Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday thanked the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionaries for their relentless service to mankind over a period of last 96 years and said if anybody wanted to know about RSS, he or she should look at the work the organisation had done to serve society.

He said the kind of service the RSS had extended during the most trying times of Covid, signified the philosophy and outlook of the organisation.

Addressing a function on the occasion of the release of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Swarnim Bharat ke Dishasutra, a book written by senior RSS functionary Sunil Ambekar, Yogi said that this book would present a guiding direction to the country as the vision of India and the vision of RSS had always been the same.

" Four years from now, the RSS will be celebrating its centenary, an achievement for any organisation which has helped humanity without taking any government help and that too without seeking any limelight," he said.

He said that it would be hard to imagine the overpowering feeling of nationality among the RSS which went down south to build Vivekananda Memorial and up in the north to set up service camps for devotees of Amarnath.

The chief minister recalled that during his days as Member of Parliament from Gorakhpur, youth used to come to him asking for recommendation letters for free coachings to aspiring students in Delhi and Mumbai. Similarly, I came to know that this organisation used to run facilities for the attendants of the patients at Tata Cancer Hospital in Mumbai or SGPGI, Lucknow. I used to tell everyone that no recommendation letter was required because the spirit to serve the needy had always been the way with this organisation.

Similarly, he said, the medical facilities which had been extended by them during Kumbh were praiseworthy by any yardstick.

He said that "another remarkable feature of RSS was that it never tried to impose its ideology on others. "It does not rejoice when admired and does not sulk when criticised," he said.