Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) (pronunciation: /rɑːʂʈriːj(ə) swəjəmseːvək səŋgʱ/, Literal translation: National Volunteer Organization[4] or National Patriotic Organization[5]) is a right-wing, paramilitary,[2] volunteer[1] Hindu nationalist group. RSS states that its ideology is based on the principle of selfless service to the nation. Its volunteers are also k
nown for their efforts in relief and rehabilitation work during natural calamities[6] and for helping with more than 100,000 charities and educational/service programmes in the fields of education, health care, rural development, tribal emancipation, village self-sufficiency, rural farming and the rehabilitation of lepers and special needs children.[7][8][9]
The RSS was founded in 1925 as an educational group to train Hindu men by character-building to unite the Hindu community,[10] to counter British colonialism in India and suppress Muslim separatism.[11] Since their foundation they have espoused an Anti-Muslim agenda and have taken part in a great many riots.[3] They drew inspiration from European right wing groups during WWII.[11] RSS volunteers participated in various political and social movements including the Indian independence movement[1] and the group became an extremely prominent Hindu nationalist group in India.[11] By the 1990s, the group had established numerous schools, charities and clubs to spread its ideological beliefs.[11]
It has been criticised as an extremist and a paramilitary group.[12][13] The RSS carried out acts of violence against Muslims when founded in 1925,[14] and have since, formed militant groups who engage in attacks on minority groups throughout India.[15]
It was banned by the British Colonial Authorities,[11] and then thrice by the Government of India after independence — first in 1948 when Nathuram Godse, a former RSS member,[16] assassinated Mahatma Gandhi;[11][17][18] then during the emergency (1975–1978); and after the Demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992. The bans were subsequently lifted...
RSS was founded in 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, who was a doctor in the city of Nagpur, British India.[19] Hedgewar as a medical student in Kolkata had been a part of the revolutionary activities of the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar striving to free India from British rule.[20] He had been charged with sedition in 1921 by the British Administration and was imprisoned for one year.[21]
Hedgewar was educated by his elder brother. He was sent there by Dr. B. Moonje in 1910 to pursue his medical studies. There he lived with Shyam Sundar Chakravarthy[22] and learned the techniques of fighting from secret revolutionary organisations like the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar in Bengal. He is said to have joined Anushilan Samiti and he had contacts with revolutionaries like Ram Prasad Bismil.[23]
Previously he was involved in such type of revolutionary activities, This fact has been disclosed by so many writers viz. C.P.Bhishikar,[24] M.S. Golwalkar,[25] K.S.Sudarshan[26] and Rakesh Sinha[27]
After completing his studies and graduating, he returned to Nagpur, inspired by the armed movement. In his memoirs, the third chief of RSS, Balasahab Deoras narrates an incident when Hedgewar saved him and others from following the path of Bhagat Singh and his comrades.[28] Later he left the revolutionary organisations in the year 1925 and formed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Since Hedgewar was primarily associated with the Hindustan Republican Association, he adopted the full constitution of erstwhile HRA and implemented it forcibly in his newly established organisation RSS later on. The RSS first met in 1925 just after two months of Kakori train robbery in a small ground of Nagpur with 5-6 persons on Vijaya Dashami. After the formation of the RSS, Hedgewar kept the organisation away from having any direct affiliation to any of the political organisations then fighting British rule.[30] But Hedgewar and his team of volunteers, took part in the Indian National Congress, led movements against the British rule. Hedgewar was arrested in the Jungle Satyagraha agitation in 1931 and served a second term in prison[21][31][32]
During WWII the RSS' members openly admired Nazi-leader Adolf Hitler.[33] Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, who became the supreme leader of the RSS after Hedgewar, drew inspiration from Adolf Hitler's ideology of racial purity.[34] He had said in his book, We, or Our Nationhood Defined :
To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by"[35][36]
— M.
