The unchanging evolution of the RSS on caste | Hrushikesh Tripathy

June 5, 2026

Abstract

This essay examines the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s century-long engagement with caste, arguing that the organisation’s evolution from Hedgewar to Bhagwat constitutes a performance of reform rather than genuine ideological transformation. It contends that the shift toward Samajik Samarasata (Social Harmony) represents a calculated electoral strategy rather than a conversion to structural egalitarianism, and that the RSS has systematically weaponised its sewa (service) infrastructure and rhetoric to co-opt Dalit and subaltern communities without surrendering its foundational Brahminical hierarchy. Tracing this strategy through leadership tenures, organisational mechanisms, and grassroots political mobilisation, the essay concludes that what evolves across the Sangh’s history is not the caste system itself, but the methods through which it is rendered politically sustainable.

On October 1, 2025, the Government of India, led by former RSS Pracharak (preacher) Narendra Modi, officially commemorated the organisation’s centenary with the release of a commemorative coin and a stamp at the Ambedkar International Centre [1]. Twenty days later in Lucknow, an elderly Dalit man was forced to lick the floor by an alleged RSS worker [2]. Only three years ago the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh supremo Mohan Bhagwat had declared, “everything that causes discrimination should go out lock, stock and barrel” [3]. What, then, is going on?

This essay seeks to explore and establish that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s century-long engagement with caste is less an evolution than a performance, carefully rehearsed dramatics of reform masking an unbroken Brahminical hierarchy. It argues that the organisation’s shift toward publicly promoting Samajik Samarasata (Social Harmony) is not a genuine ideological reformation but a calculated, necessary evolution in strategy, a political adaptation driven by the cynical imperative of electoral consolidation rather than a conversion to structural egalitarianism. From Hedgewar to Bhagwat, the Sangh’s so-called inclusivity reads less like progress and more like a marketing campaign for caste, repackaged in the language of devotion and nationalism. It further examines how the RSS has successfully weaponised its social service wings and rhetoric to co-opt subaltern communities without surrendering its internal hierarchy. This essay therefore examines how the RSS has perfected the art of appearing modern while thinking medieval, turning caste from a social ill into a patriotic duty, and in doing so, proving that nothing evolves faster in India than the defence of tradition itself.

1. The foundation

To understand the RSS’s relationship with caste, one must begin with Nagpur, the site of its foundation. Decades before Hedgewar established the organisation, Nagpur and the wider Vidarbha region had already become a hotbed of political mobilisation. While dominant historiography frames the RSS’s formation primarily as a reaction to the perceived threat of Muslim domination, a closer reading suggests that the anxieties of the region’s Brahmins over the growing Dalit mobilisation were an equally motivating force. The Mahars, a Dalit community, experienced modest economic mobility under colonial rule and began seeking social advancement. At the same time, Phule’s Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth-Seekers’ Society) gained significant ground in Vidarbha, and the region witnessed a surge in Dalit movements demanding temple entry, access to education, and civic rights. Between 1917 and 1920, four major Depressed Classes Conferences were organised across Maharashtra. The city’s upper-caste elites saw these movements as subversive activities encouraged by missionaries and non-Hindu influences. In response, the Hindu Mahasabha launched a series of counter-meetings to integrate untouchables into the Hindu fold. Hedgewar, who was already under the Mahasabha’s ideological influence, permitted Dalits to join RSS shakhas (branches). It was a calculated move to co-opt the rising Dalit mobilisation and neutralise its independent political assertion [4].

This dimension, however, has been carefully omitted from mainstream historical narratives. It was amid this twin conundrum that Hedgewar’s innovation found its enduring strategy to reimagine Hindu unity as both shield and weapon, a means to discipline caste dissent under the guise of fighting a common enemy.

2. Doublespeak, doublethink

This foundational contradiction became more pronounced under Guruji M S Golwalkar, whose writings provide the clearest window into RSS ideology on caste. On one hand, he made lofty proclamations such as “Hindu society, whole and integrated, should forever be the single point of devotion for all of us. No other consideration, whether of caste, sect, language, province, or party, should be allowed to come in the way of that single-minded devotion” [5]. On the other hand, he wrote: “It is this fact which made the first and greatest law giver of the world — Manu, to lay down in his code, directing all the peoples of the world to come to learn their duties at the holy feet of the ‘Eldest-born’ Brahmans of this land” [6]. This doublespeak persisted throughout his years as Sarsanghchalak (Chief). In his magnum opus, Bunch of Thoughts, he fully consolidates this position: “Society was conceived of as the four-fold manifestation of the Almighty to be worshipped by all. Castes were in those ancient times too, continuing for thousands of years of our glorious national life… They serve as a great bond of social cohesion” [5]. Rather than a foundational moral and structural injustice, Golwalkar shifted the narrative to caste discrimination as merely an artificial blot on the divine and just varna system, effectively pre-empting any radical internal reform. He writes: “The feeling of inequality, of high and low, which has crept into the Varna system, is comparatively of recent origin. But in its original form, the distinctions in that social order did not imply any discrimination” [5]. This defensive manoeuvre allowed the RSS to dismiss the abolitionist project of B R Ambedkar, whose call for the annihilation of caste represented a fundamental threat to the Sangh’s very conception of Hindu society. The organisation’s goal became not the dismantling of the basic social hierarchy, but its “purifying and uniting,” thus sacralising inequality.

The post-Golwalkar political project has necessarily demonstrated a high degree of organisational and ideological malleability. This flexibility is essential for any political project with fascist tendencies aiming for maximal national appropriation and assimilation. The immediate successor of Golwalkar, Madhukar Dattatreya Deoras, took the reins of the RSS in June 1973. His ascension ushered in a systematic, organisational campaign to co-opt Dalits, Adivasis, and backward castes into the RSS fold. The new era demanded a more accessible and politically expansive face for Hindutva.

This evolution in strategy was not a change of heart, but a necessary ideological adjustment. Deoras, recognised as a relatively pragmatic figure, subtly revised the Sangh’s philosophical characterisation of Dharma (religious principles). He bifurcated it into two useful registers: Dharma as a set of static, eternal laws (preserving the core Brahminical tenets) and Dharma as the basis for “immediate pragmatic decisions” [7]. This philosophical flexibility provided the ideological loophole the Sangh needed to engage in mass outreach without compromising its foundational hierarchy.

This flexibility was immediately deployed in a dramatic rhetorical gesture. In a major public address in 1974, Deoras publicly denounced untouchability, stating, “If untouchability is not a sin, then nothing in this world is a sin” [8]. This declaration served as the Sangh’s official absolution from its caste-ridden past and furnished the moral authority for swayamsevaks (volunteers) to intensify social reform efforts. This was a masterstroke which allowed the RSS to appear unequivocally anti-discrimination in public while confining the conversation solely to the practice of untouchability, thereby deflecting any fundamental scrutiny of the divinely sanctioned Varna system Golwalkar had so vigorously defended. The climax of this pivot was the formal institutionalisation of the political strategy. Under Deoras’s direction, RSS ideologue Dattopant Thengadi founded the Samajik Samarasata Manch (Social Harmony Forum) on April 14, 1983, in Pune [7]. The SSM provided the organisational technology to translate abstract Hindu unity into tangible grassroots work. The term Samarasata itself is highly revealing — it literally means “same emotion or thoughts” and implies social harmony. Academically, however, it is understood as RSS code for talking about the caste system.

The SSM’s core objective was clear: to promote Samarasata by consolidating a broad Hindu identity that would strategically include Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes as mere “horizontal identities within Hindudom.” By centralising the issue of caste fragmentation under the banner of managed harmony, Deoras successfully established the organisational and ideological machinery that would allow the Sangh Parivar (Sangh Family) to enter open political mobilisation, securing necessary electoral gains by neutralising the threat of independent Dalit political assertion. This was the moment the ideological defence of tradition was perfected into a political weapon of modern co-option.

3. The apolitical façade of sewa

If caste hierarchy is the RSS’s ideological spine, sewa (selfless service) is its soft tissue: flexible, adaptive, and engineered to move quietly through spaces where overt politics would be resisted. The Sangh’s most effective intervention into Dalit and Adivasi life has not been through elections or policy, but through the slow, disciplined construction of a service apparatus that claims to be apolitical while functioning as long-term political infrastructure. This is not benevolence. It is control disguised as care.
The RSS activities feel less like practising charity and more like administering dependency. It operates with the calculated efficiency of a “corporation, with a committed workforce and clear division of responsibilities” [9]. This massive service effort is centrally managed and supervised by specialised pramukhs (division chiefs), such as the Akhil Bharatiya Sewa Pramukh, overseeing entities like Sewa Bharati. Key affiliates target specific, vulnerable demographics. The Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA) (Forest-Dweller Welfare Centre), for example, runs hostels where Adivasi and Dalit youth are incorporated into an environment where material support is inseparable from ideological discipline. They offer aid making sure it withholds dissent. What is produced is not empowerment but compliance.

Furthermore, specialised service trusts, such as the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Vaidyakiya Pratishthan (Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Medical Foundation), cynically utilise the moral authority of Dalit icons to legitimise their work, even while adhering to the Brahminical philosophy of the RSS [9]. Bodies such as Sewa Bharati, overseen by national-level Sewa Pramukhs (Service Chiefs), run parallel to the cadre network, allowing the Sangh to penetrate subaltern social life without appearing political [10]. The genius of this structure lies precisely in its deniability — politics arrives stripped of slogans, wearing the neutral language of relief, education, and healthcare.

The financial underpinning of this effort confirms its instrumental nature. It is highly institutionalised, involving international fundraising bodies like the India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) which directs money to these service organisations. This systematic, centrally managed, and internationally financed service provision is a strategic, quantifiable investment designed to yield political allegiance [10]. This long-term engagement functions as a precursor to political mobilisation, providing a critical base of social trust that traditional electoral campaigning often fails to achieve.

The symbolism surrounding this service work is no less calculated. Trusts and institutions bearing the name of B R Ambedkar operate comfortably within the very Brahminical framework Ambedkar dedicated his life to annihilating. His image is preserved precisely because his politics are rendered inert.

The strategic investment in sewa facilitates the second crucial phase: direct political social engineering. The necessity for this manoeuvre became acute following the political upheaval caused by the V P Singh government’s partial implementation of the Mandal Commission reports in 1990. The Sangh Parivar’s response was a feat of consolidation with the successful merging of the registers of Mandal (caste assertion) and Mandir (religious mobilisation) [9].

This operation involves the politicisation of diverse identities to attract communities who had historically not supported the party. A critical component is the selective targeting of previously underserved caste segments. The BJP’s victories, particularly in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections, demonstrated an organisational mastery in attracting castes that had been marginalised or excluded from the political hegemony of dominant groups like the Yadav and Jatav communities under previous regional governments. By appealing to the socio-economic frustrations of these segmented Dalit and OBC groups, the Sangh effectively fractures the opposition while consolidating its own broader Hindu political electorate [9].

The strategy demonstrates a cynical flexibility, adapting its ideological mask to micro-level, constituency-specific requirements. For instance, in Milak, the Sangh focused on consolidating the Jatav vote by leveraging the emotional appeal of the Ram Janmabhumi (Temple of the Birthplace of Rama) issue. In stark contrast, in Bilaspur, the approach involved directly appealing to the Valmiki community with symbolic promises of building a Valmiki Mandir [9].

These micro-level negotiations expose the emptiness of the Sangh’s claims to social harmony. Communities are recognised not as political agents but as electoral assets, their dignity priced in temples, statues, and slogans.

4. Conclusion

Caste remains Hindutva’s most destabilising contradiction. As an institutionalised system of violence, it fundamentally undermines the claim that Hindus can be imagined as a unified nation. Dalits, in particular, embody this contradiction. Their lived experience of caste as brutality makes it impossible to recast Hindu society as a benign civilisational whole. Hindutva is therefore forced into a strategic bind. It must publicly denounce caste as divisive while preserving the very Brahminical structures that reproduce caste domination.

The resolution to this dilemma lies not in reform but in representation. Hindutva increasingly seeks to manage caste through what may be termed the ethnicisation of caste, recasting caste not as a hierarchy of power and exploitation, but as a plural field of cultural difference. In this flattened representation, castes appear as parallel “communities” or samāj, each possessing its own traditions and pride, rather than as positions within a graded structure of inequality [11]. This move allows Hindutva to invite Dalits into Hindu Rashtra by offering them a “place” within it, while simultaneously denying the violence that necessitated Dalit resistance in the first place.

The century-long engagement of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with caste reveals this very perfected technique of management. From Hedgewar’s early co-option of Dalit participation, through Golwalkar’s theological defence of varna, to Deoras’s strategic denunciation of untouchability and the contemporary language of Samajik Samarasata, the Sangh has demonstrated a remarkable ability to change its vocabulary without altering its structure. What evolves is not the caste system itself, but the methods through which it is rendered politically sustainable.

Hindutva’s central contradiction lies in its simultaneous need to deny caste as a lived reality while relying on it as an organising principle. Caste cannot be abolished without dismantling the Brahminical moral order that underwrites Hindu unity, yet it cannot be openly defended without jeopardising electoral consolidation. The resolution to this dilemma has been neither justice nor equality but representation expressed through a calculated choreography of symbols, service, and selective inclusion that absorbs Dalits into the Hindu fold while shutting down the possibility of autonomous Dalit politics.

Through sewa, caste hierarchy is softened into gratitude and through Samarasata, inequality is rebranded as harmony. Dalits are invited to belong, but only on the condition that they do not demand redistribution of power, challenge sacred hierarchies, or insist on historical accountability. The choice offered is assimilation without justice or resistance marked as betrayal.

This stands in direct opposition to the anti-caste project, which recognised that caste is not a social misunderstanding but a system of graded violence sustained by religion, culture, and everyday practice. It is fundamentally impossible to eliminate casteism, so long as caste remains. Where Hindutva seeks to stabilise caste by culturalising it, Ambedkar sought to annihilate it by breaking its moral and institutional foundations. In this unresolved conflict lies the future of Indian democracy.
So long as caste is managed rather than dismantled, social harmony will remain not a promise of equality, but the most refined language through which inequality endures.

(Author: Hrushikesh Tripathy (hrushikesh1890[at]gmail.com) is an undergraduate student in the Department of Economics at Pondicherry University, Puducherry.)

References

[1] “PM unveils ₹100 coin, stamp at RSS centenary,” The Hindu, October 1, 2025. https://www.thehindu.com
[2] “Dalit man forced to lick ground after urinating near temple, accused held,” Deccan Herald, October 22, 2025. https://www.deccanherald.com
[3] “Varna and Caste System Should Be Discarded, Says RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat,” The Hindu, October 8, 2022. https://www.thehindu.com
[4] Anand Teltumbde, “The RSS Was Also a Reaction to Early Dalit Mobilisation,” The Wire, October 25, 2025. https://www.thewire.in
[5] M S Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Vikrama Prakashan, Bangalore, 1966.
[6] M S Golwalkar, We, or Our Nationhood Defined, Bharat Publications, Nagpur, 1939.
[7] Saarang Narayan, “Swadeshi Globalization: Dattopant Thengadi’s Hindu Nationalist Path for Globalization in Late Twentieth-Century India,” Globalizations, published online November 4, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2025.2573111
[8] Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras, “We can’t just blame Muslims and Englishmen for shattered Hindu unity: RSS chief Deoras,” ThePrint, September 28, 2025. https://www.theprint.in
[9] Avishek Jha, “Expanding the Vote Base in Uttar Pradesh: Understanding the RSS-BJP Combined Mobilisation Strategies,” South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (SAMĀJ), 2021. https://journals.openedition.org/samaj
[10] Felix Pal, “Similarity Heuristics in the Indian Far Right: How the RSS Obscures Its Operational Scale,” Journal of Right-Wing Studies, Vol 3, No 1, 2025, pp 79–102. https://doi.org/10.5070/RW3.246
[11] Balmurli Natrajan, “Racialization and Ethnicization: Hindutva Hegemony and Caste,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, published online July 20, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2021.1951319