The Congress vice-president obviously knows very little about the RSS and the work its women's wing has done since its inception as early as in 1936, writes  Ajay Bhardwaj

last week, when AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi sought to put the RSS in the dock for not allowing women to come to the forefront and be part of Sangh morning shakhas imputing that the reason forthis was because the drill was conducted by shorts-wearing swayamsevaks, the RSS' all-India Prachar Pramukh Manmohan Vaidya politely rebutted the Nehru-Gandhi scion a day later saying Gandhi's question was akin to asking why women are not part of the men's hockey team.

Vaidya's innate decency of response aside, the fact is that the founder of the RSS KB Hedgewar had very early on realised the importance of women in nation-building and had made sure that their role was not confined to home and hearth, as it were. Soon after the RSS came into being and established roots in the first decade of its existence, laxmibai Kelkar, under the guidance and patronage of Hedgewar, set up the Rashtra Sevika Samiti in 1936 to carry forward the mission of nation building with the involvement of women. like the RSS, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti was also set up on Vijayadashmi day (at Wardha in Maharashtra).

Though technically a completely independent set-up, it is popularly known as the women's wing of the RSS and it too organises shakhas on a similar pattern to that of the RSS, has its own dress code, drill and discourses that address the powerful woman ethos of Indic culture. Senior RSS leaders have frequent interactions with various units of the Samiti on ideological issues. The all-India head of the organisation is known as Pramukh Karyavahika and the Samiti has units in states and cities across India. At a conservative estimate, the total number of sevikas is around 25 lakh spread across 3,500 shakhas.

Recently, in Delhi, the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti undertook a route march - Path Sanchalan - led by a young woman riding a horse carrying the organisational flag followed by thousands of sevikas in a grand show of woman power or nari shakti. Whither, the allegedly gender-based suppression Rahul Gandhi was hinting atIJ Indeed, the organisation has undertaken more than 250 social welfare projects to uplift downtrodden women or to help those coming from economically poor sections. They are shaped into self-dependent, confident women who can fend for themselves. Drishti is one such project being run by sevikas in strife-torn Jammu & Kashmir to rehabilitate conflict-affected women and girls. In fact, only the training ground for men and women in RSS is different; on an operational basis one sees them collaborating as equals in

Sangh-backed organisations such as Sanskar Bharati, ABVP or Adhivakta Parishad. Translating Swami Vivekananda's vision of uplifting and strengthening the woman force of the country, for in them lies the core strength of the nation on the ground especially in village and small-town India has been a huge achievement of the RSS. lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, who has been a lifelong sevika, illustrates the culture, philosophy and ethos of the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti.

To be blunt, Rahul Gandhi does not know what he is talking about. To be more charitable, in his ignorance he has trivialised a noble effort for perceived cheap political gain. Even the shorts allusion, if that is his attempt at ill-conceived 'humour' is out of place given the RSS attire having switched from khaki shorts to brown trousers.

The RSS ethos is that men and women are equal, not necessarily always the same. But then the deracinated elite of the country has never understood that, and one should not expect anything better from Rahul Gandhi who is an exemplar of that class of people.

(The writer is a freelance contributor.)