RSS children’s shakhas recruit through cultural anxiety and a fascist-style salute

Evidence

Children’s shakhas can be innocuous enough and can tap into the concerns of parents that their children do not speak Gujarati at home or are losing their Hindu religion of culture in Western society… Apart from basic literacy, the objective in children’s shakhas is to emphasize Vedic heritage, what are seen as the Hindu origins of achievements in modern science and technology, to inculcate nationalism and to promote Hindu unity, self-reliance and discipline through games, stories and moral tales. Salute (pranam) to the saffron (bhagawa dhwaj) begins and ends the shakha. The RSS’s distinctive salute cannot but invoke for the onlooker the period of the 1930s in Europe. (Bhatt, 2000:581-2). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3011

Categorization

• QUESTION: How do parents reconcile the ‘innocuous’ cultural-revival pitch with the saffron-flag salute that evokes 1930s Europe? Bhatt leaves unstated how many notice or resist.
• XREF: Echoes the ‘immodesty vs. identity signaling’ theme from the Complaints About Immodesty piece — cultural markers (saffron salute, dress) as political signaling.
• CANDY: A paramilitary youth club hides national ideology in games, quizzes, and moral tales — with a salute lifted from the era of European fascism.