What does it mean when the Government of India, on the eve of Gandhi Jayanti, releases a coin and a stamp to imprint the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh into history?

By now, you’ve probably skimmed through enough coverage of the RSS centenary to know who spoke and what happened on the occasion. But let me offer you something different: The view of someone who spent more than two decades in khaki shorts, only to now find himself working alongside “ultra pro max fans” of Baapu.

On the first two days of October 2025, India witnessed not one centenary celebration of the RSS but two. One in Delhi, choreographed under the Ministry of Culture’s seal, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on stage and the trappings of the State itself; the other in Nagpur, the Sangh’s spiritual home, where Mohan Bhagwat addressed disciplined swayamsevaks, accompanied by former President Ram Nath Kovind, underneath the ritual gravity of Vijayadashami.

To look only at Nagpur – as most commentators have – is to miss half the story. The centenary was a two-city theatre, two forms of expression, and two kinds of legitimacy: one conferred by the Government of India, the other cultivated by the RSS for itself.

Which matters more? I leave that to you. However, the real question, as the dust of the centenary settles, is what this twin staging tells us not about the past hundred years of the RSS, but about the hundred it wants to claim next.

Songs before speeches

There is another small detail outsiders miss. In every RSS function, there is always an ekal geet or the solo song, a ritual everyone endures. These are carefully chosen, written with purpose, heavy with meaning. For decades, most swayamsevaks have fought sleep during these sessions. I’ve seen it, and I’ve done it. In Delhi, at the centenary event, some in the audience nodded off until the speeches began, and some continued even after they began.

RSS events have their own contours. No applause, no swaying, no polite smiles. Just silence, or the occasional nap. I always thought of it as musical yoga – a training in patience disguised as melody.

Which is exactly why the centenary songs spoke louder than most commentaries.

Delhi’s song was reflective: “Shoonya se ek shatak bante ank ki manbhavna”, the emotional state and sentiments of a number that journeyed from zero to a hundred – a century of trudging through hostile times, and pride in reaching this far. It carried history’s weight, almost like a sigh of relief. 

Nagpur’s song, on the other hand, was about the core spirit, the motion – the virat rashtra purush striding forward, the RSS itself as the embodiment of Hindu rashtra. “Ek se anek ka, mool tatva goonjta”, the ever-present echo inherent in the growing numbers.

If Delhi hummed nostalgia, Nagpur marched with resolve.

And that’s the tell. The Delhi show might have been organised by the Government of India, wrapped in stamps and coins and applause, but if the event is RSS, then I assure you the geet is RSS too. That’s how you tell whose house you’re really in.

The speeches that mattered

The three most important pracharaks of RSS spoke at these events.

Of the three marquee speeches, the one you’ve heard least about was arguably the one that mattered most: Dattatreya Hosabale in Delhi. (His and Bhagwat’s speeches in Nagpur are more important for the RSS’s own direction. Modi’s speech matters as a reflection of how the state presents the Sangh to the world.)

In Delhi, Hosabale, Sangh’s sarkaryawah - the second in command – was calm, unshowy, but clear. He more than thanked the Ministry for the coin and the stamp. He framed the centenary as a moment of social acceptance. That choice of his words matters. He did not say the state had merely recognised the RSS. He said society had accepted it. For an organisation that claims to be a thought – a vichaar – that is the highest praise.

More importantly, he outlined five pillars for the RSS’s future agenda:

Social equality and equity, with zero discrimination.

Climate conservation.

Awakening families to retain cultural values through modernisation.

Swadeshi, or self-reliance.

Civil responsibility.

Read those again. If political parties and civil society fail to lead on climate change and social inequality, the Sangh – with its unmatched grassroots machinery – will happily occupy that space. It has the discipline, patience, and reach to mobilise where others cannot. And once it moves, it rarely retreats.

Place them alongside Hosabale’s insistence that the Sangh’s work be paristithi-nirpeksha – independent of circumstance – and you see the plan. The RSS will not be a reactionary choir. It will be a long-run organiser, a rhythm-maker. It will build structures and habits that survive electoral cycles.

Ignore it, and don’t be surprised if they start planting saplings while political parties are still tweeting hashtags.

And on social equality. Hosabale did not frame it as a trouncing of caste agitation. He framed it as social equity and family awakening. That tactic makes the theme portable: it can be presented as moral reform rather than political conquest. 

Ambedkar’s invocation across these events is not accidental. If you also take into account the former President's speech, then his mentions dwarf everyone else’s. The Sangh is not only talking about Ambedkar; it is folding him into its own story. This is a long-play strategy. If you can make Ambedkar’s language part of your argument for social unity, you blunt one of the sharpest critiques against yourself.

Bhagwat in Nagpur, meanwhile, struck the deeper notes. 

He spoke of unity, social cohesion, of the dangers of sowing discord – sometimes a veiled rebuke to cow vigilantes or lawbreakers acting in the Sangh’s name. He warned of the “grammar of anarchy”. He stressed that Indian culture demands equal respect for all, that no community must feel superior to another.

But what stood out was his grappling with modern anxieties. Climate change, environmental disasters, the schism between technological progress and the human ability to adapt – these weren’t filler lines. They were repeated, weighted. For Bhagwat, progress without morality, without ecological balance, leads not just to inequality but to social explosions. He even pointed to neighbouring countries unraveling under these pressures. That’s a quiet admission: the RSS isn’t just worried about India’s enemies, it’s worried about India’s systems failing from within.

And he repeatedly circled back to the climate. In public, a few of these themes may seem standard centre-right paternalism. In the Sangh’s mouth, they are repositioned as obligations of civilisational stewardship.

He worried about capitalism’s failures, about inequality eating away at social stability, about progress that leaves human beings behind and destabilises neighbours. He talked of morality in public life, social responsibility, and the dangers of manufactured discord. And on Gandhi Jayanti, it was Bhagwat – not Modi – who invoked Gandhi’s name. A quiet but deliberate insertion into a day that will go down in its history.

And then Modi.

Modi’s address was shorter than many expected. I won a friendly bet on this one. My friend swore it would be the usual long oratory; I said I’d be surprised if that happens at an RSS event. He clocked in well under his campaign-length standard. Discipline, even for the Prime Minister.

He reframed his life as a product of the Sangh; he celebrated the ordinary swayamsevak who becomes extraordinary through steady work. He linked policy talk to Sangh values. 

He called the RSS a divine avatar, recalled swayamsevaks at the frontlines of floods and wars. But he also stitched the RSS’s goals neatly to his government’s policies: self-reliance, social equity, development with cultural roots. The speech was less about the RSS as a cultural force and more about the RSS as a governing partner – one stream flowing seamlessly into another.

He did what a swayamsevak does: he acknowledged the RSS’s place in shaping him, and praised its discipline. He pointed to its contributions in wars, in disaster relief, and in social reform efforts. He invoked Ambedkar, caste reform, and the need to move with the times. But his speech was not the anchor. It was the symbolic presence of the most successful swayamsevak – proof that one of their own had scaled the heights of state power. That was enough. He needn't say more.

His speech may have invoked more frequent applause from attending listeners, but in substance, it told you less about the Sangh’s future than Hosabale and Bhagwat did in their quieter tones.

In both Hosabale and Bhagwat, you see the roadmap. Climate change, caste, swadeshi, civil responsibility, and social cohesion. These will be the Sangh’s talking points in the years to come. And society should not underestimate that. For every issue where political parties are reactive, the Sangh promises proactive, disciplined, ground-level work. That is how it builds influence – not by grand pronouncements, but by forming habits, by shaping behaviour, by creating “vyakti nirmaan,” the building of individuals.

The ironies woven through

The whole centenary dripped with ironies, though not the kind that need bullet points to spell them out.

Start with the Government of India releasing a coin engraved with swayamsevaks on the eve of Gandhi Jayanti. If providence wanted to play a prank, it couldn’t have scripted it better.

Or take Ambedkar. He appeared more in speeches than Hedgewar or Golwalkar, a pivot that shows where the RSS wants to root its social reform agenda. That’s not tokenism; that’s future positioning.

But perhaps the more subtle insight is this: while Delhi glittered with officialdom, the real Sangh moment was in Nagpur, where silence, songs, and speeches reflected the organisation’s deeper currents. Delhi was recognition. Nagpur was continuity. Delhi showed the RSS’s place in the halls of power. Nagpur showed why it endured long enough to get there.

The signal beneath the noise

What do we take from all this? Not the headlines about Modi, those are predictable. Not the pomp of Delhi, that was inevitable.

The real signal lies in Hosabale’s checklist and Bhagwat’s worries: caste, cohesion, climate, capitalism, culture. The RSS has placed itself squarely in debates about progress, morality, and survival – not as an NGO, not as a political party, but as a civilisational project with boots already on the ground.

For some, that will be reassuring. For others, unsettling. Either way, it’s not ignorable. Because the roadmap is not hidden. It was spelled out in plain language, in speeches most people will skim past.

As for which event mattered more, that’s not for me to answer. Bapu himself, were he watching, might have smiled at the irony. He knew the weight of discipline, the importance of patience, and the dangers of forgetting the ethics of journalism. 

As my feeble attempt to fly Mahatma Gandhi’s flag after his birthday, I leave that decision to you.

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