RSS Marks Centenary Amid Debate Over Ideological Change

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, a doctor and former Congress worker, in Nagpur on the festival of Vijayadashami. Hedgewar had grown uneasy with the Congress's approach of seeking Hindu-Muslim unity through the Khilafat movement, which Mahatma Gandhi had linked to the Non-Cooperation Movement after the First World War. He believed Hindu society lacked internal cohesion and discipline, and that this weakness, not British rule alone, explained India's subjugation. His answer was the shakha, a daily gathering that combines physical exercise, drills and ideological instruction to build a shared identity. This model allowed the organisation to expand steadily across generations without depending on prominent political leaders.

The RSS stayed largely apart from the organised freedom struggle, prioritising Hindu social consolidation over anti-colonial agitation. After independence, its image was badly hurt by its ideological closeness to Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, and the RSS was banned in 1948. The ban was lifted in 1949 after the organisation agreed to stay out of active politics, give up secrecy, and publicly accept the Constitution and the national flag. Its second chief, M.S. Golwalkar (who led the RSS from 1940 to 1973), wrote texts that described minorities as a threat and were later cited as evidence of the organisation's exclusionary worldview.