How The RSS Has Become A Cultural Hegemon

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded in 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, a Deshasth Brahmin, as a Brahminical organisation representing barely 3 per cent of India’s population, embodies a striking paradox. Despite its history of collaboration with colonial power, opposition to the Constitution, glorification of caste, and exclusion of the marginalised, it has become the world’s most powerful civil society organisation, exercising formidable political control through the BJP. Explaining this paradox requires unpacking the RSS’ strategic acumen, structural advantages, and ideological manipulation that have enabled it to sustain Brahminical hegemony within a multi-caste democracy.

The Shakha Network of Disciplined Cadre

The RSS’ primary strength lies in its exceptional organisational structure, which has been perfected over nearly a century. The shakha (branch) system creates a comprehensive network of daily gatherings where members participate in physical exercises, ideological training, and community building. This hierarchical structure—organised from local shakhas to regional prants (zones) to central leadership—ensures ideological uniformity, discipline, and rapid mobilisation capacity that no other civil society organisation in India can match.

The RSS operates through patient, long-term cadre building rather than immediate political mobilisation. Members are indoctrinated from childhood through daily shakhas, creating lifelong commitment and ideological loyalty. This disciplined volunteer base, estimated to number in millions, provides an unparalleled human resource for political and social mobilisation. The organisation’s ability to maintain hierarchical discipline while appearing to operate through voluntary participation creates the illusion of democratic grassroots support while maintaining centralised Brahminical control.

Strategic Co-option through the Hydra-headed Sangh Parivar

The RSS’ genius lies in creating an extensive family of affiliated organisations (Sangh Parivar) that penetrates virtually every sector of Indian society. Through organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)), the Bajrang Dal, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP; student wing), BMS (labour wing), Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (farmers), Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (tribals), and dozens of others, the RSS creates the appearance of representing diverse constituencies while maintaining centralised ideological control. This multi-organisational structure allows the RSS to claim it is serving all sections of society while ensuring that leadership and ideological direction remain firmly in Brahminical hands.

The political success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demonstrates how this organisational ecosystem translates into electoral dominance. The RSS provides the BJP with an unmatched organisational infrastructure, cadre base, and ideological legitimacy, creating a symbiotic relationship where political power reinforces organisational expansion and vice

versa. This structural advantage over fragmented opposition parties helps explain the RSS-BJP’s sustained electoral success despite policies that often harm the material interests of the very communities voting for them.

Identity Politics

Perhaps the RSS’ most effective strategy has been its ability to manufacture a unified “Hindu” identity that transcends caste divisions by creating external enemies—primarily Muslims and Christians, but also “anti-national” elements, “Western” culture, and various other constructed threats. By positioning itself as the protector of Hindu society against these manufactured dangers, the RSS persuades Dalits, Adivasis, and OBCs to subordinate their caste identities and material interests to an imagined religious solidarity.

This strategy of communal polarisation serves multiple functions. First, it diverts attention from caste oppression and economic exploitation by focusing popular anger on religious minorities. Second, it creates emotional investment in Hindu identity that the RSS claims to exclusively represent and protect. Third, it positions any opposition to the RSS as opposition to Hinduism itself, thereby delegitimising critics. The constant manufacture of crises—whether through cow protection campaigns, love jihad narratives, or anti-conversion laws—keeps communities mobilised around religious identity while obscuring the RSS’ actual agenda of maintaining Brahminical supremacy.

Social Service as Ideological Trojan Horse

The RSS has strategically invested in social service activities—running schools, hospitals, disaster relief operations, and community development programmes—that create goodwill while serving as vehicles for ideological indoctrination. These service activities are particularly effective in tribal areas and marginalised communities where state services are absent or inadequate. By filling the vacuum left by state negligence, RSS affiliates like Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and Sewa Bharati create dependency relationships while simultaneously imposing Brahminical Hindu cultural norms on communities with distinct religious and cultural traditions.

This social service work serves a dual purpose: it creates legitimacy for the RSS as a benevolent organisation while providing opportunities for ideological conversion and cultural assimilation. Tribal communities are taught to abandon their indigenous practices and adopt sanitised Brahminical Hinduism. Dalit communities receive material assistance while being encouraged to accept their subordinate position within the Hindu fold. The RSS thus transforms social service into a mechanism of cultural imperialism, using immediate material benefits to secure long-term ideological dominance.

The Illusion of Inclusion

The RSS has become increasingly sophisticated in projecting an image of inclusivity while maintaining Brahminical control. By promoting token OBC, Dalit, and tribal leaders to visible positions, the RSS creates the illusion that it has transcended its Brahminical origins. This strategy of symbolic inclusion is particularly effective because it provides aspirational role models for marginalised communities while ensuring that actual power remains concentrated in Brahminical hands.

However, structural analysis reveals the hollowness of this inclusivity. The RSS’ top leadership—the Sarsanghchalak and core decision-making bodies—remains exclusively Brahminical. No Dalit or Adivasi has ever held the top position, nor is likely to in the foreseeable future. The organisation’s ideological texts continue to glorify Brahminical supremacy and the Varna system. Token representatives from marginalised communities are celebrated when they serve the RSS’ interests but are ruthlessly marginalised if they assert independent political consciousness or challenge Brahminical dominance.

Ideological Flexibility and Tactical Opportunism

The RSS exhibits remarkable ideological flexibility when it serves strategic goals, while remaining rigidly committed to Brahminical supremacy. It celebrates the Constitution while undermining it, champions democracy while enforcing authoritarian internal rules, claims to oppose casteism while defending the varna system, and professes concern for marginalised communities while perpetuating their subordination. This doublespeak confuses opponents and provides plausible deniability for its true agenda.

Such tactical opportunism enables the RSS to adapt to shifting political contexts without compromising core objectives. To mobilise OBC votes, it promotes OBC symbolism while retaining Brahminical control; to win tribal support, it emphasises Hindu unity alongside cultural assimilation; to attract Dalit backing, it invokes Ambedkar’s legacy while opposing his ideology. Combined with organisational discipline and long-term planning, this strategic flexibility gives the RSS a decisive edge over ideologically consistent but weaker opponents.

Capturing Institutional and Cultural Power

The RSS has systematically penetrated India’s institutional infrastructure—education, media, bureaucracy, judiciary, and cultural institutions—creating an ecosystem that normalises its ideology while marginalising alternatives. Through sustained infiltration over decades, RSS ideologues have been positioned in universities, textbook committees, cultural organisations, and state apparatus, allowing them to shape discourse, rewrite history, and control knowledge. This institutional capture creates a self-reinforcing cycle where RSS ideology becomes increasingly hegemonic while opposition voices are systematically excluded.

The capture of media—both traditional and digital—has been particularly crucial. Through friendly corporate ownership, intimidation of critical journalists, and sophisticated social media operations, the RSS has created an information ecosystem that amplifies its narratives while suppressing counter-narratives. This control over information flows allows the RSS to manufacture consent, create false consciousness, and prevent marginalised communities from developing independent political consciousness.

Exploiting State Failure and Democratic Deficits

The RSS’ growth has been facilitated by failures of the Indian state and democratic institutions. Where the state has failed to provide basic services, security, or justice, the RSS fills the vacuum—not to empower communities but to create dependency and extract political loyalty. Where democratic parties have become corrupt, dynastic, or disconnected from grassroots, the RSS offers organisational discipline and ideological clarity, albeit in service of fundamentally anti-democratic goals.

The RSS has particularly benefited from the failure of progressive forces to build comparable structures or offer compelling counter-narratives. Fragmented opposition parties, the decline of mass-based Left movements, the corruption of secular parties, and the absence of sustained grassroots organising among marginalised communities have created a political vacuum the RSS systematically exploits. Its organisational superiority over disorganised opposition partially explains its continued expansion despite policies that harm the material interests of its mass base.

Economic Anxiety and Manufactured Scapegoats

Amid India’s economic transformation—marked by neoliberalism, jobless growth, agrarian distress, and rising inequality—the RSS channels popular anxiety away from structural critique toward cultural and religious targets. By blaming Muslims, Christians, “anti-nationals,” and “Western conspiracies” for problems caused by capitalist exploitation and state failures, it offers emotionally satisfying but misleading explanations.

This misdirection works by providing simple solutions and giving marginalised communities someone to feel superior to, even as their material conditions worsen. The psychological boost of Hindu identity assertion temporarily offsets economic deprivation, allowing the RSS to convert legitimate grievances into communal hatred and transform potential class consciousness into religious chauvinism that serves elite interests.

The Democratic Paradox

Perhaps the RSS’ ultimate success lies in using democratic institutions and processes to advance fundamentally anti-democratic objectives. By participating in elections, respecting constitutional forms (while working to change constitutional substance), and claiming to represent popular will, the RSS gains legitimacy while systematically undermining the democratic values of equality, pluralism, and social justice. This creates a paradoxical situation where democratic institutions become vehicles for authoritarian mobilisation and majoritarian tyranny.

The RSS has mastered the art of democratic aesthetics—elections, rallies, popular mobilisation—while hollowing out democratic substance. It claims to represent “people’s will” while suppressing dissent, manufactures majoritarian consensus through polarisation and propaganda, and uses electoral victories to justify attacks on minorities, intellectuals, and institutional independence. This instrumentalisation of democracy to destroy democracy from within represents perhaps the RSS’ most dangerous innovation.

The Task for Progressive Movements

The RSS’s mass appeal, despite its Brahminical origins and divisive history, stems from a calculated blend of organisational skill, ideological manipulation, strategic co-option, institutional capture, and the exploitation of state failures and democratic deficits. It has mastered the art of manufacturing Hindu unity through polarisation, offering services in exchange for loyalty, projecting inclusion while maintaining exclusion, and using democratic means for anti-democratic ends.

Yet, its strength lies less in genuine mass support than in its capacity to manufacture false consciousness—diverting real grievances into communal channels and obstructing independent political awakening among the marginalised. Its dominance endures because progressive forces have failed to match its organisation, narrative power, and ability to unite the oppressed around material interests.

The task for democratic movements, therefore, is not only to critique the RSS but to build counter-organisations, craft alternative narratives, and show in practice that secularism and social justice better serve people’s lives than communalism and hierarchy. Only sustained, collective struggle can dismantle its hegemony and revive India’s constitutional promise of equality and democracy.