RSS and the Communists: A Parallel Journey of Two Opposing Ideologies

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 three-part series examines how the two entities charted opposing courses in shaping the nation’s political mind.

RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar with other Sangh leaders in 1939.

 This year marks one hundred years since the founding of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Coincidentally, it is also around this time that the Communist Party of India completes its own century of existence. These two ideological streams represent the extreme poles of India’s social and political life. Their philosophical foundations, methods of functioning, loyalties, and ultimate goals stand in stark opposition to each other. That such diametrically opposed ideologies should have arisen at almost the same moment in history is a striking coincidence.

As both the RSS and the Communists mark their centenaries together, a comparative examination of their journeys becomes necessary. Such a study can illuminate the progress — or decline — of India’s political thought and organization over the past century. What follows is my own preliminary and broad attempt at such a comparison.

Let us begin with their founding.

Early days

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was established in 1925, on the day of Vijayadashami (Dussehra, 27 September), in Nagpur. The initiative was led by the late Dr. K. B. Hedgewar, with the participation of several prominent Hindutva-minded individuals from Nagpur and the wider Vidarbha region. Some among them held senior positions in the Congress. Notably, however, not a single Englishman or foreigner was present at the founding.

Before creating the RSS, Dr. Hedgewar had been actively engaged in the freedom struggle through the Congress. A staunch follower of Lokmanya Tilak, he served as the General Secretary of the Vidarbha Congress. After Tilak’s death, however, he found himself unable to accept the political line adopted by the Congress. He withdrew from the party and went on to found the RSS. This sequence of events is historically well-attested and documented; there has never been any dispute over it.

At its very inception, it was made clear that the organization would remain completely apart from politics and political activity, working solely for social and national rejuvenation. Its declared aims were to unite Hindu society, revive India’s national character on the strength of that unity, and strive for the creation of a united, prosperous, and powerful India.

There are sharp disagreements regarding the exact details of the founding of the Communist Party of India. Different dates and events between 1920 and 1925 are cited in this context. On 17 October 1920, the Communist Party of India was established in Tashkent, Russia, at the initiative of M. N. Roy. Present on the occasion were Roy’s English wife Evelyn Trent Roy, Avani Mukherjee, Roza Fitingof, Mohammad Ali, Mohammad Shafiq, and several others — including a few prominent British communists. However, the Communist Party of India (CPI) does not recognize this event as its official founding. They consider 26 December 1925 as their foundation day, because on that date the first Communist Party conference was held in Kanpur. At that conference too, M. N. Roy, his wife Evelyn Trent Roy, and several British and Russian delegates were present.

M.N Roy (centre) with Lenin (front) and Maxim Gorky (behind Lenin) in Moscow, 1920.

Yet, a large section of communists in India does not consider the Kanpur conference to mark the party’s true birth. Their reasoning is that between 1920 and 1923, a number of small and large communist groups had already been formed in different parts of India. Around the same time, trade unions claiming to work on Marxist principles had also been established in several places. These organizations were primarily concentrated in the provinces of Bombay, Madras, United Provinces, Punjab, Sindh, Orissa, and Bengal. All such groups eventually came together at the Kanpur conference. The CPI(M) maintains that because these groups united there to formally establish the Communist Party of India, 26 December 1925 should be considered the official foundation day. Meanwhile, supporters of other factions continue to regard the founding dates of their own groups as the true birth of the Communist Party in India.

In short, there is considerable disagreement among communists themselves about when exactly the party was founded. But 26 December 1925 is the final date in this debate; if that date is taken into account, the Communist Party was founded just two months after the RSS. Accordingly, its centenary also begins this very year.

Class struggle

From the day of its inception, the Communist Party of India was part of the global communist movement. Its declared aim was to foment class struggle in India, wrest political power and wealth from the capitalists and landlords, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. They had no acceptance of any form of democracy. Alongside this, they held another distinct belief: that “India is not one country, not one nation, but a collection of sixteen to eighteen nations.” Indian communists claimed that this conclusion was based on the country’s linguistic and caste diversity — though in reality, this argument had long been advanced by certain English thinkers, and the Indian communists merely presented it as their own.

According to them, communities speaking Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, Odia, Gujarati, Sindhi, Punjabi, and Kashmiri, as well as religious communities like Sikhs, Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians, were all separate nations. But there was no mention of the Hindus in this enumeration. Just as they argued that “India is not one country,” they also declared — based on what they called “deep study” — that “there is no such religion as Hinduism.” They believed that all these various “nations” should come together voluntarily to form a “Union of India.” But before that could happen, they considered it their foremost duty to “liberate” each of these nations from what they called India’s slavery.

In simple terms, their declared objective — then and now — was to break India into sixteen to eighteen separate parts.

The RSS, by contrast, was founded with the purpose of creating a united, integral, strong, and prosperous India. Not a single foreign power or individual participated in the RSS’s founding. In the case of the Communist Party, however, British and Russian individuals and institutions played a major role. The RSS functioned on the basis of the meagre contributions it received from its sympathizers, while from its very inception, the Communist Party received generous funding from Russia and England. In addition, the British government itself regularly provided money to the communists.

As we shall see, the dependence ran deeper than money. The CPI’s political line often shifted with the twists of Soviet foreign policy — opposing the Indian National Congress in one decade, aligning with it in another, condemning the Second World War as imperialist before abruptly supporting it after Hitler’s invasion of the USSR. This opportunism betrayed the party’s subservience to Moscow rather than loyalty to Indian realities.

While the RSS sought to build a movement rooted in India’s civilizational identity, the Communists were entangled in ideological and financial strings that ran through London and Moscow — a foreign tether that would shadow their politics for decades.

[Tomorrow, we examine the relations of the RSS and the Communists with the British government and the Congress, following Independence.]  

(The writer is Vice-President, BJP Maharashtra, former Chief State Spokeperson of the BJP, Maharashtra and Director, Vilasrao Salunke Adhysan (Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini). He is also the author of several books including a noted work on Ayodhya.)