
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded on September 27, 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, a Maharashtrian brahmin, is the leader of the pack, known these days as the Sangh Parivar (Sangh family). In the mid-1990s, the RSS had 30,000 shakhas (branches), 2,500 pracharaks (propagandists) and could mobilize around three million volunteers.
According to Hindustan Times (March 17, 2023), the RSS was planning to increase its number of shakhas to one lakh and appoint 2,500 new pracharaks in the country.
Dr. Ramesh Chandra Agarwal, a regional leader of the RSS, said there were 72,000 shakhas in the country and they were trying to increase it to one lakh by 2025, the centenary year of the RSS.
Between 2017 and 2022, 7.25 lakh youths had applied to join the RSS. And a majority of them were in the age group of 20 to 35 years. It is important to note the fact that 60% of RSS shakhas are student shakhas.
The RSS has an educational organization called, Vidya Bharathi, which provided education for 12 lakh students and employed 40,000 teachers around the country in the mid-1990s. Today Vidya Bharati is the largest voluntary educational organization in the country and running over 28,931 Schools and Colleges all over India with more than 34 lakh students and 158,550 teachers.
They also have more than 100 solid frontal organizations, both parliamentary and non- parliamentary, at their disposal specializing in specific fields. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP – World Hindu Council), established in 1966, organizes large-scale conventions of ‘Hindu’ religious men, runs schools, temples and hostels, and yearns to create a homogenized ‘Hindu’ community. Bajrang Dal, the VHP’s youth wing, organizes the lumpen elements for the movement’s muscle power.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the latter-day reincarnation of the politically isolated Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), which came into being in October 1951, and later merged into the Janata Party in 1977. Following the collapse of the Janata government over power struggle of leaders, the ‘dual membership’ (of the former Jana Sangh members in the RSS), and other issues, the new BJP was founded in December 1980. The party has a youth wing known as the Janata Yuva Morcha (Janata Youth Front).
The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the trade union movement which has been more successful among the white collar workers, had more than three million members mostly in the Hindi-speaking states in the mid-1990s.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), one of the nation’s largest student organizations, had active units in 415 districts out of 483, and 121 of the 167 universities in India had working branches also in the mid-1990s. ABVP continued to grow after the United Progressive Alliance came to power in 2003, and trebled its membership to 3.175 million members as of 2016. They claim to be India’s largest student organisation.
The Swadeshi Jagran Manch, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (Indian Farmers Union), Rashtriya Sevika Samita (National Working Women’s Council) are some of the prominent Sangh Parivar outfits. To act as a think-tank for the Sangh Parivar, there is a Deendayal Shodh Sansthan (Deendayal Research Institute) which was established in 1972 in memory of a Hindutva leader who was killed in 1968. The men who are in charge of all these organizations are all RSS members or leaders.
If we take a complete list of all the political, professional, social, economic, educational, religious, regional, children, youth, women, dalit, tribal, news, research, think-tank, overseas and other types of associations, the number of frontal organizations of the RSS could easily run into several hundreds.
Do you understand the phenomenal growth the Sangh Parivar has achieved over the past few decades and their astounding strength and magnitude?
S. P. Udayakumaran is a social activist