Bengaluru: Priyank Kharge, the tech-savvy Information Technology (IT) Minister from the home state of India’s ‘Silicon Valley’, is widely recognised as a relentless critic of the RSS.
Kharge, a Dalit leader and three-time MLA from Chittapur in Kalaburagi, Karnataka, has seldom spared an opportunity to go after the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological patron of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A vocal critic of the RSS-BJP ecosystem, as well as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policy and politics, he leaves little to the imagination when going after the Sangh.
In an X post this week, Kharge mocked the RSS through several questions. These included whether the RSS took part in the freedom struggle, and burned the Indian Constitution while demanding ‘Manusmriti’ as a replacement, among others, with a ‘True’ or ‘False’ option below, with ‘True’ highlighted cheekily.
Speaking to ThePrint, Priyank Kharge explained, “I have quite simple questions for them. Is the RSS a registered organisation? Where do they get their funding? Why does it not seek permission for any programmes from police authorities, but only informs? Why did it not hoist the national flag for over 50 years? Have they answered even one question of mine?” He added that for the centenary celebrations, the RSS tried to force students living in hostels to take part in its ‘march past’, which, Kharge called, an attempt to radicalise and indoctrinate the youth.
Priyank Kharge is the son and political heir of Congress National President Mallikarjun Kharge, and one of the more efficient and prominent ministers in Karnataka Chief Minister (CM) Siddaramaiah’s cabinet. He juggles between a two-piece suit for a meeting with chief executive officers of multinational corporations, as the state’s IT Minister, and a modest Nehru jacket as the Rural Development & Panchayat Raj Minister.
Yet, it is Priyank Kharge’s outspoken opposition to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, along with his pointed attacks on the BJP, that define his political persona. There are senior Congress leaders, such as B.K. Hariprasad and Karnataka Labour Minister Santosh Lad, who regularly take on the RSS. However, Kharge is seen as taking a more aggressive line, much like the Leader of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi.
Since I seem to have the full attention of the right-wing troll army resorting to personal attacks, let’s turn it into a learning moment for them.
Here’s a little quiz to help BJP leaders refresh their history lessons on viRSS.
————
– RSS refused to hoist the national flag for…
— Priyank Kharge / ಪ್ರಿಯಾಂಕ್ ಖರ್ಗೆ (@PriyankKharge) October 28, 2025
According to analysts, this hardening stance is likely to help the 47-year-old minister and his politics, centred on some of the most marginalised groups.
‘Questioning legitimacy’
Priyank Kharge entered the Karnataka assembly in 2013, representing the Chittapur seat in Karnataka’s Kalaburagi (Gulbarga). His rise has since been meteoric, with Kharge becoming a target as the poster boy of dynasty politics soon.
He was inducted into CM Siddaramaiah’s cabinet three years later, when he was just 38. As the then-government’s Minister for Information Technology & Biotechnology (IT/BT), he seems a natural fit, given his background in graphic design, followed by jobs with startups and other companies in London.
Successive governments continued to hand him significant portfolios, including the Social Welfare Department, in H.D. Kumaraswamy’s Congress government and Janata Dal (Secular) coalition government, followed by the rural development department from 2023. Meanwhile, he also remained a prominent ambassador for the IT/BT sector.
However, his sharp comments about the PM, RSS, and the BJP take the cake, overshadowing his other attributes.
Speaking to ThePrint, Phani Rajanna, a Udupi-based academic and analyst, said Priyank Kharge had taken a strong stand against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh at a time when other Congress leaders were being seen as sympathetic to the Sangh or its practices.
“Priyank Kharge is taking a leaf out of Rahul Gandhi’s politics and going after the RSS. The RSS has grown strong, spread its roots everywhere, and has become stronger across regions. But Priyank Kharge has questioned its very legitimacy, which creates a platform within the Congress to take a stand against the RSS,” he said.
Karnataka Congress President D.K. Shivakumar singing the RSS anthem inside the assembly, or MLAs nominating or appointing leaders connected with the Sangh to key government posts, had created doubts in the minds of the party’s support base in the state, according to analysts.
The Kharges enjoy a considerable political clout in the Kalyana-Karnataka region, with its big mix of Dalits, Scheduled Tribes, backward classes, Lingayats, and Muslims. The family belongs to the Holeya caste (SC). The group, historically, has worked as agricultural and manual labourers. Though they are now employed in different sectors, they continue to face social and economic challenges due to their historically marginalised caste status.
The BJP has a negligible presence in the Kalyana-Karnataka region. And, this region has been seeing growing resistance against caste-based discriminatory practices, such as untouchability and violence.
The biggest resistance to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s centenary celebrations earlier this month did not come from the Congress but from at least a dozen Dalit organisations.
One of the major issues that the state’s Dalits have had with the BJP is the party’s opposition to the ongoing caste census. It came across as the denial of social justice to all marginalised groups, with the Congress effectively leveraging that to its advantage.
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‘Anti-Hindutva, not anti-Lingayat’
A letter from Priyank Kharge on 12 October sought a ban on all RSS-linked activities in government institutions and public spaces, painting a bigger target on his back. An order by CM Siddaramaiah’s government backed him only a few days later, thereby overshadowing the RSS’s centenary year celebrations.
Kharge received threats on messages and calls. “Why did the RSS not condemn these threats?” he questioned, speaking to ThePrint.
Though Mallikarjuna Kharge has been a staunch critic of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, analysts say he always held back from making it his political mainstay. In Karnataka’s deeply entrenched caste politics, leaders seldom take positions that go against dominant communities, such as the Lingayats or Vokkaligas, even if their focus is purely on constituencies with a significant population of Dalits or Other Backward Classes.
“In Congress, each one is building their own constituency. Siddaramaiah has long projected himself as the champion of AHINDA (Kannada acronym for minorities, backward classes, and Dalits). Priyank Kharge has to build on his father’s constituency, which is anti-Hindutva, but not anti-Lingayat,” Narendar Pani, JRD Tata Chair at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), said.
And so, they go after the RSS, he added.
There are underlying tensions within the Lingayat community over the BJP, as the party objects to the revival of clamour for a separate religion within its core support base. In this backdrop, the Congress has been careful not to go after the Lingayats. Its last mistake, which led the community to completely distance themselves from the Congress, was in the late 1980s. At the time, the party was seen by the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) as largely opposed to the Mandal Commission recommendations.
In Karnataka, the Veerashaiva-Lingayat community falls under OBC Category 3B—based on income. A small number of Lingayat sub-castes are also listed in the central OBC list, which puts the majority of them in the general category.
Within the Congress’s Muslim support base, anger has been growing. CM Siddaramaiah’s government has done little to contain the Sangh or its affiliates, especially in Karnataka’s communally sensitive coastal districts.
The latest round of ‘tit-for-tat’ murders based on religion broke out in May this year. It led to considerable outrage against CM Siddaramaiah’s government among Muslim groups.
“The Dalit and Muslim constituency is harbouring a grouse that the Congress is not taking a strong stand against the RSS. There is also a large section of people in both the urban and rural settings, who are not comfortable with how the RSS-BJP is aggressively pushing on communally charged topics, but were not in a position to express themselves or find a rallying point since no leader has been taking a strong stand against it,” A. Narayana, a Bengaluru-based political analyst and faculty at the Azim Premji University, said.
“Priyank Kharge, instead of being like any other Congressman, is trying to carve out an identity for himself through them [groups that oppose the RSS], which will help in the long run,” Narayana added.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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