The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right

by Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay

In 1919, post the massacre of thousands of innocents in Jallianwala Bagh, K.B. Hedgewar travelled to Amritsar for a special session of the Indian National Congress. On his return to Nagpur in 1920, he began hectic preparations to hold the next Congress session in the city and was at the forefront of a campaign to have Bal Gangadhar Tilak preside over the proceedings. The reason: his meeting with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, whose suggestions had deeply unsettled the young Keshav. At this juncture, Hedgewar’s discomfort with Gandhi was mainly due to the latter’s open declaration at the All India Khilafat Conference of launching a non-cooperation movement unless the demands of the Muslims were met forthwith. Gandhi, along with several Indian Muslims, had rued over the decline of the Ottoman Caliphate and was worried about the looming uncertainties following the end of the First World War. The Khilafat Manifesto, published at the end of the congregation in Delhi, demanded that the British protect the Caliphate and urged the Muslims to unite for the cause. Not only was Bal Gangadhar Tilak not in favour of Gandhi’s suggestion because he believed that the Muslims must be drawn to the Congress on the issue of self-rule or swaraj and not on the basis of religion, K.B. Hedgewar had openly ‘disapproved of Gandhiji’s policy of launching the non-cooperation movement with Khilafat as its major plank.’ He further added that the Congress backing the Khilafat agitation would, ‘only breed e...