When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a three-week lockdown on March 24, the whole of India braced itself for what was going to be an incredibly tough battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the priorities were clear right from the word go. A day after the lockdown announcement, the RSS Sarsangchalak (Chief) Mohan Bhagwat extended an unequivocal message to his swayamsevak clan to put everything on the backburner, suspend the Sangh shakhas and dedicate itself completely to public service.
What followed was an unflinching resolve and indomitable spirit of every single swayamsevak who took the pledge to reach out to as many disadvantaged people and families hit by the corona crisis as possible and ensure that no one had to end up sleeping empty stomach.
The RSS committed itself in a massive way to the cause of addressing the challenges induced by the lockdown. Several volunteer and frontal organisations were set up to feed the underprivileged. Over 3.5 lakh frontline Sangh workers strived tirelessly in 67,000 different locations across the country to arrange ration for around 50 lakh families and provide food packets to over 3 crore people. The Sangh donated more than 44 lakh face masks and organised blood donation drives on a large scale. Many voluntary outfits of the RSS came forward in different parts of India to look into the matter of safety and survival of the older folk and senior citizens living on their own.
Shortly after social distancing was declared to be followed all over India, Seva Bharti - which is a frontal organisation of the RSS - started its food packing units in various cities. The volunteers pursued a relentless mission to provide food and essential rations to thousands of poor families or those with meagre financial resources. In the Okhla industrial area of south Delhi, Seva Bharti workers donated holistic ration kits to hundreds of daily wagers so that they could feed their families.
In Mumbai, which continues to be the worst affected city in India by COVID-19, the RSS got involved in massive relief operations ever since the corona crisis erupted. Sangh volunteers launched a city-wide “Annapurna Yojana” covering 24 wards of the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Under the Yojana, 17 community kitchens were established to provide freshly cooked meals to around 1.2 lakh people. Over 40,000 food packets from these kitchens were offered to the BMC alone on a daily basis, which the corporation distributed among its staff, healthcare workers and police personnel engaged in emergency services. The Jankalyan Samiti and the Keshav Srushti My Green Society - which are the service and environment wings respectively of the RSS - supplied daily food to over one and a half lac people in the city in April.
It is incredible how the people of India in different parts of the country have reposed faith in the RSS during the COVID-19 pandemic, counting on the Sangh functionaries as the saviours who would come to their aid in the hour of crisis. One pertinent example of this is reflected by the fact that students and workers from the north-east stuck in various metro cities due to the lockdown were provided special assistance by the RSS. When over 5000 stranded north-eastern Indians approached the Sangh for help, the volunteers swiftly arranged transportation facilities for them.
RSS’s compassion rose to greater heights when the organisation came to the rescue of the “stigmatised” sections of the society. Sangh workers reached out to the sex workers community in Delhi’s GB road who had been ostracised amid the coronavirus outbreak and left to fend for themselves with no source of income. The volunteers served ration packets and food to more than a thousand sex workers in the area.
So what makes the efforts of the RSS to stand up for the society in these critical times so admirable? There could be a multitude of reasons, depending on the nature, extent, and ambition of the relief work accomplished by the swayamsevaks, to adulate the Sangh’s benevolent service to the people of India during the pandemic. Perhaps the greatest of all reasons is that the Sangh workers reached out to the wider community of all faiths and beliefs without discrimination. It is an eye-opener for the pseudo-secular lobby that accuses the RSS of being anti anything that is not Hindu or does not fall in the realm of Hindutva, often blasting the Sangh in the foulest possible vocabulary.
In addition to the grave current health emergency that India is pitted against, history furnishes a plethora of examples describing that the Sangh has always been at the forefront of serving the destitute and the vulnerable irrespective of their caste and religion.
The RSS has a rich legacy of committing itself to the nation’s cause whenever required. Almost a decade before the Sangh (later became known as the RSS) came into existence in 1925 in Nagpur, the city was under the grips of a menacing plague. It was at this crucial juncture that Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, the founding father of the Sangh, and his compatriots decided to devote themselves to serving those affected by the plague in Nagpur. In the decades that followed, philanthropy and social service in the event of an epidemic or a natural calamity, or even in normalcy, became the guiding principle of the RSS. Today the organisation runs more than 1.5 lac service and rescue operations across India. Be it the Gujarat earthquake of 2001, the 2004 Tsunami or the Uttarakhand floods of 2013 - during all of these disasters, the Swamaysevaks left no stone unturned to fulfil their duties without caring for their own safety.
The glory of the RSS is entrenched in its legacy of rising to the occasion whenever the country is in a precarious situation. The Sangh has never claimed credit for its humanitarian work but instead has always gone about its duties without fuss. The motto of the RSS over the years has been to enlighten the society about the value of ‘solidarity’ and ‘community support’ in perilous times. And, for the Sangh, the word ‘community’ does not represent a particular religious community but the community of 1.3 billion Indians.
What India has learnt in this testing period of the COVID-19 pandemic is that when the country is in the hands of an able leadership like that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the citizens are assured of their safety and security on all fronts. But what the country must also acknowledge is that along with our magnificent COVID warriors in the healthcare sector, the police force and other service providing institutions, there are thousands of unsung heroes in the form of the Swayamsevaks who have put themselves on the line to perform Sewa of those who have little or nothing to fall back on.
