Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: A look at its origins, ideology and rise (1925-1966)

“RSS is India’s banyan tree of immortal culture and modernisation,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 30, 2025, when he visited the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s headquarters in Nagpur. Mr. Modi, a former RSS pracharak (full-time volunteer), was the first sitting Prime Minister to visit the RSS’s premises. The RSS, which is the ideological fount of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is celebrating its centenary year.

The organisation, which wishes to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra, was founded by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, a Maharashtrian Brahmin physician from Nagpur, on Vijaya Dashami in 1925. Since then, it has grown from one shakha (theological school with volunteers called swayamsevaks) to more than 1,27,367 shakhas spread across 51,570 places in India. The RSS has a chequered history and has been banned at least thrice in independent India. Today, it wields considerable influence ideologically, politically, and socially across the nation.

In this multi-part series, we trace the Sangh’s foundation, ideology, organisational structure, and journey from the pre-Independence era to modern-day India

The beginnings

About four decades after the Indian National Congress (INC) was founded in 1885, there were increasing calls for an alternative political platform. Some leaders of the party advocated for a more militant idea of nationalism. Organisations such as the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League propagated their own religious agendas but with the collective aim of ridding India of the British Raj, explains author Dinesh Narayanan in his book ‘The RSS and the making of The Deep Nation’. Both the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League were influenced by ideological movements in Europe.

K.B. Hedgewar was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha and was hugely inspired by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, one of the first to reject the moderate ideas of the Congress. Hedgewar believed that Hindus were fragmented by caste, region, and sect and decided to establish shakhas to forge unity in the community. He envisioned that these spaces would enable young Hindu men to learn discipline and establish a sense of community. As the number of attendees in the shakhas increased, the venue of the meetings kept shifting.

During a meeting in 1926, names for the organisation, which began as a cultural project, were proposed by 26 swayamsevaks, including founding members Balaji Huddar, Bhauji Kawre, Bapurao Bhedi, Anna Sohni and Vishwanathrao Kelkar, who were in attendance. Names such as Jari Patka Mandal, Bharat Udharak Mandal, and Hindu Sevak Sangh were put forth. Many argued that an organisation formed to unite Hindus cannot be rashtriya (national). Yet, Hedgewar prevailed, and the name Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was finalised.

Hedgewar, who had been an active member of the Congress until then, even taking part in the Non-Cooperation Movement, had distanced himself from the party. He had grown increasingly disenchanted with the views of the Congress, particularly its inclusive view of nationalism which was at odds with his own idea of Hindu nationalism and with Mahatma Gandhi’s stance on the Khilafat movement.

In 1928, though, he attended the Calcutta Session of the Congress, where he met Subhas Chandra Bose, G.D. Savarkar, and V.D. Savarkar. Narayan writes, “Dr. Hedgewar was annoyed that Bose would not give up on Hindu-Muslim unity even though he tried to impress upon him that the idea was meaningless and found himself more in agreement with Savarkar.” The influence of the Savarkar brothers on the Sangh is palpable: the RSS’s founding principles were based on V.D. Savarkar’s manuscript on Hindutva titled Essentials of Hindutva.

The RSS’s publication, ‘About RSS’, published in 2023, describes the Sangh’s aim — “to make our country, Bharat, a pioneer in science and knowledge, economically self-reliant and prosperous”.

Apart from these goals, the RSS follows Savarkar’s treatise on Hindutva in which he says “India or Bharat (as referred to by RSS) is a Hindu nation. While anyone can be its citizen, only the Hindus have a civilisational claim on it”. The RSS also aims to reclaim ‘Akhand Bharat’ spanning from ‘Gandhar’ (Kandahar, Afghanistan), Pakistan, Trivishtap (Tibet), ‘Bramhadesh’ (Myanmar), Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. This Bharat, it believes, will be a ‘Vishwa Guru’, or a global power, in which Indian culture and way of life leads the world.

The structure of the RSS leadership began to unfold and Hedgewar was designated as the Sarsanghachalak (chief). Balaji Huddar was made ‘Sarkaryavah’ (general secretary) and Matandrao Jog ‘Sarsenapati’ (chief trainer). By this time, Hedgewar had officially left the Congress. During his tenure in the RSS, the organisation instituted 18 shakhas across Nagpur, and the first set of 99 volunteers (swayamsevaks) were initiated into the Sangh at Mohitewada in 1928.

The organisation was also inspired by fascist ideology. Founding member B.S. Moonje met with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on March 19, 1931, at the fascist government’s headquarters in Palazzo Venezia. According to Italian scholar Marzia Casolari, Moonje wrote in his diary about visiting the regime’s military schools and youth party wings responsible for the indoctrination of children. In his conversation with Mussolini, Moonje said, “Every aspiring and growing nation needs such organisations. I have already started an organisation of my own, conceived independently with similar objectives. I shall have no hesitation to raise my voice from the public platform both in India and England when occasion may arise in praise of your Balilla and Fascist organisations”. On returning to India, Moonje proceeded to fashion the RSS’s structure in a similar manner.

In 1930, responding to the Congress’ call for a ‘Poorna Swaraj’, i.e. complete Independence from the British Raj, all the RSS shakhas celebrated January 26 as India’s independence day. However, unlike the Congress, the RSS raised the saffron flag instead of the national tricolour.

In the 1930s, the Jungle Satyagraha was held as part of the Civil Disobedience Movement. It was held as a protest against British forest laws, which restricted the rights of Indians, especially tribal and rural communities, to access forests for their needs. While Hedgewar and some swayamsevaks participated in the Jungle Satyagraha, Hedgewar forbade the RSS from officially participating in it.

The British Raj grew wary of the Sangh. Between 1932 and 1934, it issued several circulars banning government employees from joining the Sangh, claiming that they “were taking part in communal activities”. On March 3, 1934, the government classified the Sangh as a ‘Nazi’ organisation. This notion was challenged by councillor Mr. V.D. Kolte from Bhandaras, who introduced a one rupee cut motion in the Budget session of the Central Province Legislative Assembly. He claimed that the classification was unjust to the Hindu community, as similar Muslim organisations, Depressed Classes, and other communal organisations were not covered by it. In a rare show of support, the Assembly passed the resolution condemning the British government’s order. While the British did not rescind the order, they did not implement it either.

On June 21, 1940, Hedgewar passed away. The baton of the RSS was handed over to Madhav Sadasiva Golwalkar – a teacher and lawyer-turned-monk of the Ramakrishna order. The RSS was not yet a political organisation at this point, but had begun having a cultural impact in central India.

Golwalkar’s rise

A teacher by profession at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Golwalkar met Hedgewar in 1931 when the RSS founder was visiting the institution. Influenced by the Hindutva ideals of Madan Mohan Malaviya, Golwalkar joined the RSS shortly after. He joined the Ramakrishna Mission, but when his mentor, Swami Akhandananda, died in 1937, Golwalkar rejoined the RSS and later took over as Sarsanghachalak.

“Unlike RSS leaders who were weaned on Savarkar’s ideas and known atheists, Golwalkar was a monk,” explains Narayan. Golwalkar’s ability as forceful speaker in both Hindi and English shaped the Sangh’s doctrine ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined’. Under his leadership, the RSS’s influence spread across north and south India as well, but grew apart from Savarkar’s own militant-style organisation, the Hindu Mahasabha.

In 1939, Golwalkar’s book We was published in which he first proposed the concept of a Hindu Rashtra. Inspired by G.D. Savarkar’s Rashtra Mimansa, which was published in 1934, Mr. Golwalkar’s treatise espoused, “a nation… of a people who considered a land their mother and themselves its sons. These people should have a common system of conduct, same dreams, tradition, heroes and carry the same historical burdens and glory. They should consider other communities that gave them joy as friends and those that invaded them and gave them pain as enemies”.

Geographically, he envisioned that the Hindu Rashtra would stretch from the Himalayas in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south. He asserted, “We have to establish that in this land Hindu means nation and nation means Hindu. That is why the Sangh is called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.”

Golwalkar also drew parallels to Nazi Germany, stating, “Germany has shown how impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

The book’s release courted controversy. Several scholars researching the Savarkars stated that the parallels drawn to the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were killed were added by Golwalkar and were not part of Savarkar’s book. With the RSS disowning We, an edited collection of Golwalkar’s speeches named A Bunch of Thoughts became the bedrock for the Sangh and remains every volunteer’s guide. The book toned down Golwalkar’s words, such as by changing references to Muslims and Christians to ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ and ‘missionary evangelism’, respectively, to avoid criticism.

Through the 1940s, the RSS became a growing concern for the British as its strength grew from 37,362 volunteers in 1941 to 1,00,402 in 1946, states Narayan. The RSS chose not to participate in the Quit India movement due to ideological and strategic reasons and forbade its swayamsevaks from participating in it.

However, RSS sprung into action during Partition. The Muslim League called for Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946, demanding Muslim-majority ‘independent States’ in the north-west and eastern regions of India while powers were being transferred from the British to India’s Constituent Assembly. A week leading to the day, the then-Bengal Chief Minister Huseyn Suhrawardy claimed that he had taken measures to “restrain” the police, effectively giving an open call to groups to indulge in violence. With the suspension of business across the state, Muslim League members took to streets forcing Hindu shopkeepers to shut down their establishment. This elicited a response from the Hindus who obstructed the League’s procession.

The resulting clash spread across the city, killing over 5,000 and injuring 15,000, kicking off a year-long protests over Partition. The growing animosity on religious grounds provided the RSS to expand in the north, set up relief camps for Hindus affected by communal clashes, and call for an exodus of Muslims from India.

As violence broke out across Punjab, Delhi, and Bengal and lakhs of Muslims fled to Pakistan in the wake of the Partition, Gandhi attempted to reach out to the RSS to assuage communal tensions. Addressing a gathering of swayamsevaksin Bhangi (Harijan) colony in Delhi, on September 16, 1947, he extolled the Sangh’s “rigorous discipline, complete absence of untouchability, simplicity, service and self-sacrifice”. However, he critiqued the Sangh’s assertion that India only belonged to the Hindus, saying, “The Sangh’s strength could be used in the interest of India or against it and it should show by their good conduct that these allegations (forcing Muslims to leave India via violence) are baseless”.

However, Gandhi’s pleas fell on deaf ears. On December 8, 1947, while addressing a rally in Rohtak, Golwalkar said, “The Sangh will not rest content until it had finished Pakistan. If anyone stood in our way we will have to finish him too.” He condemned Gandhi’s ‘appeasement’ towards Muslims for their votes.

Gandhi’s death and its aftermath

A month later, Gandhi was shot dead in New Delhi’s Birla House while proceeding towards lead the evening prayers. His assassin was Nathuram Godse– an RSS pracharak and Hindu Mahasabha leader, with close links to Savarkar.

Gandhi’s assassination led to national outrage and the Nehru government clamped down on the RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar and Golwalka. Within a week, the RSS was declared unlawful and Godse was arrested along with two others – N.D. Apte and Karkare. The RSS premises in and around Mumbai were searched and top RSS and Mahasabha leaders including Golwalkar and Savarkar were arrested. According to the RSS, at least 17,000 swayamsevaks were arrested after the RSS was deemed unlawful and the organisation was pushed into financial debt.

In February 1949, Golwalkar’s close friend and former Advocate-General T.R.V Sastri met him in Seoni jail to discuss the RSS’ stance on India’s flag, establishing a ‘secular democracy’ in India, publishing the RSS Constitution, and the RSS’ financial issues, in a bid get the ban lifted off the RSS. Within weeks of this meeting, the Sangh’s Constitution was framed and a draft was submitted to the Centre stating that the Sangh would not be involved in politics and would be ‘wedded to purely cultural work’. The Sangh also agreed to respect the Indian tricolour while retaining its own saffron flag, follow a democratic organisational structure headed by a Sarsanghchalak who would be nominated with the consensus of the Sangh’s executive council. RSS members were allowed to belong to any political party. On July 12, 1949, the ban was lifted and Golwalkar was released from jail.

Seeking to absorb RSS cadres with political ambition, on November 17, 1949, the Congress Working Committee passed a resolution allowing RSS members to join its party if they gave up their Sangh membership.

Meanwhile, upon release from jail, Golwalkar made RSS more closed-off, keeping it away from politics. During his remainder years as Sarsanghachalak, Golwalkar expanded the RSS’ influence in shaping Indian society and the Hindutva sphere. During his tenure, the Sangh Parivar was established with the founding of several RSS affiliates – student union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (1948), disaster relief organisation Rashtriya Sewa Bharati (1950), religious council Vishwa Hindu Parishad (1964), tribal welfare organisation Vanvasi Kalayan Asharam (1951), workers’ union Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (1955).

In 1949, former Hindu Mahasabha president, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, resigned after the organisation refused to “abandon its communalist composition and open its doors to every citizen, regardless of religion who was ready to accept its economic and political programme”, explains Mr. A.G. Noorani, eminent Supreme Court lawyer in his book RSS: A Menace to India. Mookerjee, who had been a part of the first Nehru cabinet, quit after the signing of the Nehru-Liaquat pact between India and Pakistan, accusing Nehru of abandoning the cause of Bengali Hindus in East Pakistan. While the RSS was bound to not partake in political activities, several senior RSS leaders including V.R. Oak, B. Madhok, and Bhai Mahavir nursed political ambitions. Mookerjee and Golwalkar struck a deal to set up the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951 and droves of RSS workers joined it.  

The Jana Sangh

The initial years of the Jana Sangh were choppy as RSS cadres and political leaders found it difficult to adhere to a formal ‘democratic Constitution of a political party’, despite adhering to a similar ideology, says Noorani. Founding members such as Mauli Chandra Sharma, B. Madhok, and Guru Dutt resigned from the Jana Sangh accusing the RSS of exercising undue influence within the party. Yet, both the Jana Sangh and RSS began to grow. As former princely states and Portuguese colonies joined the Indian Union, RSS workers participated in the liberation of Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Golwalkar had also revered the cow as a ‘Hindu symbol’. Using cow protection as a cause for mobilisation, Golwalkar instructed cadres to hold the biggest demonstrations independent India had seen on November 7, 1966 on Parliament street in Delhi.

“The crowd fronted by hundreds of naked, ash-smeared Naga mendicants was agitating to abolish cow slaughter. In the late afternoon, the crowd got violent and went on a rampage in the city, setting fires, destroying vehicles, and raiding ministers’ homes. Seven people, including demonstrating Naga sadhus, were killed in police firing near Parliament. Police arrested hundreds of people including top RSS leaders Vasant Rao Oak, V.P. Joshi and O.P. Tyagi,” writes Narayan. Since then, the RSS has often staged protests, organised meetings, and pushed for laws for protection of cows by banning cow slaughter

.(With Inputs from The Hindu Archives)