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The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was founded by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar at Nagpur in 1925.

Origins

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Hedgewar was a political protege of B. S. Moonje, a Tilakite Congressman, Hindu Mahasabha politician and social activist from Nagpur. Moonje had sent Hedgewar to Calcutta to pursue his medical studies and to learn terrorist techniques from the Bengali secret societies. Hedgewar became a member of the Anushilan Samiti, an anti-British revolutionary group, getting into its inner circle. The secretive methods of these societies were eventually used by him in organising the RSS.[1][2][3]

After returning to Nagpur, Hedgewar organized anti-British activities through the Kranti Dal (Party of Revolution) and participated in Tilak's Home Rule campaign in 1918. According to the official RSS history,[4] he came to realize that revolutionary activities alone were not enough to overthrow the British. After reading V. D. Savarkar's Hindutva, published in Nagpur in 1923, and meeting Savarkar in the Ratnagiri prison, he founded the RSS with the objective of strengthening the Hindu society.[1][2][3][5]

Hedgewar believed that a handful of British were able to rule over the vast country of India because the Hindus were disunited, lacked valour (pararkram) and did not possess a civic character. He recruited energetic Hindu youth with revolutionary fervour, gave them a uniform of a black forage cap, khakhi shirt (later white shirt) and khakhi shorts, emulating the British police, and taught them paramilitary techniques with lathi (bamboo staff), sword, javelin and dagger. Hindu ceremonies and rituals played a large role in the organisation, not so much for religious observance, but to provide awareness of India's glorious past and to bind the members in a religious communion. Hedgewar also held weekly sessions of baudhik (idealogical education) consisting of simple questions to the novices concerning the Hindu nation, its history and heroes, especially Shivaji. The saffron flag of Shivaji, the Bhagwa Dhwaj, was used as the emblem for the new organisation. Its public tasks involved protecting Hindu pilgrims at festivals and confronting Muslim resistence against Hindu processions near mosques.[1][2][3]

Motivations

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Scholars differ on Hedgewar's motivations for forming the RSS, especially because he never involved the RSS in fighting the British rule. An alternative interpretation is that he formed it to fight the Indian Muslims.[6]

Hindu-Muslim relations

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The decade of 1920's witnessed a significant deterioration in the relations between Hindus and Muslims. The Muslim masses were mobilised by the Khilafat movement, demanding the reinstatement of the Caliphate in Turkey, and Gandhi made an alliance with it for conducting his own Non-cooperation movement. Gandhi aimed to create Hindu-Muslim unity in forming the alliance. However, the alliance saw a "common enemy", not a "common enmity". When Gandhi called off the Non-cooperation movement due to outbreaks of violence, Muslims disagreed with his strategy. Once the movements failed, the mobilised Muslims turned their anger towards their Hindu neighbours.[7] The first major incident of religious violence was the Moplah rebellion in August 1921, which ended in a large scale violence against Hindus and their displacement in Malabar. A cycle of inter-communal violence throughout India followed for several years.[8] In 1923, there were riots in Nagpur, called "Muslim riots" by Hedgewar, where Hindus were felt to be "totally disorganized and panicky." These incidents made a major impresison on Hedgewar and convinced him of the need to organize the Hindu society.[5][9]

In 1927, after acquiring about 100 swayamsevaks (volunteers) to the RSS, Hedgewar took the issue to the Muslim domain. He led the Hindu religious procession for Ganesha, beating the drums in defiance of the usual practice not to pass in front of a mosque with music.[10] On the day of Lakshmi Puja on 4 September, Muslims are said to have retaliated. When the Hindu procession reached a mosque in the Mahal area of Nagpur, Muslims blocked it. Later in the afternoon, they attacked the Hindu residences in the Mahal area. It is said that the RSS cadres were prepared for the attack and beat the Muslim rioters back. Riots continued for 3 days and the army had to be called in to quell the violence. RSS organized the Hindu resistance and protected the Hindu households while the Muslim households had to leave Nagpur en masse for safety.[11][12][5][13] Basu et al. note the accounts of "Muslim aggressiveness" and the "Hindu self-defence" in the RSS descriptions of the incident. The riot vastly enhanced the prestige of the RSS and enabled its subsequent expansion.[12]

Stigmatisation and emulation

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Christophe Jaffrelot points out the theme of "stigmatisation and emulation" in the ideology of the RSS along with other Hindu nationalist movements such as the Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha. Muslims, Christians and the British were thought of as "foreign bodies" implanted in the Hindu nation, who were able to exploit the disunity and absence of valour among the Hindus in order to subdue them. The solution lay in emulating the characteristics of these "Threatening Others" that were perceived to give them strength, such as paramilitary organisation, emphasis on unity and nationalism. The Hindu nationalists combined these emulatory aspects with a selective borrowing of traditions from the Hindu past to achieve a synthesis that was uniquely Indian and Hindu.[14]

Hindu Mahasabha influence

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The Hindu Mahasabha, which was initially a special interest group within the Indian National Congress and later an independent party, was an important influence on the RSS, even though it is rarely acknowledged. The initial meeting for the formation of the Sangh on the Vijaya Dashami day of 1925 was held between Hedgewar and four Hindu Mahasabha leaders: B. S. Moonje, Ganesh Savarkar, L. V. Paranjpe, and B. B. Tholkar. RSS took part as a volunteer force in organising the Hindu Mahasabha annual meeting in Akola in 1931. Moonje remained a patron of the RSS throughout his life. Both he and Ganesh Savarkar worked to spread the RSS shakhas in Maharashtra, Panjab, Delhi and the princely states by initiating contacts with local leaders. Savarkar merged his own youth organisation Tarun Hindu Sabha with the RSS and helped its expansion. V. D. Savarkar, after his release in 1937, joined them in spreading the RSS and giving speeches in its support. Officials in the Home Department called the RSS the "volunteer organisation of the Hindu Mahasabha."[15][16]

Traditional representations

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Hindu nation

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The sense of community engendered at the sakha is extended to the entire body of the RSS and the Hindu nation itself.[17]

Expansion to Maharashtra

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B. S. Moonje was a co-founder of the RSS. Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, the brother of Veer Savarkar, merged his own organisations, Tarun Hindu Sabha and Mukteshwar Dal into the RSS and helped its expansion in Western Maharashtra.


References

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  1. ^ a b c Goodrick-Clarke 1998, p. 59.
  2. ^ a b c Jaffrelot 1996, pp. 33–39.
  3. ^ a b c Kelkar 2012, pp. 2–3.
  4. ^ Bhishikar 1979.
  5. ^ a b c Kelkar 1950, p. 138.
  6. ^ Chitkara 2004, p. 249.
  7. ^ Stern, Democracy and Dictatorship in South Asia (2001); Misra, Identity and Religion: Foundations of Anti-Islamism in India (2004)
  8. ^ Jaffrelot 1996, pp. 19–20.
  9. ^ Jaffrelot 1996, p. 34.
  10. ^ Jaffrelot 1996, p. 40.
  11. ^ Chitkara 2004, p. 250.
  12. ^ a b Basu 1993, pp. 19–20.
  13. ^ Frykenberg 1996, p. 241.
  14. ^ Jaffrelot 1996, Chapter 1.
  15. ^ Bapu 2013, pp. 97–100.
  16. ^ Goyal 1979, pp. 59–76.
  17. ^ Gold 1991, p. 361.

Bibliography

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  • Bakaya, Akshay (2004). Anne Vaugier-Chatterjee (ed.). Lessons from Kurukshetra the RSS Education Project. New Delhi: Manohar. ISBN 8173046042. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  • Bapu, Prabhu (2013). Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915-1930: Construction Nation and History. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415671651.
  • Basu, Tapan; Sarkar, Tanika (1993). Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right. Orient Longman. ISBN 0863113834.
  • Bhishikar, C. P. (1979). Keshave: Sangh Nirmata. New Delhi: Suruchi Sahitya Prakashan.
  • Chitkara, M. G. (2004). Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: National Upsurge. APH Publishing. ISBN 8176484652.
  • Curran, Jean Alonzo (1951). Militant Hinduism in Indian Politics: A Study of the R.S.S. International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations. Retrieved 2014-10-27.
  • Frykenberg, Robert Eric (1996). Martin E. Marty; R. Scott Appleby (eds.). Hindu fundamentalism and the structural stability of India. University of Chicago Press. pp. 233–235. ISBN 0226508846. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  • Golwalkar, M. S. (1980). Bunch of thoughts. Bangalore: Jagarana Prakashana.
  • Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (1998). Hitler's Priestess: Savithri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth and the Neo-Nazism. New York University. ISBN 0-8147-3110-4.
  • Gold, Daniel (1991). "Rational Action and Uncontrolled Violence". Religion. 21: 357–370. doi:10.1016/0048-721X(91)90038-R.
  • Goyal, Des Raj (1979). Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Delhi: Radha Krishna Prakashan. ISBN 0836405668.
  • Jaffrelot, Christophe (1996). The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN 978-1850653011.
  • Kelkar, D. V. (4 February 1950). "The R.S.S." (PDF). Economic Weekly. Retrieved 2014-10-26.
  • Kelkar, Sanjeev (2011). Lost Years of the RSS. SAGE. ISBN 978-81-321-0590-9.
  • Sirsikar, V. M. (1988). Eleanor Zelliott; Maxine Bernsten (eds.). My Years in the RSS. SUNY Press. pp. 190–203. ISBN 0887066623. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  • Misra, Amalendu (2004), Identity and Religion: Foundations of Anti-Islamism in India, SAGE Publications, ISBN 978-81-321-0323-3
  • Stern, Robert W. (2001), Democracy and Dictatorship in South Asia: Dominant Classes and Political Outcomes in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 978-0-275-97041-3
  • Venkatesan, V. (13 October 2001). "A pracharak as Chief Minister". Frontline. {{cite news}}: Missing pipe in: |ref= (help)
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Category:Sangh Parivar Category:Hindutva Category:Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

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