A nation faced with threats and challenges like ours has to seriously strengthen its school of thought and fortify the foundations that power action. In any age, it is the power of ideology that drives societies and people to realise conceived dreams and ambitions. To coincide with the Nationalist Parivar's ideas about the Nation, People and Society in the light of great stalwarts and pathfinders like Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Dr. Hedgewar and Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, an academic strategy to formulate and give a fillip  to the process of mental churning, an institution on the lines of a Think Tank - which provides a platform for various ideas and thoughts, a Vidya Teertha for facilitating Manthan, would help the movement to shape and rewrite the national agenda in very walk of life.

The Think Tank is an independent, autonomous entity supported by organisations working to realise the same ideas, viz., Cultural Nationalism in every field of national life through academic contributions. It means providing fuel and arsenal to actions required to achieve success in our mission.

The Man and the mission 
The raison d'être of such a think tank remains firm -- helping realise the dream of a powerful, prosperous and harmonious egalitarian Bharatiya society proud of her Hindu civilisation, culture and ethos with the vedic rishi’s world view of vasudhai kutumbakam ( world as a family). 

It essentially requires addressing issues that are undermining our national life –immediate and long term goals, as well as nurturing positive factors helping national resurgence.  Such a Think Tank has a basic ideology, which defines its goals, but simultaneously provides a platform for a free discussion on all points and issues concerning our school of thought in various ways, so  that it doesn't remain a 'boxed' place for a singular flow of pre- conceived ideas and notions, but becomes an academic station – adda – of convergence to refine, mature and further develop nationalism vigorously  and re-strengthen it  through contributions of the best minds across party and national boundaries.

Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee was a universal personality who stood for cultural rejuvenation and gave his life for national Integration. Any activity bearing his name should carry forward the mission that resonates with his life and work.

A Think Tank with his name certainly needs to address issues of nationalism, economic development and a global vision of Hindutva, which can be expressed through a nationalist world view as well. Internally, women empowerment and special focus on disadvantaged sections, religious assaults in various forms including proselytisation and insurgency of various shades – Jihad, Maoist violence, Church-supported violence in NE, cultural alienation, shrinking domain of Indian languages and a state powered attitude to humiliate the civilisational contours of the nation. On the external front, national security and way of life have to be addressed separately. Immediate issues are visible: India-US nuclear deal, un-rest in neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and special Ramayana region ties with East Asia and Far East.  

An important part of the think tank would be to encourage and direct areas of study and form discussion groups at the micro level amongst workers and cadre, beginning with small cities and towns, specially in remote and border areas like NE and other Himalayan states, and in Marxist/Naxal influence zones where the threat perception is extraordinarily high.  

India is passing through her most exciting, challenging and invigorating era. On one hand the threats to the national ethos have increased manifold, the Hindu majority is facing assaults fromwithin and without on an unprecedented scale; at the same time, the Indian genius is making a global impact and Indian entrepreneurship is getting multinational. At the opening of the 20th century, Hindus formed over 75% of the population and thus unsurprisingly the backbone of the nationalist movement. Modern Hindu thinking desired to unite Hindu society, weaving the identities of caste, language and ethnicity, into a larger national identity. In 1925, Dr. K.B. Hedgewar founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Nagpur, Maharashtra, which grew into the largest civil organization in the country, and a more potent, mainstream base of Hindu nationalism. The main purpose of the RSS was to unite Hindu society, with cadres drawn across the caste and ethnic spectrum working to alleviate Hindus from poverty and ignorance, for social and economic development. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar coined the term Hindutva for his ideology that described India as a Hindu Rashtra, a Hindu nation. This ideology has become the cornerstone of the political and religious agendas of modern Hindu nationalist bodies. Nationalist political demands include revoking Article 370 of the Constitution that grants a special semi-autonomous status to the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir, adopting a uniform civil code, defining secularism in its correct perspective, ending a special legal framework for various communities on the basis of religion and thus moving towards de-communalising the public debate and laws. These particular demands are based on ending laws that nationalists consider as offering special treatment to Muslims. Demands like banning cow slaughter and building a Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya reflect a patriotic  desire to assert cultural nationalism and a reversion of the destruction of Hindu temples by iconoclasts.

Historic Roots
Vedic rishis were providing the much needed intellectual inputs to the society and kept the social and political policies under an equilibrium of harmonious thoughts flowered in the Upanishads. The ashrams were our basic think tanks.
The other institutionalised approach comes to the fore through eminent scholars and political masters like Kautilya who single headedly drove the leadership to create a self reliant and militarily strong empire.
In the modern world, intellectuals from myriad disciplines and social reformists have come together to collate society’s originality and intellectual vigour and present the same for societal and political action. Think tanks now exist in all nations of the world.

Current Roles
Think tanks today are a hallowed place of ideas, though many are really extensions of certain interest groups. Rather than influence the society, they lobby to maintain influence in the policy decision-making network. This, of course, is alien to the nationalist, cilvilisational Indian ethos.
Think tanks legitimately spread their influence among the educated intelligentsia and the elite, and thus among politicians and policy makers, through research papers, lectures, seminars, workshops, conferences, articles in newspapers, journals and so on. Media is a much-desired forum. By setting themselves up as experts, think tank scholars often appear as regular guests on television and radio news shows, which enhance their visibility and public esteem immeasurably.

It goes without saying that every think tank has a tacit political orientation, and this plays a major role in the interplay between media and the think tank, and the response of society and government to its views.
In a fundamental sense, think tanks disseminate easy-to-understand information on relevant current topics to their audiences, via seminars, conferences, public lectures (issues like opening retail to FDI, problems in Myanmar, Tibet, Muslim Personal law, etc.). They thus play a major role in moulding public opinion and thus influencing government policy.

Our goal is to give researchers and experts time and resources to work, so as to attain quality publications, articles, and other research within a specified time. The permanent staff of the think tank shall endeavour to disseminate their work in the right places:
newspapers, MPs, key media, and the wider world. We shall strive to plan events that attract the right people who can be influenced by our policies.

Conferences - Arrange meetings of likeminded scholars. Put forth broad topics organise a conference and discuss amongst our core group.

Publish - Proceedings from the conferences organised. Second, regularly publish comments on significant political events. Make institution's opinion known. Three, help spread ideas/papers into newspapers, magazines, e-zines, blogs and the like.

Organise - Get people together.

Cooperate - Lending S.P.M. Foundation's name to events organised by other groups that share our interests. Helps to get our name out and move our cause forward.

The road ahead
Dr. S.P. Mookerjee stood for certain values: Indian unity, nationalism, opposition to minority appeasement, a common civil code and a vigorous and unapologetic defense of Hindus when they were persecuted in Pakistan (especially East Bengal) and in Jammu and Kashmir. Moreover, he and his colleagues who founded the Jan Sangh were opposed to the Socialist planning and bureaucratic development model chosen by the Congress and still defended by part of the Congress today, along with the Left.  

Hence, we need to pick up a couple of key themes from his life, simple but powerful ideas, and present them as the foundation for the think tank. They should be forward looking, broadly in line with the approach and thinking that is needed for India in the coming decade.