ON A quiet morning in Nagpur’s Mohite Wada on May 28, 1926, a motley group of 15-20 young men gathered in a field under the watchful eyes of a bespectacled doctor. They stood in lines, dressed in khaki uniforms, and moved in disciplined unison through drills that were unfamiliar to India’s political culture of satyagraha and protest.At the centre of this fledgling experiment was Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, a man who had been shaped by both Gandhian idealism and revolutionary nationalism but who was convinced that the true problem of India lay elsewhere: the disunity and weakness of Hindus.This small gathering, the first shakha of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the organisation that Hedgewar established in 1925 with just five members, was an act of imagination that few outside Nagpur noticed at the time. Yet, a century later, the RSS has grown into one of the most powerful forces in India, presiding — through its political progeny, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — over the most complete dominance of the Indian state.From Hedgewar’s modest beginnings, through decades of suspicion, bans, and marginalisation, to its present-day role as the ideological core of the ruling dispensation, the RSS’s journey has been remarkable for its resilience and adaptability. Its chiefs have been the faces of this journey, but the deeper story is of an organisation that continuously re-invented itself to survive and expand while never letting go of its foundational conviction: that India is, and must be, a Hindu Rashtra.Building the shakhaHedgewar’s own trajectory reflected the ferment of early 20th-century India. A medical practitioner inspired by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and shaped by his association with the Anushilan Samiti — a fitness club that operated as an underground society for anti-British revolutionaries — he was an enthusiastic Congress worker, even courting arrest during Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement. But the Mahatma’s support for the Khilafat agitation and the Congress’s emphasis on Hindu-Muslim unity left him disenchanted. After a brief association with the Hindu Mahasabha, Hedgewar decided to chart his own course.In Dr Hedgewar, Parichay Evam Vyaktitva, RSS historian C P Bhishikar records Hedgewar’s frustration: “The policy of Gandhi to extend more-than-necessary cooperation to Muslims was not acceptable to Doctor sahab. He even conveyed this to Gandhi ji.”Bhishikar further notes that Hedgewar reached a conclusion: “If hardline Muslims who have taken the path of separatism and their instigators, the English, have to be countered successfully, then the only solution is that the Hindu society, which is the real national society (of India), is organised.”The RSS was thus born not as a political party but as a cultural project to organise Hindus. Hedgewar’s innovation was the shakha: a daily one-hour gathering that combined physical training, ideological education (baudhik), and rituals of Hindu unity.Story continues below this adScholars Walter K Andersen and Shridhar Damle, in The Brotherhood in Saffron (1987), describe how Hedgewar “devised a training system which was intended to establish a brotherhood which, in the pursuit of a renewed sense of community, could transcend parochial antagonisms and social disorder.”Hedgewar believed that the British, though numerically insignificant, could rule India only because Hindus were disunited, lacking in parakram (valour) and civic character. His answer: to systematically train “energetic Hindu youth with revolutionary fervour.”Hedgewar’s innovations included creating a recruitment strategy that deliberately targeted educated middle-class youth, teachers, clerks, even orphans, rather than seeking patronage from political elites. “Others considered them just part of a crowd. Hedgewar groomed them as leaders of social and cultural movements,” notes former Rajya Sabha member Rakesh Sinha who has written a book on Hedgewar.From the beginning, Hedgewar also invested in preparing the organisation’s future leadership. “Both Guru ji (MS Golwalkar) and Deoras ji (Balasaheb Deoras) were groomed by Doctor Sahab. They went on to expand and steer the organisation for the next 50 years,” says current RSS Prachar Pramukh Sunil Ambekar.Story continues below this adHedgewar’s stance of political aloofness drew criticism for the Sangh. The organisation stayed away from the Congress-led civil disobedience, even though Hedgewar himself participated in a ‘Jungle Satyagraha’ after stepping down as chief. It was a stance that continued during the tenure of his successor, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, with the RSS as an organisation staying away from Quit India Movement.As Andersen and Damle observe, “From its inception, the RSS adopted a cautious, non-confrontational approach toward political authority to reduce the chances of government restrictions.”Hedgewar argued that “going to jail was patriotism of optics” and that it was more important “to live for the country”.From ban to expansionWhen Hedgewar died in 1940, the Sangh was still small, but his successor Golwalkar would turn it into a national force. A zoology lecturer at Banaras Hindu University, Golwalkar, or “Guruji”, became chief at just 34.Story continues below this adGolwalkar provided ideology and organisation. His writings — We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) and Bunch of Thoughts (1966) — offered the RSS an intellectual core. Cambridge’s Neha Chaudhary and Leeds University’s Saarang Narayan, in their paper ‘Hindutva in the shadow of the Mahatma’, note how Golwalkar consciously appropriated Gandhian concepts such as Satyagraha while keeping the RSS ideologically distinct.Golwalkar’s biggest contribution, however, was the Sangh’s grassroot expansion. Under Golwalkar’s leadership, RSS evolved from having shakhas only in a few states to establishing a pan-India presence. He systematised the pracharak system of unmarried, full-time missionaries dedicating their life to the organisation. This became the backbone of the RSS. By 1973, this system had produced leaders who would later occupy prominent positions in Indian politics, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee and later, Narendra Modi.According to RSS sources, Golwalkar’s scholarly approach to ideology-building included developing a comprehensive training system for pracharaks that ensured ideological consistency across the expanding organisation.But soon after Independence, crisis struck. Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 by Nathuram Godse, a former swayamsevak, brought a ban on the RSS. Thousands were arrested. Though the organisation was cleared of direct involvement, the stigma was severe. The government lifted the ban only in 1949, after the RSS adopted a written constitution committing itself to constitutional means and non-political engagement.Story continues below this adThis forced discipline strengthened the organisation. The RSS spawned multiple affiliate organisations, including the Bharatiya Jana Sangh which directly engaged with politics. In the period after the ban, other associate organisations such as the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal (BSM) took shape. Each extended the Sangh’s reach into new social sectors.By the 1970s, the RSS had become a nationwide network, resilient enough to survive suspicion and bans, and disciplined enough to act as an alternative pole of mobilisation.From Emergency to RamThe next decisive shift came under Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras alias Balasaheb Deoras, who took over in 1973. Until then, the RSS had largely maintained political aloofness. But the Emergency (1975–77) changed everything. For the first time, the RSS threw itself into a political agitation, joining Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement for democracy. Thousands of swayamsevaks went to jail.Rajni Kothari, political scientist and founder of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, later observed that this “mainstreamed the RSS and gave it political legitimacy.” Jayprakash Narayan, the face of the Opposition during the Emergency, himself famously declared: “If RSS is fascist, I am a fascist.”Story continues below this adYet, Deoras was also pragmatic. From jail, he wrote conciliatory letters to Indira Gandhi, praising her in parts — a move critics saw as capitulation but which insiders saw as necessary. As veteran RSS leader K N Govindacharya put it: “Thousands of ordinary workers were rotting in jails and their families were suffering. The letters were an attempt to open dialogue.”Nevertheless, the Emergency heralded RSS’s first tryst with power — through the Jana Sangh, which was part of the Janata Partygovernment. By 1980, however, Deoras disbanded the Jan Sangh and formed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).Organisationally, Deoras modernised the RSS, aligning Sangh units with electoral constituencies. According to Pralay Kanungo’s book, RSS’s Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan, “the old hierarchical structure was brought in line with the electoral constituency division. Each RSS district would now cover one or two parliamentary constituencies; below that came the assembly and municipal constituency divisions”. This structural realignment created what Kanungo describes as “a well-oiled election machinery”.Deoras’s modernisation included encouraging married men to take full-time RSS positions and, according to Kanungo’s book, “developing financial sustainability through control of educational and other institutions where the full-time workers could be given employment without any cost to RSS”.Ideologically, Deoras broadened the appeal of Hindutva. In 1974, he declared, “Untouchability should go lock, stock and barrel.”Cambridge’s Neha Chaudhary observes that Deoras reframed Hindu nationalism in the language of civic nationalism — addingconstitutionalism, democracy, and social welfare.Story continues below this adMost consequentially, Deoras planted the seeds of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. As Christophe Jaffrelot notes, he saw as early as 1979 that Hindu consolidation could reshape politics. He revived the Vishva Hindu Parishad, launched yatras, initially in response to conversion of Dalits into Islam in Tamil Nadu and later as a Hindu rejuvenation project, and sought a “powerful and popular Hindu symbol” — which he found in Lord Ram. This set in motion a movement that would culminate in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and fundamentally alter Indian politics with the ascendance of the BJP.A new faceIn 1994, Rajendra Singh, or Rajju Bhaiya, took over as chief of the RSS. Paradoxically for an organisation that has prided itself in being caste-neutral, Singh, an upper-caste, remains the only non-Brahmin chief the RSS has had.A nuclear physicist and professor, Singh represented a new face of the RSS — scholarly, open, modernising.He institutionalised transparency, demanding written reports and statistical accounts of work. Ratan Sharda, in RSS: Evolution From an Organisation to a Movement, notes that Singh’s practice of seeking data became a norm. He also reached out to journalists and intellectuals.Story continues below this adSingh mentored a generation of leaders — Kalyan Singh, Rajnath Singh, Ashok Singhal, Uma Bharti, K N Govindacharya, and Mohan Bhagwat, among others. His rapport with political leaders across parties gave the Vajpayee government breathing room in coalition politics.His tenure coincided with the BJP’s first stint in power. The 1998 nuclear tests, allegedly influenced by the RSS’s strategic thinking, underlined the Sangh’s growing imprint on policy. Under Rajju Bhaiya, the RSS was no longer in the shadows — it was in dialogue with the establishment.Ideology vs powerIf Rajju Bhaiya opened the window for conversation and engagement, his successor K S Sudarshan pulled the shutters down. Taking charge in 2000, Sudarshan was uncompromising and ideologically rigid. He opposed globalisation, disinvestment and foreign capital, and trained his focus on Swadeshi.There were daily conflicts with the Vajpayee government, often to the latter’s embarrassment.These included Sudarshan making a last-minute intervention to influence a Cabinet appointment; unleashing the BMS and SJM to attack the government daily on its economic policies; declaring that the Indian Constitution be thrown out for being rooted in British ethos; RSS ideologue Govindacharya calling Vajpayee a mukhota (mask) and Sudarshan eventually declaring in 2005 that Vajpayee and Advani must make way for a younger leadership.Former journalist and BJP leader Swapan Dasgupta wrote in India Today in 2000, “Sudarshan likes to play both philosopher and field marshal… For Sudarshan, politics is a black-and-white game and part of the unending quest for ideological supremacy.”He also famously dismissed media criticism, once telling a worried activist after the Graham Staines murder, “Why are you worried? Panchjanya has published the real story.”Sudarshan’s era showed the limits of ideological purism in the face of governance realities.The age of BhagwatIn 2009, Mohan Bhagwat became chief. A veterinarian by training, he was one of the youngest leaders since Golwalkar. His tenure has coincided with the Sangh’s greatest political triumph: the rise of Narendra Modi and the BJP’s absolute dominance.Bhagwat has modernised the RSS in tone, if not in essence. He has explicitly discarded anachronistic elements — distancing from outdated portions of Golwalkar’s writings, rejecting casteist portions of the Manusmriti, acknowledging LGBT rights, asking Hindus not look for a Shivling under every mosque (with the exception of Kashi and Mathura), calling for women’s participation in the male-dominated Sangh, and launching a social harmony programme against caste discrimination.Encapsulating this shift, he said in his August 2025 lecture series that “Hindustan being a Hindu Rashtra is RSS’s sthir mat (unchanging)”, but it is open to revising its views on everything else.Under him, the RSS’s shakhas have grown from under 40,000 to over 83,000 across the country. More importantly, many of its historic goals — the abrogation of Article 370 and construction of the Ram temple — have been realised, not through street agitation but through government action, signaling smooth communication and coordination between the RSS and BJP.Yet, Bhagwat has also warned against hubris. When BJP president J P Nadda declared in 2024 that the party has grown from the time it needed the RSS and is now “saksham (capable)” and runs its own affairs, Bhagwat retorted: “Sevak (one serving the people) should not have ahankara (arrogance).” Modi has since been heaping praise on the Sangh.Bhagwat now has the onerous task of steering the organisation through disruptive digital technologies, generational change, and international scrutiny. The Hindutva narrative sweeping the Hindi heartland has spawned multiple unaffiliated flagbearers of the Hindu cause. They are not necessarily aligned with Sangh’s negotiation approach. As the RSS turns 100 and dominates Indian politics, Bhagwat’s challenge would be to rein in such forces.RSS at 100: A Timeline of Key Milestones1925 – FoundationDr. K.B. Hedgewar founds the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Nagpur on Vijayadashami.First shakha begins on May 28, 1926.1940 – First Leadership TransitionHedgewar dies.M.S. Golwalkar (“Guruji”) takes charge as 2nd Sarsanghchalak.1947–48 – Partition & BanRSS cadres provide relief during Partition.After Gandhi’s assassination, RSS is banned.1949 – Ban LiftedRSS adopts constitution pledging cultural, not political, role.1951 – Political ForayRSS pracharak Syama Prasad Mookerjee launches Bharatiya Jana Sangh.1950s–60s – Institutional GrowthExpansion of shakhas nationwide.Affiliates founded: ABVP (1949), BMS (1955), VHP (1964).1973 – Second Leadership ChangeGolwalkar dies.Balasaheb Deoras becomes 3rd chief.1975–77 – Emergency EraRSS banned, thousands jailed.Joins JP movement; later aids Janata Party’s rise.1980s – Hindu MobilisationDeoras backs VHP’s Ram Janmabhoomi campaign.RSS shapes strategy for Hindu consolidation.1990 – Rath YatraAdvani’s Ram Rath Yatra, powered by RSS cadres, electrifies Hindutva politics.1992 – Babri DemolitionRSS affiliates at centre of mosque demolition; organisation banned again, later reinstated.1994 – Third Leadership ChangeRajendra Singh (“Rajju Bhaiya”) becomes 4th chief.Brings transparency, pushes intellectual outreach.1998 – BJP in PowerVajpayee’s NDA government comes to power with RSS support.Nuclear tests align with Sangh’s vision.2000 – Fourth Leadership ChangeRajju Bhaiya steps down due to ill health.K.S. Sudarshan becomes 5th chief.2000–05 – Confrontations with BJPSudarshan pushes swadeshi economics, clashes with Vajpayee on reforms.In 2005, urges Vajpayee and Advani to make way for new leaders.2009 – Fifth Leadership ChangeMohan Bhagwat becomes 6th chief — youngest since Golwalkar.2014 – BJP’s Majority WinNarendra Modi leads BJP to first single-party majority in 30 years.RSS influence peaks.2019 – Ram Mandir VictorySupreme Court clears path for Ram temple.RSS hails fulfilment of decades-long struggle.2020 – CAA MobilisationRSS backs Citizenship Amendment Act, rallies affiliates amid protests.2024 – Tensions with BJPBJP chief J.P. Nadda says party no longer depends on RSS.Bhagwat counters: “Sevak should not have ahankara.”2025 – Centenary YearRSS completes 100 years.Bhagwat reiterates: “Hindustan being a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ is RSS’s sthir mat (unchanging view).”