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The History of the birth and growth of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is, in many respects, unique.
Founded in 1925 by Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar with a handful of young men, the Sangh has now spread to over 20,000 places, leaving no part of the country untouched. Also, no section or group in the society - students, teachers, farmers, workers, traders, artisans, employees, industrialists, intellectuals or other professionals - has been left out of its fold.
Several factors have contributed to the fast-growing popularity of the Sangh. From time to time, the Swayamsevaks have launched jana-jagarana - public awakening - campaigns on issues of vital national concern. They have also responded to the nation's call in all crucial moments of natural or man-made exigencies. Because of their dynamic role in various fields of national life they have built up powerful movements which have had remarkable impact on millions of our countrymen.
The perception of the nation's ills and the remedies thereof that forms the backdrop of the founding of the Sangh also has some distinctive features.
Dr. Hedgewar was a born patriot, and a fiery one at that. Even as a boy of tender age, sparks of protest against the foreign British rule flew from him. He braved rustication from the school, shadowing by the government informers and hardships to his uncle. He set out to Calcutta more to delve into the intricacies of the revolutionary movement than to study medicine. Back home as a doctor, he turned his back on personal and family happiness and plunged into the mass movements for Swaraj led by Congress at the time. Twice he courted imprisonment completing hard terms in prison.
Dr. Hedgewar's speeches were marked for their fiery character. Listening to the Doctor s defiant statement in the court in 'defence' of one of his public speeches for which he was hauled up for 'sedition', the judge remarked, 'Your defence is more seditious than your speech' and awarded him one year's rigorous imprisonment. That was in 1921. The 1930 movement again saw him courting imprisonment by offering Satyagraha this time with some of his colleagues in the Sangh also joining him.
Author : H.V. Seshadri
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