JOURNALISTS of the New York Times (NYT) spent a year investigating the RSS, speaking to its leaders as well as common members to bring out an expose of the “far-right Hindu nationalist group” which has moved from the fringes to centre stage in India ever since its pracharak Narendra Modi became the country’s prime minister nearly 12 years ago. Published in an influential daily of the West, this investigation throws light on the workings of the RSS and its ideological principles in a manner that has may be news for Western readers, who are used to being told that Prime Minister Modi is ushering a new age of prosperity and strength in India, closely aligned with the West.

“While there have at times been tensions with the strongman premier, the R.S.S. is closing in on its dream to rebuild India’s secular republic as a muscular, Hindu-first nation,” the NYT writes. 

Describing the growth of RSS during Modi’s rule, the NYT writes, “The R.S.S. has infiltrated and co-opted India’s institutions to such a degree that its deep roots will ensure it remains a powerful force long after Mr. Modi is gone. It reaches inside India’s society, government, courts, police, media and academic institutions through a vast umbrella of affiliated groups, placing core members into all of them. It makes and breaks political careers. It commands loyalty across the nation by offering young men a path to relevance and influence in their communities through Hindu-nationalist activism.”

The political dominance of RSS has divided India along religious fault lines more than ever, the article says. “It’s philosophy casts India’s 200 million Muslims and Christians as descendants of foreign invaders who need to be put in their place.” 

The writers say that the RSS hand is visible from BJP’s dominance in critical elections to “Hindu vigilantes parading through Muslim neighborhoods or ransacking churches”. 

How RSS Works

Explaining how the RSS works, the NYT article writes:

“On its surface, the RSS is a vast social services organization. The movement’s organizing principles are built around neighborhood groups, training tightly knit classes of boy-scouts-for-life through exercise classes and spiritual reflection. This is the RSS’s recruiting pool, and its enforcement squad for reshaping the societal fabric. It is also where the organization systematically builds its influence in every walk of life.” 

As detailed earlier in People’s Democracy, the NYT refers the RSS’ many arms that “include a large student wing, trade unions, farmers unions, networks of professionals, religious outfits and charity organizations. The affiliates, which hold regular coordinating meetings, push the R.S.S.’s Hindu agenda to amass political heft as the surest bet for irreversibly entrenching their vision of India. 

The NYT writes that RSS “commands enormous sway over the world’s most populous nation … with little transparency or accountability. It operates without maintaining detailed records. It has accumulated vast riches that are spread through a multitude of small, independent outfits and trusts”. 

Explaining the doublespeak of RSS leaders the NYT article writes that its leasers may take “a nuanced public stance …. presenting a more inclusive idea of majoritarian rule for the country but … on the streets that nuance is often lost”.

The NYT article asserts:

“A new generation of more extreme right-wing leaders compete for attention, their rhetoric amplified by social media, often normalizing violence against minorities. Vigilantes who proudly identify as members of R.S.S. affiliates police public life along religious lines, frequently enforcing economic boycotts of Muslim businesses. They have turned Hindu celebrations into public shows of force. They have ransacked churches over accusations of forced conversions to Christianity, rampaged through Christmas celebrations, and dug up Muslim graves. They have dragged couples from trains on suspicion of interreligious relationships, and lynched men on allegations of carrying beef, which many Hindus do not eat, as they consider cows sacred. Its ideas deeply permeate India, from the pages of history textbooks to WhatsApp chat groups, screaming television debates and even the country’s courtrooms — long seen as protectors of India’s secularism.” 

It quotes Allahabad High Court’s Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav who said, while addressing a seminar in the premises of the Court, “I feel no hesitation in saying that this is India and it will run as per the wishes of its majority.” 

Shakhas – The Building Blocks

The journalists of the NYT appeared to have attended a shakha (daily meeting of primary members) of RSS in Mumbai where they observed the rituals of saluting the saffron flag, the physical exercises, and the palm down arm-at-the-chest salute. Writing that the RSS originated with “a group of right-wing ideologues” in the 19202 who thought that there was a deeper, bigger fight than the freedom struggle – it was “to revive Hindus after the Muslim invasions of centuries past had broken their spirit and opened the path to other colonial powers”. They adopted a “bottom-up approach to reorganizing society”, with the shakha as its building block. 

They write: “There are now 83,000 shakhas spread across the country, each linked from the neighborhood level to the national through WhatsApp groups. They remain the central pillar of molding the kind of men the R.S.S. wants as the warriors of its vision for India. They build habits and instill ideology through simple daily repetition by leaning into something fundamental — a basic human need for community and camaraderie.” 

“It is in these shakhas that the R.S.S. closely watches for potential and recruits its leaders. (Mr. Modi had started attending as a young boy, before becoming a full-time R.S.S. campaigner in his youth.) These recruits then seed a litany of affiliated organizations that make up the R.S.S.’s vast network.”

The NYT also quotes from the CERI-Sciences Po and The Caravan investigation of RSS (see People’s Democracy of January 4, 2025) found 2,500 organizations with “concrete, traceable, material ties” that make them “tightly networked parts of a single entity.” 

Tracing the ideological history of the RSS, the NYT journalists write that “The R.S.S.’s early leaders defined their fight in no uncertain terms: India was to have an exclusively Hindu identity.” 

Referring to the book ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined’ by M.S. Golwalkar, the second Sarsanghchalak (supremo), the NYT article says that Golwalkar “drew on the example of Hitler’s purging of the Jews in Germany to say it was not possible for races and cultures to be assimilated into one united whole”. 

Golwalkar had written that the only way non-Hindus could remain in India was if they “wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen’s rights.” 

Referring to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination the NYT writes that “the Hindu right was furious that the new Indian state had not been given a similarly outright religious identity (like Pakistan – ed.). The target of their fury was Gandhi, who was later shot dead at an evening public prayer”. 

“The shooter was a right-wing Hindu activist with ties to the R.S.S., which distanced itself by saying he had quit years earlier. Still, the organization was banned and became a pariah for decades.”

Rise to Power 

After briefly tracing the history of RSS through the Emergency and the founding of BJP, the NYT writes that the Ayodhya issue gave the RSS a big opportunity and “forever changed the course of Indian politics”. 

“The president of the B.J.P. crisscrossed the country in a truck decked out as a chariot, stirring deadly local tensions as his caravan moved. The movement’s bigger goal was to unite Hinduism’s vast diversity in a way similar to the invading monoliths, R.S.S. leaders said. “Jai Shri Ram,” or hail to the Lord Ram, became its battle cry,” the NYT writes. 

“The buildup culminated in 1992 when mobs that included known R.S.S. affiliates — armed with rods, pickaxes and burning rage — climbed the mosque’s domes and tore it down,” it continues. 

“The R.S.S. was banned again. But the formula has remained central to its success ever since: uniting Hindus around grievances from the past and injecting a militant sense of score-settling, right down to the local level, that treats India’s Muslim and Christian citizens as remnants of that past.” 

The NYT concludes that “it wasn’t until Mr. Modi became prime minister in 2014, with a clear majority, that its agenda was rolled out in earnest”. 

It refers to the building of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the scrapping of Art.370 taking away the special status of Kashmir as examples of this agenda. It also writes that RSS leaders “enjoy the freedoms, and luxuries, that come with unchecked power. They opened a lavish campus in New Delhi, consisting of three 13-floor towers built across 3.7 acres. Mr. Bhagwat travels with a security entourage close to the size of Mr. Modi’s”.