Madhav Bhandari

Part 3: A century since their founding, the RSS has built a vast national network while the Communists, once courted by Congress, have slid into political irrelevance by crumbling under the weight of their own dogma. Third RSS sarsanghchalak Balasaheb Deoras addresses a rally. The relationship between the Communists and the Congress always swung between “love and hate.” Until 1942, the communists worked from within the Congress. Many communist leaders held office at various levels of the...

Part 2: From the moment of its birth, the British saw the RSS as seditious while the Communists, born under Moscow’s shadow, paradoxically found comfort in the Empire’s embrace, particularly the Communist Party of Great Britain. As a young medical student in Kolkata, K.B. Hedgewar joined the revolutionary Anushilan Samiti which was inspired by Bengal’s Swadeshi movement and later channelled that nationalist zeal into founding the RSS. Dr. Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, was a follower and...

Part 1: Exactly a century ago, the RSS and the Communist Party of India were founded within months of each other. The first of a...