NEW DELHI: Senior RSS office bearer, Dattatreya Hosabale, has left for Nepal to co-ordinate relief activities through the Nepalese wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), known as the Hindu Swayamsewak Sangh (HSS).
“There have been conflicting reports that RSS has sent off its people to Nepal for relief work, that is not true. Our volunteers of HSS have started work, but they are Nepalese.
It is a foreign country and we need to co-ordinate with the government of Nepal for any relief work through the RSS,” said Sangh’s Prachar Pramukh Manmohan Vaidya.
“Dattaji has gone to Nepal and he will co-ordinate what HSS needs to do, and whether it is alright with the government of Nepal, for us to send people from here,” he added.
He said that RSS shakhas outside of India were nomenclatured as the HSS, and that some volunteers from the Nepal wing had distributed dry food and water to those left stranded by the earthquakes.
The Rashtriya S w ay a m s e v a k Sangh has been fairly prompt in rescue and relief works in the past and it forms an important part of its activities as an organsiation.
According to BJP Vice-President Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, RSS began its activities in rescue work after the 1979 cyclone in Andhra Pradesh, and Morvi floods in Gujarat after the Macchu Dam burst its walls, also in the same year.