Take ‘selfies’ with each other, share pictures clicked together on WhatsApp, connect on Facebook, call each other home for lunch or dinner, go out together for picnics or hang out in gardens while sharing snacks.
These are some of the activities senior Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Pravin Togadia would like Hindu families to engage in to achieve a “society without untouchability.”
Extending the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s much publicised motto of “one temple, one well, one crematorium” for Hindus, Mr. Togadia outlined the concept of the ‘Hindu Mitra Parivar” or the Hindu Family Friend.
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Under the programme, which has been intensified by the VHP in recent months, the outfit encourages its activists to engage with and connect to Hindu families during social functions such as birthdays, weddings or festivals and even during moments of distress such as death, illness or accidents.
Every Hindu family should make another Hindu family its ‘family friend,’ Mr. Togadia said. Preferably, the families should belong to different castes. In a column published in the RSS mouthpiece Organiser , Mr. Togadia acknowledged that in the “social psyche deep rooted customs, mind sets and habits take long to change” and removing them was not a matter of abrupt agitations or road shows.
It “requires phase-wise action plan and sustained efforts to reach out to people with clear focused but warm humane messages,” Mr. Togadia said, underlining the fact that the stress would be on “extensive deep experiences and interactions” among Hindu groups.
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