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    Celebrating 80 years, women's wing of RSS offering self-defence training, lessons on nationalism

    Synopsis

    The samiti is only striving to give a better life to the girls in conflict areas and linking the victims with those with the right intent to help them, Seetha said.

    ET Bureau
    NEW DELHI: Motherhood is important for women, but equally important is cultivating love for the country among children, said Annadanam Seetha, general secretary of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti. The samiti, which is celebrating 80 years of its foundation this year, is conducting a nationwide drive to instill such values among young women.

    While the samiti is popularly seen as the women’s wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Seetha said it is not so. “We share the ideological leanings of RSS but we work on our own, taking guidance and support from RSS leaders whenever needed,” said the 45-year-old pracharika.

    “Women, instead of fighting for rights, should focus on their duties, on how they can hold the society together, impart patriotism to their children and family members,” Seetha told ET. “There is no need to fight for rights. It is because of fulfilling our duties that the Indian society has given us the importance and rights we have now,” she said.

    What are a woman’s duties? “Our responsibility should be matrutva, netrutva, kartrutva (motherhood, social leadership, professional excellence). The duties of the woman have to go beyond her family now, she has to prepare herself and her children for the nation’s cause, fight social evils,” Seetha said. The samiti is conducting workshops at 200 places across the country for young women.

    Called ‘Tejomaya Bharat (enlightened India)’ and ‘Hum Hain Bharat Bhagyavidhata (We are creators of India’s fate)’, nearly 65,000 women in the age group of 16-45 have participated in these events, Seetha said.

    “We are teaching our women to bring back our resilience that women like Sita and Draupadi had,” Seetha said. “Hundreds of years of aggression made Indian women docile and weak.

    They stayed at homes and lost the inner strength Indian women are born with. We are only trying to revive that in our girls,” she said. The samiti’s endeavour is to get women to listen to speeches on nationalism and participate in discussions on national issues. In the 2,500 weekly shakhas that the samiti runs, the women learn sword-fighting, yogasana, Indian martial arts using ropes and sticks, karate and concentration techniques.

    Self-defence is not a new thing among Indian women, Seetha said. “Aatmabal (inner strength) has been the biggest strength of Indian women in the past. When Devi Sita was kidnapped by Ravana and taken to Ashok Vatika and kept captive there, there was no man to protect her — no husband, no son. How did she protect herself from Ravana? Indian women have forgotten the soul strength their mothers had,” she said.

    Seetha said the ideal for every young woman should be Sita, who had the aatmabal to hold her ground in Ashoka Vatika for eight months. “She compared mighty Ravana to a blade of grass, but these days our girls run away with men for merely recharging their phones. This is because there is no one to tell them what their goals should be, what is expected of them for the society and country,” she said.

    On July 5, the samiti organised a march-past in Jammu, with more than 200 women holding swords and batons. Seetha said the nationalist fervour in the camp motivated the organisation to organise the march-past, which is otherwise restricted to two days in a year, the Hindu New Year and Vijayadashami.

    “We train our girls both in traditional martial art forms and also in judo and karate. We wanted to show our preparation to the society to make it a community drive,” she said. Besides 9,000 young women, who underwent training to become part of the samiti this year, more than 3,000 professionals, mainly lawyers, doctors and IT professionals who identify with the Hindu way of life, have associated with the organisation in the recent months, according to Seetha. She said women from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Assam, Telangana and Punjab have enrolled in the samiti in large numbers.

    The story goes that Laxmibai Kelkar persuaded KB Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, on the need to start a women’s wing in the Sangh and established the Rashtra Sevika Samiti at Wardha in 1936.

    Seetha brushed aside recent accusations that the samiti is trafficking girls from Assam and placing them in schools in Punjab and Gujarat where they are undergoing training in the Hindu way of life. “There is innocence among people in Assam and they trust everybody. We are only working to protect them from some bad people who are creating tension there,” she said. Parents send children willingly to the Samiti, Seetha said.

    “Their eyes well up with gratitude every time they see us because they know their girls are being educated and given a life they could have never got, amid all the poverty and violence.

    They look up to as protectors; they trust us completely because we work with them,” she said.

    The samiti is only striving to give a better life to the girls in conflict areas and linking the victims with those with the right intent to help them, Seetha said. “The relationship between social activists and society is complex and people who are criticising us have not understood that…We are only trying to secure as many as we can, give them a good life,” she said.

    On Sundays, the hostels run by the samiti are open for parents to call, Seetha said. “We are responsible for the safety of the children who are in our hostels. We ourselves escort the girls to their families on festival days… And there is nothing wrong in knowing the country and its culture. Knowing that will instil pride in the girls,” she said.


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