RSS Quotes

“As long as Modi and the BJP do not back away from asserting India’s strategic interests and continue to work for a militarily strong country (which includes a growing security relationship with the US and Japan), the RSS and its affiliates will continue to support Modi’s right to shape Indian foreign policy.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“Both China and India aspire for the same goals in the same geographical region; hence they will, at any given time, be more of competitors than friends.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“The RSS aims to plan for the long run, while prime ministers and their governments are transitory.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“The shift of the RSS’s urban membership core from the lower middle class (including small-scale traders) to educated professionals has moderated its once implacable opposition to globalization as well as encouraged its greater openness on a wide range of social and economic issues.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“Ironically, the RSS leadership has always implicitly accepted the self-reliance policies adopted by India’s first prime minister, Nehru (1947–64).”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“The importance given to the Amarnath pilgrimage by the sangh parivar suggests, according to journalist and scholar Raksha Kumar, an effort to turn the site into a kind of Indian Jerusalem, ‘mixing religious and national sentiment to turn the disputed territory into sacred ground that can never be surrendered’.44”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“While the accuracy of the contention is difficult to ascertain, the BJP now claims to be the largest political party in the world, with a membership of 100 million.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“In 1943, Nathuram Godse, Narayan Apte and J.D. Jogalekar—young RSS members who left the organization in 1938 after it refused to involve itself in the Hyderabad movement—formed the militant Hindu Rashtra Dal, with branches in western Maharashtra.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“Kerala, with about 5000 shakhas, has one of the highest densities of these daily-meeting centres among Indian states—even more than the four RSS administrative areas of BJP-ruled Maharashtra, which cumulatively boast some 4000 shakhas.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“The RSS first entered the Northeast in Assam and, among the states of the region, that is where it remains the strongest.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“With a mix of ethnicities and cultures, Hindu nationalism is faced with the challenge of accommodating itself to diverse regional cultures on a range of core Hindu nationalist issues, like the veneration of the cow.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“Contrary to the assertions popular in sections of Indian media, the sangh parivar does not shape the key elements of government policy on issues of high importance, such as economic development. The issue of coal denationalization illustrates the limits of the RSS affiliates’ influence.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“the power balance between the party and the RSS seems to be gradually shifting in favour of the party.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside

“The RSS since the early 1990s has grown into one of the world’s largest non-government associations, with an estimated 1.5–2 million regular participants in its nearly 57,000 local daily meetings (referred to as shakhas), 14,000 weekly shakhas and 7000 monthly shakhas, taking place across 36,293 different locations nationwide as of 2016.”
― Walter K. Andersen, The RSS: A View to the Inside