency politics that guards against attempts to chip away at pluralism and democracy? In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, 'democracy-in-danger' and 'Constitution-under-siege' became electoral slogans and while the outcome saw a whittling down of the BJP government's numbers, it was certainly no mandate for the Opposition. Does that mean that the people don't worry, or worry enough, about the spectre of diminishing democracy? 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