Saffron brotherhood’s long march to power
The RSS first tasted power in the 1977 elections, which also led to the repeal of the ban on it (by Indira Gandhi in 1975) after 21 months.
It’s February 1922. After leading a rousing movement of civic non-cooperation across India, Mahatma Gandhi abruptly calls off the stir after a mob set fire to a police station in the Chauri Chaura hamlet of Uttar Pradesh. The surprising decision sets off a churn within the Congress, especially among a group of people now termed as Hindu revivalists, many of them followers of Maharashtra firebrand Bal Gangadhar Tilak. They feel Gandhi has made a serious mistake.
The next year, communal riots break out in Nagpur. Despite a compromise brokered by senior Congress leaders, sectarian passions simmer. Some Hindu leaders are convinced that they need an organisation more strident than the Congress to take up their cause.
Among them is Keshav Baliram Hegdewar. The young physician is reading the works of VD Savarkar and is certain that behind India’s subjugation is a fundamental weakness that needed to be remedied.
“Some time in 1924–25, he satisfied himself that he had discovered the cause: The fundamental problem was psychological and what was required was an inner transformation to rekindle a sense of national consciousness and social cohesion. Once having created a cadre of persons committed to national reconstruction, he believed there would be little difficulty in sustaining a movement of revitalisation, which, of course, would include independence as one of its objectives,” write Walter Anderson and Shridhar Damle in their magisterial The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism
Hedgewar launches the new movement on September 27, 1925 on Vijayadashami in Nagpur, the first participants largely recruited from a Brahmin locality. “This early group had neither a name nor a developed programme of activities. The participants were expected to attend an akhara during the week and take part in political classes on Sundays and Thursdays,” Anderson and Damle wrote.
That motley group of men has today grown into one of the most powerful organisations in the world. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is avowedly apolitical but is the ideological parent of the national political hegemon, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and has developed a deep imprint in the country’s cultural, social and socioeconomic spheres. To its opponents, thearound one-million swayamsevak-strong organisation has harmed India’s secular fabric and hurt education, history and culture. But to its supporters, it has made significant contributions to India’s social and political life, instilled a culture of discipline and patriotism, and given a moral road map to the country.
Early years
Hedgewar, a 36-year-old physician with a Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery (LMS) degree from erstwhile Calcutta, founded the RSS with 17 of his close associates at his Juni Shukrawari residence in central Nagpur on Vijayadashami in 1925. Hedgewar had gone to Calcutta in the 1910s to pursue medical studies at Calcutta Medical College and also joined the Anushilan Samiti, an underground revolutionary group working against British rule under the guise of a fitness club.
He returned to Nagpur in 1917. Almost immediately, he plunged into political activity by joining the Congress and during the 1920 Nagpur session of the Congress, he mobilised nearly 1,200 young volunteers, dressed in khaki half-pants.
“Initially, RSS was not the hard-core Hindu nationalist organisation. Most of the early swayamsevaks were Congressmen, particularly followers of Tilak disillusioned by Gandhi’s sudden ascendancy after Tilak’s death in August 1920,” said Dilip Deodhar, a former swayamsevak.
In 1926, Hedgewar set up a second shakha (branch) at Wardha with the help of Appaji Joshi, a Congressman. By 1940, the RSS had expanded to about 700 shakhas across undivided India, reaching as far as Lahore and Peshawar. Three young Maharashtrian Brahmin men — Balwant Indurkar, Babasaheb Apte and Madhavrao Mule — took responsibility for propagating the Sangh’s ideology in erstwhile united Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province. “Between 1938 and 1940, they succeeded in establishing several shakhas in these regions,” said Vishwas Indurkar, son of Balwant Indurkar.
In 1940, Hegdewar died and the second second Sarsanghchalak, MS Golwalkar, took charge. Known to his followers as Guruji, Golwalkar expanded the shakhas from 700 to 7,000 nationwide. He also inspired the creation of several affiliated organisations, including the Jana Sangh, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.
Handpicked by Hegdewar and groomed by him, Golwalkar focussed on expansion and giving the RSS a distinct identity. But his decision to not join hands with the Congress during the Quit India movement generated controversy as did his comments on caste and religious minorities in his speeches, later collated in Bunch of Thoughts. He created a robust network of provincial organisers, drawing from local Congress leaders. But the RSS also faced the first of its three bans during his tenure, after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
According to a senior swayamsevak, who requested anonymity, while Golwalkar focused on religious, social, farmers’ and trade union activities, his successor, Balasaheb Deoras, the third Sarsanghchalak, gave the RSS a more political direction — something that became evident during the Emergency.
“It was Deoras who played a key role in forging the tie-up between the Jana Sangh and the newly formed Janata Party, which eventually led to the formation of the government at the Centre in 1977,” he said. Eventually, the internal contradiction between the socialists and the RSS loyalists would splinter the government.
For the first time, Sangh-backed governments also came to power in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Deoras further expanded the organisation into remote tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and north-east states, increasing the number of shakhas nationwide to over 70,000.
Social churn
The Sangh’s membership has grown from just 17 in 1925 to around one million in 2025. In its early decades, swayamsevaks wore khaki shirts and knee-length khaki shorts, similar to the British military uniform. When the colonial government banned civilians from wearing military-style clothing in 1940, the Sangh adopted a white shirt and khaki half-pants. Eventually, after years of debate, when senior pracharaks proposed switching to full trousers, the change was implemented under current chief Mohan Bhagwat in 2016.
When the RSS was founded in 1925, women were not part of its structure. In 1936, Laxmibai Kelkar from Wardha persuaded Hedgewar to establish a women’s wing, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti. Soma Ijmulwar, an old member of the samiti, said that members engage in yoga, patriotic singing, self-defence training, and discussions on current issues, alongside initiatives for women’s empowerment. “Today, we have over 5,500 shakhas with nearly one million women members,” she said. The samiti, Ijmulwar added, also talks to young women about ‘love jihad’, a dubious term used by right-wing groups to describe interfaith relationships, the consequences of interfaith marriages.
The Sangh also reached out to Dalits and tribals. Sandip Jadhav, former deputy mayor of Nagpur, recalled that under the influence of Balasaheb Deoras he became actively involved with the Samajik Samrasta Manch, a Dalit outfit formed in 1983. The Manch, he said, was committed to preventing caste conflicts among Hindus by ensuring equal access to temples, wells, crematoriums, and other community spaces.
“There have been many instances where the Manch took the initiative in promoting inter-caste marriages,” Jadhav noted. He added that the organisation also sought to harmonize Phule–Ambedkar thought with the Hindutva philosophy.
Jadhav cited the example of Gurudeo Sorde, a Dalit and senior RSS pracharak, who worked for five years as a full-timer with ABVP before joining the Samajik Samrasta Manch. “Sorde made a colossal contribution in bridging the gap between upper and lower castes through the Manch. Unfortunately, he passed away during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Jadhav said.
Similarly, several tribal activists associated with the RSS are working extensively among tribal communities. “We focus on education and creating a healthy sporting environment for tribals by setting up gyms and providing other facilities for their overall upliftment,” said Prakash Gedam, a tribal swayamsevak associated with the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in Maharashtra.
Power shift
The RSS first tasted power in the 1977 elections, which also led to the repeal of the ban on it (by Indira Gandhi in 1975) after 21 months. When Deoras came to Delhi, he was given a hero’s welcome at the railway station with the new foreign minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, turning up to garland the RSS chief. Prime Minister Morarji Desai, too, surreptitiously met Deoras and exchanged notes on major developments from time to time, wrote Abhishek Choudhary in his biography of Vajpayee — ‘The Believer’s Dilemma’.
During the turbulent Janata years, RSS loyalist Nanaji Deshmukh emerged as a key figure, befriending industrialists and expanding the organisation of the Jana Sangh. When he retired at 60, he adopted a clutch of villages in Uttar Pradesh. “The high profile inauguration of the project had a symbolic significance. For the first time, the President of India, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, sat beside the RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras at a public event,” wrote Choudhury.
The second stint in power came during the Vajpayee years in the late 1990s. But the relationship between the PM and the then RSS chief, KS Sudarshan, was far from serene. The two found themselves at odds on several issues. First in 1998, rumours were rife that Sudarshan had stopped the appointment of Jaswant Singh as finance minister in an affront to Vajpayee. Then, in 2000, Sudarshan launched a public broadside against Vajpayee and key appointees such as national security adviser Brajesh Misra. At the time, HT reported that Vajpayee kept the organisation at a distance, not allowing it to dictate policy to the government or weigh in on crucial appointments. The hardliner Sudarshan often targeted the government’s economic policies.
But the third tryst of power has been far smoother. Bhagwat has maintained a cordial relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi became the first PM to visit the RSS headquarters in Nagpur earlier this year, when he paid glowing tributes to Hedgewar and Golwalkar.
“There is better coordination and understanding between the two leaders, which has enabled the Sangh to see much of its agenda implemented under Modi’s regime — whether it be the Ram Temple, the abolition of instant triple talaq, or the abrogation of Article 370,” said Deodhar.
Bhagwat’s tenure has also been marked by significant ideological shifts. He called Bunch of Thoughts – which defended the Manusmriti – as outdated and urged the rejection of caste divisions. “The Sangh is not dogmatic. Times change, and our thoughts evolve,” he said in 2018.
Bhagwat also spoke about reconciliation and avoiding fresh disputes over temples and mosques during the Gyanvapi Masjid controversy in June 2022. A swayamsevak from the Rashtriya Muslim Manch, an RSS affiliate, said Bhagwat rejected Golwalkar’s harsh characterisation of Muslims, Christians and Communists as “internal enemies” in Bunch of Thoughts. A senior leader of the Rashtriya Muslim Manch, a liberal Muslim outfit of the RSS, Virag Pachpore, pointed out that Bhagwat has engaged with several Muslim intellectuals recently.
Atul Londhe, chief spokesperson of the Maharashtra Congress Committee, a well-known critic of the RSS and a Nagpur native who resides near the Sangh headquarters, accused the organisation of being consistently involved in religious conflicts and failing to promote progressive ideas. He alleged that the RSS thrives on negativity and continues to uphold the caste system, while merely pretending to have rejected the Manusmiṛti.
“In reality, the RSS does not believe in the Indian Constitution and still places its faith in the Manusmiṛti. If its political wing, BJP secures a one-third majority in Parliament, it would not hesitate to amend the Constitution,” Londhe remarked.
He further asserted that the RSS lacks scientific temperament and has never provided a blueprint or roadmap for the nation’s scientific development. Instead, he claimed, it remains preoccupied with Hindu-Muslim conflicts, seeking to win over Hindus by misleading them.
