(1889–1940) Founder and first
supreme leader (sarsanghchalak) of
the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh
(RSS), which he formed in the central
Indian city of Nagpur in 1925. The RSS
is a conservative Hindu organization
formed for the express purpose of
providing leadership for a revitalized
Hindu India; for most of its history it
has characterized its mission as cultural, rather than religious or political.
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Hatha Yoga
The character of Dr. Hedgewar and
the RSS are inextricably linked to the turbulent years immediately after World
War I, and the profound dislocation in
Indian society that came with the struggle for independence. In his youth,
Hedgewar had been involved in the
independence movement, and for some
time even supported Mohandas
Gandhi’s Congress Party. But by the
early 1920s, he had become disillusioned with Gandhi’s methods. He had
also been deeply influenced by the
Hindu nationalist Vinayak Damodar
Savarkar, whose central thesis was that
the Hindus were a nation, despite their
profound regional, social, linguistic, and
religious differences.
On the festival of Vijaya Dashami
(Dussehra) in 1925, Hedgewar formed
the RSS to help create this Hindu nation
by unifying Hindus previously separated
by divisions of caste and class. This date
is highly significant, since according to
popular Hindu belief any endeavor
begun on Vijaya Dashami will invariably
succeed. Hedgewar led the RSS until his
death, fifteen years after the organization was founded.
Aside from training a leadership
corps, the RSS was also formed to protect
Hindu interests. On one level, it endeavored to do this by developing more
assertive, tough members, and by training them to use traditional weapons
such as the wooden staff. On quite
another level, the RSS has a long history
of charitable work with refugees and victims of natural disasters, and one of its
missions is service to the Hindu community.
In either case the RSS has often been
perceived as anti-Muslim—until 1977,
non-Hindus were barred from being
members—and many of its members
view the Muslim community as aliens in
India, if not actual enemies. Throughout
his life, Hedgewar kept the RSS strictly
aloof from politics, and his insistence
that it was a cultural and characterbuilding organization helped keep it
from being banned by the British. Under
its banner as a cultural organization, the
RSS spread from the state of
Maharashtra to other parts of India,
aided in part by deteriorating HinduMuslim relations in the years prior to
independence in 1947. For further
information see Walter K. Andersen
and Shridhar D. Damle, The
Brotherhood in Saffron, 1987; Tapan
Basu et al., Khaki Shorts and Saffron
Flags, 1993; and Christophe Jaffrelot,
The Hindu Nationalist Movement in
India, 1996.