Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Organization), set up in 1925 in Nagpur, became, by the early 1930s, a radical right organization with clear fascist tendencies. It had great contempt for democracy, hailed the Nazis , tried to imitate them, and set up a tight, leader-centric organization with a rabidly Hindu chauvinist agenda. The construction of a homogeneous Hindu identity meant negating any idea of class and caste divisions through token gestures, while retaining an upper-caste and upper-class hegemony. It also meant creating the image of a permanent enemy, the Muslims, and a gendered concept of communal identity, which meant a strong effort at controlling women by the imposition of a modernized patriarchy. M. S. Golwalkar, the second supreme leader of the RSS, in his book We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939), welcomed the events of Kristallnacht and said that the Germans had proved that two nations cannot live in one country. During the violent days of Partition the Hindu communalist organizations made a bid for power, but the murder of Gandhi by a Hindu communalist led to strong government action, and to a decline of the organizations. However, the strategy of the RSS was already one of deeply penetrating civil society. So Golwalkar got the ban on the RSS rescinded by promising the government that it would remain a “cultural” organization and ... log in or subscribe to read full text