A New Dress for the Hindu Right -- Will the RSS drop the Khakhi Shorts?

From: The Times, December 12, 2009

Hindu nationalists drop their baggy shorts

by Jeremy Page in Delhi

For more than eight decades, members of India’s largest Hindu nationalist organisation have identified themselves with a distinctive military-style uniform consisting of long baggy shorts, a white shirt and a black cloth cap.

Followers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh can still be seen wearing the uniform, modelled on that of British colonial police, as they perform ritual early morning exercises in public parks and squares across India.

Now, 84 years after its foundation, the RSS has finally given in to the demands of modern India and decided to renounce its uniform. Ravi Bansal, a RSS spokesman, told The Times that it hoped to devise a new uniform by March.

The move is the latest attempt by India’s beleaguered Hindu nationalists to overhaul their image after a year in which its main political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party, was trounced in a general election. Analysts say that the movement — which campaigns to rid India of the legacies of foreign invasions and establish a pure Hindu state — is struggling to appeal to young people, especially the urban middle classes.
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So, as well as deciding to change its uniform, the RSS has also introduced evening meetings as an alternative to its traditional morning exercises to cater for busy middle-class professionals.

It has organised special forums for supporters in the technology hubs of Bangalore and Hyderabad. It is also allowing married couples to take a more prominent role in the organisation, although its leadership still consists entirely of celibate males, known as pracharaks.

Some RSS veterans say that the uniform change is a step too far and betrays the legacy of K. B. Hedgewar, who founded the movement in 1925 and introduced the uniform a year later to encourage discipline.

Critics are happy to see the end of a uniform that they say was inspired partly by the European fascist movements of the 1920s. The RSS, which trained the killer of Mahatma Gandhi, has been banned three times for inciting violence and is still often accused of fomenting ethnic and religious hatred.

The question now is whether the movement can agree on a design for the eight million members it claims.

Sadanand Menon, a popular columnist, said: “It is universally accepted that there can be nothing more boring and unattractive than their present attire ... What designers will have to pay attention to is how to make it trendy, smart and ‘cool’.”