The Vision of Dr. K.B.
Hedgewar and RSS
·
“Sangh never was anti-Congress nor is ”,
asserted the Sarsanghchalak
·
One of the founders and Sarkaryavah, Balaji Huddar, turned Marxist
Dr. Hari Desai
On the
auspicious day of Vijaya Dashami in 1925(27 September 1925), some 25
closed friends proud of their Hindu heritage met at Nagpur under the leadership
of a Congressman Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar (1 April 1889-1 June 1940) and
launched an organization which was to be named Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS)
the very next year on 17 April 1926. Before this meeting Dr. Hedgewar had gone
to Ratnagiri to consult Barrister Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.He established the
organization with the intention of promoting the concept of the Hindu Nation
and drew upon influences from social and spiritual Hindu reformers such as
Swami Vivekananda and Aurobindo to develop the core philosophy of the RSS. Some
of the friends who attended the meeting at Hedgewar’s residence to establish
RSS included Bhauji Kaware, Anna Sohani, Vishwasrao Kelkar, Balaji Huddar and
Bapurao Bhide. The Indian National Congress(INC) was a movement to fight for
the rights of the people of British India. One of the prominent Congress
leaders of Central Province(CP), Dr. B. S. Moonje, who later became a firebrand
leader of Hindu Mahasabha, saw young Keshav as a prospective leader and a supporter
of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak of Pune like him in 1904. Dr. Hedgewar had a
dream of seeing the Hindun Nation become invincibly powerful and shine in its
full and effulgent glory; and this, he was convince, could be achieved only by
nurturing the RSS to its full stature, according to his official biography, “Dr.
Hedgewar, the Epoch Maker”.
As a student of Kolkata’s
National Medical College, Hedgewar had come in close contacts with the
revolutionaries and had joined the secret organization, Anushilan Samiti
apart from becoming instrumental in bringing weapons for Vidarbha
revolutionaries, according to his biographer and RSS ideologue Rakesh Sinha.
Prof. Sinha, in the biography published by the Publication Division of the
Government of India, gives description of Hedgewar joining other revolutionaries in
preparing bombs at Dr. Moonje’s
residence. Hedgewar was arrested for
throwing a bomb at a Police station in August 1908 but was released due to lack
of evidence. He was a link between the revolutionaries of Bengal and CP during
1910 and 1915 and brought weapons secretly whenever he came to Nagpur, records
Sinha. Hedgewar’s code name in the secret revolutionary organization was
“Cocaine” and the code word for the weapons he was bringing was “Anatomy”.
The Congress Convention was to
be held in 1920 at Nagpur. The Central Province Congress leaders including Dr.
Moonje were keen to have Lokmanya Tilak to preside over but unfortunately Tilak
died on 1 August 1920. It shocked most of the Tilakites since Tilak was an icon
for all the revolutionaries in the Congress. Dr. Moonje along with Dr.
Hedgewar, the then joint secretary of Nagpur city Congress, were involved in
organizing the Congress Convention at Nagpur gave a thought to who be invited
to preside and they zeroed down the name of Aurobindo Ghosh. Both went to
Pondicherry (now Puducherry) where Aurobindo had settled down since 1910.
Aurobindo turned down the invitation to return to active politics and preside
over the Nagpur Congress. Gradually Mahatma Gandhi replaced Tilak in the Congress which was not liked by the
revolutionaries and pro Hindu leaders since Gandhi was a moderate like Gopal
Krishna Gokhale.
Hedgewar
was to be the first Sarsanghachalak (Supremo) and Huddar the first Sarkaryavah(General Secretary) of
RSS. The first chief of RSS refused to be the Guru but he preferred Bhagva
Dhvaja(Saffron Flag) to be the Guru for RSS. Not many people would
know that RSS founder had praised the Congress President Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru for the Purna Swaraj resolution in December 1929 Congress at
Lahore and given a call to celebrate 26
January 1930 as Purna Swaraj Day in all RSS Shakhas ! Doctorji did
participate in two Satyagrahas following the calls given by the Congress and
was imprisoned twice. But he never involved RSS in the Satyagrahas. He expected the Swayamsevakas to participate as
an individual. When Moonje insisted the participation of RSS as an organization
in the Bhaganagar(Hyderabad) Satyagraha organized by the Hindu Mahasabha, Dr. Hedgewar
turned down his request but allowed the Swayamsevaks to participate in their individual
capacity.
At a
later stage, one of the founders of RSS, Balaji Huddar, turned to Marxist ideology and
became the leader of the Communist Party
of India. Despite the ideological differences, Dr. Hedgewar continued to
maintain not only friendship with Huddar but he even invited him to address the
Shit Shibir of RSS at Nagpur in 1938! The year 1938 was important in the life of
Doctorji since the Congress leadership was at loggerheads with him. His
official biographer, N. H. Palkar writes in “Dr. Hedgewar Charitra” that Dr.
Hedgewar was furious since the organization he had selflessly worked for last so many decades was expressing doubts in
his integrity and the functioning of RSS. When he received a letter from the
Central Province Congress on 10 November 1937, asking him to give
clarifications about certain issues on RSS, he wrote back saying: “ Now it is
not my age of a student to appear for an exam and reply the questionnaire you
have sent. Since you are trying to brand us as anti-Congress in the name of
public, I would like to state that we appreciate your guts to accuse us of and clarify
that the Sangh was never anti-Congress
and not anti-Congress even now.” The RSS founder attended the Congress
Convention at Kolkata in 1928 and had met Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, when
Vallabhbhai Patel shined up as the Sardar at the national level after the
Bardoli Satyagraha. In 1938 itself, Hedgewar sent invitation to Bose, the Congress
President, to be the chief guest for the Pune RSS Camp, but Netaji wrote back
to express his inability to join him since the local Marathi Congress leaders
were against accepting the invitation. Unfortunately, Dr. Hedgewar
died in 1940 but before his death he had nominated Prof. Madhav Sadashiv
Golwalkar ( Guruji) as his successor.
Now that the front organization
of RSS, BJP, is ruling over India and many Indian states, the new generation of
Swayamsevakas and BJP rulers must remember the words of the founder
Sarsanghchalak, recorded by Palkar in
the biography of Dr. Hedgewar in
conversation with Mahatma Gandhi at Wardha in 1934 : “The Congress leaders keep
the name of the residence as Parna-Kuti ( Hut made of Leaves) but inside
the Parna-Kuti the arrangements are royal. In RSS we follow simplicity
and do things ourselves with involvement.” None should forget the contribution
by those who laid the foundation stone of the organization some nine decades
ago.
Next Column: Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha in
Coalitions
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