Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the best representative of the RSS and carries its values into government action in his own way, the Hindu nationalist group’s general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale said in an interview.
Hosabale said Modi does not have to use the RSS’s exact language to reflect its ideas. He pointed to the prime minister’s “Ek Ped Maa ke Naam” campaign as an example, comparing it with the RSS’s call to plant a tree. “He (PM Modi) is doing these things in his own unique ways, all of them. He may not express the same words. For example, he said 'Ek Ped Maa ke Naam'. We have said, 'plant a tree',” Hosabale said.
The remarks matter because Hosabale linked the prime minister’s public agenda to a wider RSS blueprint for the next 25 years. He said the organisation has identified five focus areas: social harmony and cohesion, self-awareness and shedding the colonial mindset, civic sense, stronger family values and sustainable development models. He also said many government programmes reflect the values espoused by the RSS, including the Atamnirbhar Bharat initiative and the Five Resolves Modi spelled out in his Independence Day address in 2022.
Hosabale said Modi’s links to the organisation are natural because he is a Swayamsevak. “So, being a Swayamsevak, he has these things naturally,” he said, adding that Modi understands his “cultural roots” and “what this organisation stands for.” He said the prime minister stressed the importance of the future path charted out by the Sangh when he released a postal stamp and a commemorative coin during the RSS centenary year.
He also framed the relationship between the RSS and the Bharatiya Janata Party as one that was built to endure. Hosabale said the BJP was formed in 1980, after its founders moved away from the Janata Party, and wanted to keep their connection to the RSS intact. “They wanted to retain the relations of RSS. That was the prime reason for the formation of the political party, coming away from the Janata Party. That way, that umbilical cord relationship cannot be disturbed,” he said.
That leaves the clearest reading of Hosabale’s remarks: the RSS is not describing Modi as merely sympathetic to its ideas, but as the politician who most fully translates them into the language of government. His praise also underlines how closely the organisation continues to define its political lineage, even as it says its ambitions now stretch another 25 years ahead.
