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Hindu vision: Chief administrator Mohan Bhagwat (left) at an RSS event in Ahmedabad, Gujarat state, India, 14 April 2023
Sam Panthaky · AFP · Getty
Shankar Nagar is a residential area in Nagpur, a city of just over three million people in the state of Maharashtra in central India. Every morning at around 6am, before the first rays of sunlight raise the temperature, a couple of dozen people gather on the grass in Shivaji Nagar Park. The traffic is still calm and they can hear birds singing in the trees. Teenagers, fathers, grandfathers – all generations, though everyone is male – are gathered for the raising of a saffron banner, the colour favoured by Hindu nationalists. The flag is that of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS), a sprawling Hindu nationalist organisation that has been weaving its web across the subcontinent since September 1925. For a century it has been dedicated to a single cause: the promotion of Hindu supremacy in a country where 80% of people belong to the faith.
A command comes: ‘Sangh daksh!’ (attention). Lined up before the flagpole, participants put their right hands to their hearts, palm down, and bow their heads until they hear ‘Aaram!’ (at ease). The hour-long session can now begin: a few minutes’ warm-up, running, stretching, breathing exercises, martial arts, some yoga poses, ten minutes’ doctrinal teaching. The session ends with a prayer. The flag comes down and everyone gets on with their day.
The group in Shankar Nagar is a shakha, a local RSS branch. These exist in every district of Nagpur, and in every city, town and rural area across the country. Due to the RSS’s secrecy, it is impossible to count them: it has no registered statutes and its members pay no fees and have no membership cards. It is said to have between eight and ten million followers, which, if true, would make it the largest non-governmental organisation in the world. That’s a plausible claim in this huge country, which became the planet’s most populous in 2023, with over 1.4 billion inhabitants. Hindu pilgrimages here regularly attract crowds in the (…)
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Rodney Benson is a professor of sociology at New York University and author of Shaping Immigration News: a French-American Comparison, Cambridge University Press, 2013
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