Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday projected the RSS as a key cog in the country’s fight for independence, taking it upon himself to dispel the widely held belief that the outfit had sided with the British.
Speaking at the centenary celebrations of the RSS at the Dr Ambedkar International Centre here, Modi said: “If we look at the freedom struggle, many workers, including the most revered (RSS founder) Dr Hedgewarji, participated in the freedom movement. Doctor Sahib went to jail several times. The Sangh protected many freedom fighters and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with them. In 1942, when the movement against the British was launched in Chimur, many volunteers faced severe atrocities.”
According to historical records, the RSS stayed away from the Quit India movement — of which the agitation in Chimur (currently in Maharashtra) was a part — and encouraged its members to join the Civic Guard, a colonial equivalent of the Home Guards.
The RSS has frequently faced intense criticism from the Opposition over its role in the freedom struggle and its refusal for long to hoist the Tricolour, with the BJP’s rivals using this to question the party’s much-vaunted nationalistic credentials.
Modi, who has been assiduously wooing the RSS, released a special postage stamp and a commemorative coin to mark the centenary of the Sangh.
The ₹100 coin has an image of Bharat Mata holding a saffron swallowtail with a lion in the background and swayamsevaks saluting her. The RSS’s motto — Rashtray Swaha Idam Rashtray Idam Namah — is inscribed on it.
The Bhagwa Dhwaj is the saffron swallowtail of the Maratha empire that is used as a flag of the RSS and both factions of the Shiv Sena. This is the first time that Bharat Mata and the RSS have found pride of place on stamps and currency.
The postage stamp shows the RSS participating in the citizens’ march on Republic Day in 1963. While Modi referred to it as the Republic Day parade, the official armed forces parade was organised on a small scale that year owing to their deployment along the border with China soon after the war.
Modi said: “We have seen how even after Independence, there have been attempts to crush the Sangh…. His Holiness Guruji (M.S. Golwalkar) was implicated in a false case (of involvement in Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination). He was even sent to jail...”
Modi added: “But when His Holiness Guruji (M.S. Golwalkar) came out of jail, he said casually, ‘Sometimes the tongue gets caught under the teeth. It even gets crushed, but we don’t break the teeth because the teeth are ours and the tongue is ours’.”
Modi said: “When Emergency was imposed, this trust gave strength to every swayamsevak to face it…. These two values — integrity with society and faith in constitutional institutions — kept the Sangh volunteers steadfast in every crisis.”
The Prime Minister’s effusive praise for the RSS drew sharp criticism from the Opposition.
Congress communications head Jairam Ramesh posted a copy of a letter from former home minister Sardar Patel to Bharatiya Jana Sangh’s Syama Prasad Mookerjee in 1948 stating: “As regards the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, the case relating to Gandhiji’s murder is sub judice and I should not like to say anything about the participation of the two organisations, but our reports do confirm that, as a result of the activities of these two bodies, particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy became possible. There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasabha was involved in this conspiracy. The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of the Government and the State.”
The RSS was cleared of involvement in Gandhi’s assassination.
The Congress also posted a video saying that the RSS never participated in the freedom struggle, considered Bhagat Singh an “anarchist”, spied for the government and did not hoist the Tricolour for most of its history.
CPM general secretary M.A. Baby wrote on X: “Releasing a coin and stamp to glorify the RSS is an insult to the Constitution and an attempt to erase its divisive past and whitewashing history. The PM is misusing his office to legitimise the RSS’s sectarian agenda and distort India’s freedom struggle.”
AAP parliamentary party leader Sanjay Singh said: “During World War II, the RSS encouraged Indians to join the British Army and supported them. A deeper look at history shows that the RSS spied on revolutionaries, opposed the Quit India Movement and even opposed the national Tricolour.”
He added: “The people of the country must remember that for 52 long years the RSS did not hoist the national flag at its own headquarters. This is an organisation that believes in discrimination. That is why, to this day, it has never appointed a Dalit, backward, tribal or a woman as its chief.”