Dr. Keshava Baliram Hedgewar (April 1, 1889 - June 21, 1940) was an Indian nationalist. He was the founder of RSS in 1925.

Hedgewar founded the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) at Nagpur in 1925. RSS began as an explicitly upper caste Hindu organisation, promoting the Hindu Rashtra. It successfully crystallised the concept of Hinduism and Nationalism.

Hedgewar was sent to Kolkata by Moonje in 1910 to pursue his medical studies and unofficially learn the techniques of terror from the secret revolutionary organisations like the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar in Bengal.

He became a part of the inner circle of the Anushilan Samiti to which very few had access. He was also a member of the Hindu Mahasabha till 1929. He was imprisoned for sedition in 1921 for one year and again for nine months in 1930. After his spell in prison he instructed the RSS to remain aloof from political activities including the salt satyagraha (1930), Quit India movement (1942) and the Naval mutiny (1946) in Mumbai and continue mainly as a social organisation.

The RSS was formed on Vijaya Dashami Day in 1925 in Nagpur. It targeted primarily Hindu youth. Since Hindus formed the core of the country, Hedgewar felt that if they could be strong, then Muslims would drop their separatist agenda and live together with the majority community as a country. Guided by a great vision of national unity, he built the RSS from scratch. He travelled extensively to expand and consolidate the organisation.

Hedgewar found inspiration in Hitler, the Nazi leader. According to Hedgewar "at the heart of Hindu culture is Hindu religion, and its noble ideas are from the Vedas". He also asserted that the diverse languages of India are offshoots of Sanskrit, the dialect of the gods and Aryans the enlightened race. (R Robinson, Biography of Golwalkar, Oxford University Press 1967)

Even at the time of the country’s independence and vivisection, as Desraj Goyal shows in his book on the RSS, the only role the RSS played was to organise the killing of Muslims in various parts of north India.

He orderd the RSS cadre to refrain from taking any part in India's freedom struggle. Extracts from his collected speeches say to quote "The RSS only aim is to polarise the Indian masses on communal lines, wherever possible in order to awaken a dormant Hindi nationalism".

Lord Mountbatten has praised the RSS. According to the Government of India Viceroy minutes 1946 Dec 17 the the Viceroy's principal secretary is intructed to "refrained from imposing any ban on it. For, any division of Indian people on communal lines would deflect the Indian inspiration for independence".

One of the now withdrawn volumes of Towards Freedom series gives also gives evidence of this role of the RSS that, that the organisation directly as well as indirectly, went in favour of British rule. In fact, this was the reason for the withdrawal of those volumes by the now RSS controlled Indian Council of Historical Research. However copies are avaiable at the British Libarary London.

Hedgewar emphasised character building and arousing pride among Hindus in their culture. Character building was through physical exercises, bodybuilding, sports This is because Hedgewar spoke of samskars or good things by which he hoped to refurbish the Hindu character to make it nationalistic and defend itself against the "threatening others", namely the British and the Muslims.

In 1927 Hedgewar led the Ganesh procession playing music while going through the mosque road in Nagpur. Both the events were directed against the Muslims. This caused a riot which left over four hundred people dead.

External links

• http://www.rss.org/New_RSS/History/About_DRJI.jsp