RSS at 100: Foundational flaws and fear of freedom

As the right-wing ecosystem commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded on 27 September 1925 in Nagpur by Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, the organisation has reasons to look back with satisfaction. It is today a pivotal force in India’s socio-political landscape.

While admirers celebrate its organisational discipline, nationalism, and vast social-service projects, critics underline its exclusionary ideology, aloofness during the freedom struggle, persistent challenges to India’s democratic pluralism and its often regressive stand.

Dhirendra K. Jha, in his seminal work Shadow Armies: Fringe Organizations and Foot Soldiers of Hindutva, argues that 'the Sangh was less concerned with uprooting foreign rule than with enforcing an internal cultural hegemony'. This characterisation captures the central tension in the RSS’s century-long existence: its claim of uniting Hindus under a common identity clashing with an operational record marked by caste exclusivity, gender hierarchies, secrecy, and ideological rigidity.

As India debates its future course in 2025, the centenary of the RSS compels a reckoning with its legacy — whether the organisation is a force of national unity or one of persistent division.

Foundational flaws

The RSS was born with the proclaimed aim of preserving and strengthening Hindu civilisation. However, critics argue that the organisation’s foundational culture mirrored existing caste hierarchies rather than aiming at dismantling them.

In Hindutva: Ideology and Politics, Shamsul Islam observes that 'despite its claims of transcending casteism, the RSS has never produced a Sarsanghchalak from Dalit, Adivasi, or backward class communities. The leadership lineage — Hedgewar, M.S. Golwalkar, Balasaheb Deoras, Rajendra Singh, K.S. Sudarshan, Mohan Bhagwat — reflects a continuity of Brahminical dominance. This exclusion speaks to what Anand Vardhan Singh, in Hey Ram to Jai Shri Ram: 20 Dates that Changed the Course of India terms “an ideological project of cultural homogenisation that paradoxically sustains upper-caste supremacy”.' 

Women fare no better in the Sangh’s power structure. Female participation is relegated to the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, an auxiliary body with no influence over the central leadership. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay in The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right, notes: 'The expectation is for women to uphold Hindu culture through domesticity rather than leadership, reinforcing traditional patriarchal divisions.'

Thus, despite a century of presence, the RSS has struggled — or refused — to reconcile its rhetoric of Hindu unity with genuine inclusivity.

At odds with modern India

One of the starkest divergences between the RSS and the Republic of India is ideological. The Constituent Assembly, influenced by leaders like Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Dr Rajendra Prasad, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, embedded secular, egalitarian, and democratic principles into the Constitution.

Golwalkar, the RSS’ most influential ideologue, made his disdain clear. In Bunch of Thoughts (1966), he wrote: “Our Constitution does not inspire us. There is nothing Bharatiya in it.” He argued instead for the Manusmriti and texts rooted in Hindu tradition as the basis for governance, directly clashing with Ambedkar’s vehement opposition to caste hierarchies.

Ambedkar himself had warned: “Hindutva, with its glorification of the Manusmriti, is anti-Dalit and anti-democratic. It is opposed to the very idea of constitutional morality.” Indeed, he burned copies of the Manusmriti in 1927 to symbolise his resistance.

Sardar Patel, though initially sympathetic to Hindu consolidation, famously admonished the RSS in 1948 after Gandhi’s assassination, reminding them: “Your activities have spread communal poison. You cannot claim to stand for Hindu interests unless you respect the Indian State and Constitution.”

Dr Rajendra Prasad, India’s first President, too, lauded the Constitution as a moral foundation of unity. His vision clashed with the RSS’ ambivalence toward secular governance and national symbols. As Vijay Trivedi highlights in RSS: Both Sides of the Coin, 'the RSS resisted the tricolor flag for years, preferring the bhagwa dhwaj as a civilizational marker, only grudgingly accepting the national emblem when political survival required assimilation'.

Absence from the Freedom Struggle

Perhaps the most enduring charge is the RSS’s silence during the independence movement. Hedgewar founded the Sangh in 1925, at a time when Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement had electrified the nation. Yet, as Dhirendra K. Jha documents, Hedgewar gradually directed cadres away from anti-colonial mass movements into closed physical drills and cultural work.

During the Quit India Movement of 1942, the RSS abstained from protests. Ashutosh, in Reclaiming Bharat: What Changed in 2024 and What Lies Ahead, observes: 'While students, peasants, and workers filled jails, the RSS remained conspicuously absent, fearing decimation of its nascent cadre.'

Such withdrawal led Jawaharlal Nehru to remark that organisations like the RSS were “living in fear of freedom”. Critics argue that its reluctance to oppose imperial power reveals a prioritisation of communal consolidation over liberation.

Communalism and the path to Partition

The Sangh’s role in intensifying religious divisions before Partition is hotly debated. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay argues that “by defining Muslims as the ‘Other’ within, long before Jinnah invoked the two-nation theory, the RSS normalised the logic of separation”.

Golwalkar himself articulated this stark vision in Bunch of Thoughts: 'Non-Hindu people in Hindustan must either merge in the Hindu culture and lose their separate existence or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation.'

This conception fed into the communal polarisation gripping the subcontinent. Anand Vardhan Singh observes: 'By prioritising internal enemies over external oppressors, the RSS indirectly bolstered the climate of division that facilitated Partition.'

Gandhi’s assassination

The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by Nathuram Godse brought the RSS under direct scrutiny. Godse had been associated with the Sangh, though the RSS officially denied involvement. Nonetheless, the government banned the RSS in February 1948.

Patel, in correspondence with Golwalkar, declared: 'As regards the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, the activities of these two bodies have to be watched. Our reports do confirm that, as a result of the poison spread by these bodies, country was not safe from communal violence.'

The ban was lifted in 1949 only after the RSS pledged loyalty to the Constitution. But, as Shamsul Islam emphasises, 'the shadow of Gandhi’s murder continues to mark the organisation as an ideological inheritor of exclusivist politics that could not tolerate pluralism'.

Secrecy, bans, and accountability

Over the decades, the Sangh’s functioning has remained opaque. Its structure is para-military in discipline, with closed meetings, no transparent finances, and no accountability to the public. Vijay Trivedi underlines: 'The RSS is not registered as a society, nor does it publish detailed accounts. Its financial structure makes it immune to democratic oversight despite its massive reach.'

This secrecy extended to repeated bans — the second during the Emergency (1975–77) and the third after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. Each ban highlighted the state’s fear that the Sangh could disrupt democratic order, even as it revived by leveraging nationalist rhetoric.

Global inspirations and authoritarian parallels

Scholars also note the RSS’ initial admiration for authoritarian models. Golwalkar praised Nazi Germany’s racial policies at one point. In We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939), he wrote approvingly of racial pride, a point later disowned by the Sangh but cited consistently by critics.

Dhirendra K. Jha argues: 'The emphasis on uniformity, drills, hierarchy, and unchallenged leadership echoes the fascist regimes of the interwar years.' Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay further adds that such models created 'a rigid framework where dissent is impossible, and loyalty to the leader is absolute'.

From margins to mainstream

The turning point in the RSS narrative came with the creation of the Jana Sangh in 1951 and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980. Ashutosh argues that 'the organisational model of the RSS and the electoral front of the BJP represent a classic division of labour — cultural regiment on one side and political conquest on the other'.

With the BJP’s dominance since 2014, the RSS has achieved direct influence in governance. Its worldview informs debates on education, history, minority rights, and federalism. Vijay Trivedi remarks: 'The Sangh now enjoys unprecedented legitimacy, but this ascendancy raises deeper fears of constitutional erosion'.

After 100 years, the RSS embodies the paradox of modern India: it is both a vehicle of disciplined social mobilsation and a source of division and ideological rigidity. Its defenders highlight shakhas and relief work during floods. Yet critics invoke caste exclusivity, patriarchal control, anti-secular instincts, Partition rhetoric, and ideological inspiration from authoritarianism. Dr Ambedkar’s caution remains relevant: “If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country.”

In 2025 as India reflects, the centenary of the RSS demands introspection about nationalism and exclusion, cultural pride and democracy, and allegiance to tradition versus the Constitution. Only by confronting its historic contradictions can the RSS contribute to India’s democratic promise.

Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. More of his writing may be read here