New Delhi, May 7: There are million ways to begin a day, especially a Sunday, apart from reading news articles, but then when we come across a piece about how the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have come up with a customised baby plan for Indian couples to have stronger, taller, fairer and smarter children it can be really difficult to resist not reading that. And that makes your day, better or worse. Also Read - Nagpur University Introduces RSS Role in ‘Nation-building’, Its History in Varsity’s Syllabus

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A few RSS veterans and medical experts had a talk with Sunday Express and clarified their stand on the whole customised baby, or as the Sangh likes to call ‘Uttam Santati’, the perfect offspring project. A few of the broader guidelines to have that perfect offspring are that the couple must go through a period of ‘Suddhikaran’ (purification), must have sexual intercourse at a time decided by planetary configurations, after the baby is conceived must observe abstinence and then there are dietary recommendations. And Voila! the baby will be customised into a contributor to the national dream, or perhaps RSS’s dream of a samarth Bharat (Strong India). Also Read - Columnist Rakesh Sinha Joins BJP

As per reports, this whole project has an official name, Garbh Vigyan Sanskar (Culture of Pregnancy Sciences) and is one of the prime focus of the RSS’s health wing Arogya Bharati. This project, which we shall henceforth call GVS, was apparently launched in Gujarat over a decade ago and was taken up at the national level in 2015. And now GVS has spread into other states and in collaboration with the RSS’s education wing Vidya Bharati, has around 10 branches in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and future units planned in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.

Before moving forward into the details of this ambitious project of the RSS, one matter must be understood. If this whole customised baby thing seems quite familiar and rings a bell in the mind, it is because a similar project was initiated by the Germans under the Nazi, to produce babies of pure Aryan genes. More on that coming soon.

Anyway, the GVS has reportedly been incorporated into the curriculum of two institutions, apart from the Jamnagar University. These are Children’s University in Gandhinagar and Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hindi University in Bhopal.

The German Connection

One of the ‘pioneers’ of GSV, Dr Ashok Kumar Varshney, who has been a member of the RSS for over 30 years and is the national organising secretary of Arogya Bharati said that this project, GVS, was inspired by the the advice of a senior RSS idealogue received more than 40 years ago in, well, Germany. According to this RSS idealogue, he met this woman called ‘Mother of Germany’ and she told him about a new generation of Germans who were born through Garbh Sanskar (Pregnancy Culture). She also reportedly made reference to the whole Abhimanyu incident from the Mahabharatas.

Just saying that this ‘Mother of Germany’ as a fact is not a name, but instead seems to be a reference to a medal of honour which was given to women under the Nazi regime and was called, Cross of Honour of the German Mother, for exceptional contribution of the German mother towards the nation. Seems fine until now, but then there is a catch, and now we go back to Nazi German’s customised baby plan for another reference.

Lebensborn (Fount of Life) was a project initiated by the Schutzstaffel, aka SS, which was a major paramilitary organisation under the Nazis. Through this project, they aimed to increase the birth rate of ‘Aryan’ children based on ideologies of Nazi racial hygiene and their health ideologies. They planned to give birth to these racially pure children via extramarital relations of persons who were classified as ‘racially pure and healthy’. Post birth, these babies were made to be adopted by ‘racially pure and healthy’ parents, who were mostly members of the SS and the woman who bore the most Aryan children was conferred with this Cross of Honour of the German Mother.

The Veda Connection

Now it is a well known fact that the RSS pracharaks, members, are treasure houses of Vedic knowledge and as per them, this whole idea on which the GVS is based on has been prescribed in the ‘shastras’ (scriptures). Varshney states how the ‘Shastra’ prescribes a specific time to have intercourse for pregnancy. It is reportedly these doctors who instruct couples when to be ‘intimate’ on the basis of their horoscope and planetary configurations. They also suggest that once the baby is conceived, there should be no intimacy as it is suicidal for both the mother and the baby.

Dr Hitesh Jani, who is the national convenor of the Arogya Bharat wing and Dr. Karishma Mohandas Narwani, national Convenor of the GVS project also joined Varshney to comment on the matter. As per Jani, this project does not intervene the natural process and this process will make it possible that ‘babies of dark skinned parents with lesser height can have fair complexion and grow taller.’ He further added that people with lower IQ, with poor educational background can have babies with extremely higher IQ.

The process

According to Jani, the project is conducted in two parts, before and after pregnancy. And the first part involves 90 days of purification of the body and the energy channels, a process during which the male sperm and female egg is purified to remove any kind of genetic defects.

And then begins the second part of the project. Proper food habits are emphasised in this part. As per Varshney, as quoted by Express, he said, “Calcium is required in the third month when bones develop; therefore, she should take milk and related products. Brain is developed in the fifth month, hence ghee is required. When eyes develop during the sixth or seventh month, she needs vitamin A.”

The other most important aspect of the second part is the chanting of shlokas and mantras, which will reportedly help in the mental growth of the baby and if the women leads such a life, labour pain vanishes and the baby gains up to 300 grams of more weight.

GVS: Present Status

As per Narwani, Arogya Bharati has conducted several seminars and counselling sessions regarding this project in Delhi and Mumbai and also in cities of Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Kolkata, Rohtak and Gurugram (Gurgaon) are next in the line where similar seminars will be conducted.

Noteworthy that, Jani and Narwani have a Bachelor’s degree in Ayurveda, medicine and surgery and Varshney holds a PhD in Biochemistry obtained from Allahabad University in 1986.

Viewpoint

India does not really need babies right now as it is already overpopulated. A stronger India is not the one where these customised babies will be left unfed. While the experts claimed that the parents of these babies need not be literate, to have a baby with higher IQ, they contradict themselves when they say in the second part of their project that the mother needs to read shlokas and good stuff during pregnancy to help facilitate the mental growth.

Overburdened with already a wave of children, India instead needs to focus on controlling birth, and focus more on the already present force that is available. Better skill based education schemes, employment opportunities, and food security should top the list of us all,, rather than telling people astronomically how to and where to ‘get intimate’.

And for some queer reason, this whole project sounds like Nazi German stool to the author.

Also, do not confuse the references to Schutzstaffel (SS) with our very own RSS.

Original story in the Indian Express by Ashutosh Bhardwaj.

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