The RSS, or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is a right-wing Hindu nationalist organisation in India. It was founded in Maharashtra in 1925 by a physician, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. The RSS identifies as a cultural organisation and is the ideological mentor of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). Several BJP leaders, including India’s 14th prime minister Narendra Modi, started out as workers or pracharaks for the RSS. The organisation has a paramilitary nature with young volunteers joining training camps.
Its website says that in the RSS system, there is no formal membership. Those who attend the RSS shakhas are called swayamsevaks and any Hindu male can become a swayamsevak.
The RSS equates Indian society with Hindu society and calls for the preservation and propagation of Hindu-ness, or the idea of Hindutva. The organisation’s mission statement read out by Hedgewar suggested that if Hindustan is to be protected, we should first nourish the Hindu culture. He believed it is the duty of every Hindu to do his best to consolidate the Hindu society.
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