New Delhi, Oct. 10: Sangh swayamsevaks will formally discard their khaki shorts and slip into full-length brown trousers tomorrow on Vijaya Dashami when RSS chief Mohanrao Bhagwat addresses members at Nagpur.
The change to trousers, a few shades darker than khaki and falling uniformly from the waist to the ankles, unlike the shorts that flared clumsily at the bottom and did not flatter any sort of physique, signifies a milestone in the 91-year-old organisation's history.
The RSS has also given up its white socks for a brown pair but these are the only ways in which the " gana vesh" (uniform) has been tweaked after decades of intense debate and hair-splitting.
The half-sleeved white shirt, black cap and black shoes remain.
Some RSS units, as those in Delhi, Karnataka and Goa, did not wait for Vijaya Dashami to make the switch.
The younger swayamsevaks (volunteers) and pracharaks (whole-timers), eager to sport their new outfits, wore them on Sunday when they went on the " path sanchalan" (route march), routinely staged before Vijaya Dashami.
Asked what the feedback was, a Sangh activist from Delhi said: "Good. The brown trousers gave us the look of soldiers and we felt proud wearing them."
When the announcement on the sartorial shift was made last March at a Sangh national convention at Nagaur, Rajasthan, leaders had directed the local units to have them ready by October.
The Sangh had hired a Delhi fashion designer, Suket Dhir, to design the new look. Dhir made the cut from among a shortlisted panel sympathetic to the RSS and its ideology. He had suggested mélange grey but the RSS's physical training department settled for brown.
The trousers are a cross between track pants and baggy pants and have been designed to help the volunteers go through their daily physical regimen at the shakhas (camps) that includes sit-ups and other exercises.
The push for a new uniform had come from the RSS's expanding overseas constituency that felt disconcerted by the ungainly shorts and wanted trendy black sweatpants, white polo shirts and sports shoes. That idea was rejected as being "far too radical".
Within India, many of the younger members of the BJP and the ABVP, the Sangh's student wing, had been rooting for a makeover. An MP in his early fifties admitted that the sight of "those oversized" shorts had put him off from attending a shakha several times till he took up the matter with the Sangh seniors, only to be told he would have to "wait".
Jettisoning tradition is not easy. It took the Congress years and endless discussions to evolve from the old-world way of sitting on the floor with cushions and bolsters to prop up aging shoulders and backs to a boardroom style.
In 2011, the leather belt was replaced with a canvas belt following objections from Jain swayamsevaks.
A Sangh source refused to disclose the names of the tailors who had stitched the uniforms except that they were locally hired. The fabrics were sourced from unnamed retailers with the help of Dhir.
