Bhagwat and top six RSS leaders join Twitter

Bhagwat, who had once said that he would never join the social media, chose @DrMohanBhagwat as his handle.

The other leaders, including Suresh Joshi, Krishna Gopal, Suresh Soni, Arun Kumar, V Bhagaiah and Anirudh Deshpande, too got their handles verified.

Their arrival on the micro-blogging site is part of the organisation's 95th anniversary celebrations. Though the organisation had joined Twitter on 2011 and has 1.3 million followers, the top leaders had so far not been active.

From 2016 onward, RSS, which was established in 1925 and has worked as the ideological mentor of BJP, started a process of 'modernisation'.

One of the first steps taken to attract more youth to the right-wing organisation, was to change the decade-old 'khaki' (dark yellowish-green colour) shorts, which served as the uniform for RSS members.

Twitter has become one of the biggest platforms for political and socio-cultural discourse, as well as entertainment. With over 321 million monthly users worldwide, as per data revealed in 2019, the micro-blogging site has become an important and visible part of the private and public communications.

In June, India became the country, with the second largest number of Internet users. Growing penetration and access is likely to make these platforms even more influential, in the coming years.

Mr Bhagwat's arrival on Twitter is curious, because as recently as last year, the Sanghchalak had publicly denounced social media for being all about "me, my, mine".

He was chosen as the Sarsanghchalak of RSS on March 21, 2009. He is one of the youngest leaders to head the Sangh after K.B. Hedgewar and M S Golwalkar.

With Mr Bhagwat and others joining Twitter, the organisation's popularity on social media is likely to improve and increase.