Rightwing Hindu movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) announced yesterday it was abandoning its trademark khaki shorts to try to modernise the dress code, 91 years after adopting the austere military-style uniform.
Foot soldiers of the RSS are often seen after dawn across India engaged in physical drills and uttering religious chants - dressed in pleated shorts, white shirts and black hats.
But RSS general secretary Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi acknowledged the organisation, the ideological fountainhead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, must keep in step with a modern, changing world.
“We have decided to replace khaki half-pants with brown pants. We are not rigid and take decisions according to the times,” Joshi told reporters at a three-day meeting of the group’s top decision-making body in Nagaur Rajasthan.
“It may take four to six months for the dress code change to take effect as the message has to be communicated to at least 50,000 villages, towns and cities in the country,” Joshi said.
The RSS leader felt that trousers would in no way affect the exercise and drills of swayamsevaks, the volunteers.
“Cricket and judo-karate players and people who do yoga also wear track-suits and full pants. So it is wrong to say that wearing pants will affect training or exercise of swayamsevaks,” Joshi said.
He said there was no specific reason to opt for brown colour for trousers, except the fact that it was easily available and the colour looks good.
The RSS announced last year it was considering the decision.
The rare sartorial tweak made headline news yesterday in India where the RSS says it has several million members, including at one stage Modi himself.
The RSS styles itself as a cultural organisation devoted to protecting India’s Hindu culture. But critics accuse it of being an anti-Muslim pseudo-fascist organisation with a history of fuelling religious tensions.
Meanwhile Joshi said demands for reservation by the affluent sections of society only reflected deviation from the spirit of the Constitution.
“Reservation has helped weaker sections of the society and if the affluent sections demand reservation, it does not sound good,” he said.