RSS suspends annual ‘Shiksha Varg’ to ‘provide boost to India’s fight against coronavirus’

Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, April 6

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The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is suspending its annual Sangh Shiksha Varg for the first time since 1929, to “provide strength to India’s fight against coronavirus”, Senior Sangh functionary Dr Manmohan Vaidya said on Monday.

The event has been held every year since Independence, except the three times RSS was banned.

Vaidya said that keeping in mind the COVID-19 outbreak, the RSS was suspending all its activities, including the Shiksha Varg, till June.

This is for the first time since 1929 that the annual activity has been suspended, said Vaidya, outlining the “welfare work” being undertaken by Sangh’s two lakh cadres in 26,000 places across the country.

Notably, Shiksha Varg is an important event in the Sangh’s yearly calendar. It was at one such event that former President Mukherjee was invited as a chief guest in Nagpur.

Started in 1929, it was initially called Officers’ Training Camp (OTC) but MS Golwalkar, the second RSS chief, renamed it as Sangh Shiksha Varg.

The RSS was banned thrice by the post-independence India, first in 1948, when Nathuram Godse, who claimed to have left the Sangh in 1946 over ideological differences, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, then during the emergency (1975–1977); and for a third time after the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.