The RSS and the Freedom Struggle

· The RSS kept totally aloof from the many anti-British movements of the 1940s: the individual civil disobedience of 1940-41, the Quit India struggle, Azad hind Fauj, the 1945-46 upsurges around the INA trials and the Bombay naval mutiny.

· Yet the early and mid-1940s remained a period of rapid growth, with the number of shakas doubling between 1940 and ’42, and with 10,000 swayamsevaks being trained by 1945 in Officers Training Camps (now set up in nearly every province).

· Similar to the Muslim League and the other Hindu communal groups, the RSS, too, benefited from the fact that it was never a target of British wartime repression.

· But much more important was the way in which Hindu and Muslim communalism were feeding into each other, with the drive for Pakistan making more and more Hindus feel that the RSS was their best, and perhaps only defender. Such sentiments spread particularly among the Hindus of the Muslim-majority province of Punjab, as well UP where there was a highly articulate and aggressive Muslim leadership. A section of the Congress too, has come to consider the RSS a useful bulwark against the increasing intransigence of the Muslim League.

· In Bengal, the other major Muslim-majority area, in contrast, the already powerful progressive and Left traditions were able to block large scale RSS inroads. Taking the country as a whole, however, recruits were trooping into shakhas, and money, too, was pouring in.

· It was a time of prosperity for trading groups, with ample opportunities for war contracts and profiteering, and traders have always provided the major social bases for the RSS. Significant inroads seemed to have been made during these years into government services also.

· The communal holocaust of 1946-47, ushered in Jinnah’s call for direct action and the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946, was regarded as its ‘finest hour’ by the RSS.

· Through active participation in riots, relief work in Hindu refugee camps and virulent propaganda, the RSS contributed vastly to the development of a massive fear psychosis among large sections of Hindus about the ‘foreign’ Muslims.

· Even a section of the Congress High Command, particularly Vallabhbhai Patel, had become fairly sympathetic towards the RSS, although Nehru remained bitterly hostile. In the interviews they gave us, G. L. Sudarshan kept discreetly quiet about these bloodstained years; B.L. Sharma, however, boasted openly about his active role in the Punjab riots. (authors of Khakhi Shorts)

· The onward march of the RSS was abruptly halted by the impact of the murder of Mahatma Gandhi. Nathuram Godse had left the organisation many years back, but no one could deny that he had been initially trained by it, and RSS rhetoric about ‘appeasement’ of Muslims seemed all but indistinguishable for the justifications offered for the assassination.

· Golwalkar sent telegrams expressing shock to Nehru and Patel, and shakha work was suspended for 13 days ‘out of respect’ for ‘Mahatmaji’.

· But popular suspicion and anger could not be allayed so easily. RSS offices and houses were attacked in many parts of the country, particularly in Maharashtra where popular anger took an anti-Brahmin turn;

· ON 4 February 1948, the Government of India declared the RSS illegal.

· The shakhas lay low. Confining themselves to ‘social functions’ and quiet group discussions. The organistion in fact crumbled quiet rapidly, despite its much vaunted discipline and militancy, even though repression was never very severe – much less so than what the Communists were facing in the same period.

· The main response was to approach eminent personalities in efforts to persuade the overnment to lift the ban. In August 1948 Golwalkar began a correspondence with Nehru and Patel with that goal in mind.

· His letters to both on 24 September 1948 harp on the alleged danger from Communism, as evidenced by the ‘alarming happenings in Burma, Indochina, Java and other neighborind states’. The Indian youth was strongly attracted, for the ‘one effective check of the RSS no longer exists.’ The RSS, he pleaded with Nehru, should therefore be allowed ‘to work honourably and help the government fight the menace-on its own cultural lines’. He assured Patel that ‘if you with government power and we with organised cultural force combine, we can soon eliminate the menace.’

· As could have been expected, Nehru remained unimpressed, and even more sympathetic Patel wanted proof that the RSS was ready to change its ways. Other measures to remove the ban proved equally abortive: a signature campaign, which could rope in only 9 lakhs, a Jana Adhikar Samiti chaired by Acharya Kriplani, and finally, in December 1948, a brief satyagraha in January 1949, and resumed negotiations, in which interestingly, G D Birla acted as one of the mediators.

· Eventually the RSS agreed to adopt a written constitution, maintain regular registers of members, not to admit minors without parental permission, and work openly and in the cultural field only.

· The RSS won back its legality on 12 January 1949 in this way, agreeing to conditions, which were general enough not to seriously hamper its work, but which still represented a humiliating surrender under pressure.

· The contrast with Communist behavior in the same years is rather illuminating. The RSS leader wrote letters from the jail offering cooperation: Communist opened ‘jail fronts’ to carry on militant confrontations even inside prisons.

(Source : Khakhi Shorts and Saffron Flags, Orient Longman, 1993 )

Ø The RSS kept aloof from the Quit India Movement and other anti-British

movements of the 1920s. It maintained a safe distance from Azad Hind Fauj,

and the trials of martyrs like Bhagat Singh, and the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny.

Ø The issue came to the fore last March also when the Prime Minister in the presence of RSS chief, Professor Rajinder Singh, released a commemorative postage stamp to mark the 110th birth anniversary of, “freedom fighter and the founder of the RSS, Dr. KB Hedgewar.”

(Shri Guruji Samagrah Darshan, Vol. IV pp. 39-40).

To know the attitude of the RSS towards Quit India Movement of 1942, one should go through the following statement of Golwalkar: “There are bad results of struggle. The boys became militant after 1920-21 movement. It is not an attempt to throw mud at the leaders. But these are inevitable products after the struggle. The matter is that we could not properly control these results. After 1942, people often started thinking that there was no need to think of the law”. (Ibid. P 41). Shri Guruji continues, ” In 1942 also there was strong sentiment in the hearts of many. At that time too the routine work of Sangh continued. Sangh decided not to do anything directly.” (Ibid. p 41) No publication of Sangh throws any light on what great work Sangh did indirectly. However, it is not at all difficult to know what was this routine work. It was to sharpen and aggravate the division between Hindus and Muslims. And for this the British regularly rewarded them. During the British rule neither RSS nor the Muslim League ever faced any ban.

RSS ANTI-NATIONAL AND SUBVERSIVE : INDIAN HOME MINISTRY

The issue was so crucial that when a move was initiated by few sympathizers of the RSS within the Congress to lift the ban, Ministry of Home, Government of India through a communiqué dated November 14, 1948, once again emphasized,

” the information received by the Government of India shows that the activities carried on in various forms and ways by the people associated with the RSS tend to be anti-national and often subversive and violent and that persistent attempts are being made by the RSS to revive an atmosphere in the country which was productive of such disastrous consequences in the past”.

While rejecting all pleas of reforms within the RSS of Golwalkar the communiqué continued. “He has written letters both to the Prime Minister and the Home Minister explaining inter alia that the RSS agrees entirely in the conception of a secular state for India and that it accepts the National Flag of the country and requesting that the ban imposed on the organization in February should now be lifted. These professions of the RSS leader are, however, quite inconsistent with the practice of his followers and for the reasons already explained above, the Government of India find themselves unable to advise provincial governments to lift the ban. The Prime Minister has, therefore, declined the interview which Mr. Golwalkar had sought”.

In a letter to the RSS chief, Golwalkar, on the ban on the RSS following Gandhiji’s assassination, Sardar Vallabhai Patel had written,

“ It was not necessary to spread poison in order to enthuse Hindus and organise for their self-protection. As a final result of their poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. The RSS man expressed joy and distributed sweets.”

(from a publication, sympathetic publication, Truth Triumphs, distributor : Sahitya Niketan, Hyderabad –57. Published in 1997)