Elst on K. B. Hedgewar

“Dr. Hedgewar was a man of action, not a thinker and writer. He has left us very few writings, but that in itself is indicative of an important choice which the RSS has made since the beginning and to which it has remained true: a disdain for intellectual work. Hedgewar was of the opinion that Hindu society already had everything to succeed in the struggle for survival and freedom, except for a single prerequisite: organization. So, he wanted no more time to be wasted on reading and writing, and all energy to be devoted to organizing the Hindus.”

“It is simply a fact that through K.B. Hedgewar, the RSS was an offshoot of the freedom movement. He himself had been involved with the revolutionary wing of the freedom movement in Bengal, and had drawn his lessons about the needs of Hindu society on the eve of the (by then increasingly inevitable) transition to freedom. The RSS uniform was originally the uniform of a safety squad guarding a conference of the Indian National Congress, which had felt the need of extra security after the Khilafat riots against Hindus because most politicized Muslims saw Congress as a Hindu phenomenon. ... So, through different tributaries, the RSS was entirely rooted in the freedom movement, in both its Gandhian and revolutionary wings.”

“Hedgewar started the organization with purely pragmatic ends in mind, such as dissuading Muslim ruffians from harassing Hindu girls in the post-Khilafat communal tension in Nagpur.”