RSS is now attempting to take control of its own narrative |
This past September marks the hundredth-year anniversary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). On September 27, 1925, on Vijayadashami/Dussehra, a small group of young men in the central Indian and ethnically diverse city of Nagpur, led by a recently graduated medical doctor from a Telugu Brahmin family, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, laid the foundation of the RSS. The original training took place in neighborhood meeting grounds (referred to as a shakha) and involved assembling each day to create a kind of brotherhood whose participants were committed to each other in the common pursuit of unifying the diverse Hindu community. Partly to discourage personality based hero-worship, Hedgewar selected the RSS flag (the “bhagwa dhwaj”), a symbol of the united Hindu nation, to be the “guru” of the RSS, and thus emphasise the teacher-student imagery. From this modest start, the RSS was to blossom into what is today one of the world’s most influential non-government organizations that penetrates all parts of India as well as those outside India.
Much has been written about the RSS and its founders, yet what they were trying to achieve has been widely misinterpreted as deliberately divisive socially. Rather, the overarching goal over the past hundred years has been to better unify society. A key question is how has the sarsanghchalak, the head of the organisation, navigated the significant challenges that the organisation faced? Another question is how has the organization managed to retain its core message that Hedgewar and Golwalkar considered imperative for a strong national culture and society. The sarsanghchalaks are largely responsible for maintaining internal dialogue between the RSS and its affiliates and to mediate differences, and they have managed to do so over the past hundred years. The robustness of internal debate ensured that the organisation maintained its culture of deliberation, consultation and discussion which were envisaged as critical by its founding fathers. The selection of a sarsanghchalak has likewise been a carefully considered decision based on........