focused on physicality, militancy, asceticism, and sectarian membership, the RSS
provided its own version of the ritually mediated Indian gymnasium, the akhara.
At these gatherings, organized under the aegis of a more Westernized unit
of control, the local branch (shakha), groups of men could train themselves,
physically and morally, to become exemplars of “Hindu manhood,” under the
guidance of teachers/preachers (pracharaks). (The gender dimension was not
systematically thought through, but rather an outgrowth of an unthinking
androcentricism. As the ideological appeal of inducting women into the move-
ment became clearer, a women’s wing [the Rashtra Sevika Samithi, the National
Council of (Women) Workers] was formed without much justification regarding
gender.) The RSS expressed a combination of martial and spiritual values that
drew from the previous few centuries of experience amongst the brahmins and
other upper-caste men of Maharashtra. This cultural appeal was compounded
by sociopolitical factors. The growth of the Congress was due to mass mobiliza-
tion; and the involvement of and articulation of demands by other sections of
Hindu society was as much a cause of unease amongst potential RSS men as
was Muslim political activity. Consequently, the model developed by the founders
of the RSS was attractive and recognizable amongst many groups of brahmin
and other upper-caste Hindu men in and around Maharashtra.
The problem for the RSS was that it was founded with the aim of eventually
transforming the whole nation while its cadres seemed to be drawn from a
narrow caste and regional background. So the drive began to extend its appeal.
The cultural background of its early members, however, never ceased to be
influential, and the growth of the RSS was not a product of any change in its
ideological character. The model of the teacher and the idea of disciplined accul-
turation helped widen its appeal at least to other parts of North India where
young upper caste men could identify with the RSS. Not only has the RSS never
been able to have appeal across castes, but it has tended to be weak in South
India, outside the areas of Karnataka state on the borders of Maharashtra.
Where the RSS has drawn from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds, it has
done so because of the ambition of castes and individuals to improve their social
status through the emulation of the upper castes known as “Sanskritization.”
Meanwhile, in the 1930s, the Hindu Mahasabha, which still based itself on
the narrow appeal of elite groups of royal families and upper-caste notables,
could not mobilize itself as a political force of any electoral or strategic con-
sequence. Specifically political concerns about the place of Hindus and Hindu
culture in an independent Indian state were articulated much more influentially
by the Hindu traditionalists within Congress. They attempted to reconcile their
fundamental sympathy for a more Hindu-oriented political dispensation with
Mahatma Gandhi’s determination to preserve harmony and equality between
religions. Whatever the inner tensions of Hindu traditionalism within Congress,
it had the immense advantage of working institutionally within the electorally
dominant Indian political force of that time, leaving the Mahasabha without
scope for influence.
530 c. ram-prasad