Hosabale hits back at Kharge, says RSS can’t be banned over politicians’ wish

The society has accepted RSS, and it cannot be banned just because some politicians wish it to be banned, Sangh general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale said today. He was reacting to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s demands to ban RSS.

“The entire society recognises RSS as an organisation that works for the unity, security, culture, and development of the country. Thrice in the past, RSS was banned, and everyone knows what came later. Before making such demands, politicians ought to take lessons from the past,” RSS second-in-command said.

Kharge had said on the 150th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel that RSS should be banned. Kharge pointed out that even Patel, India’s first Home Minister, had banned the participation of government employees in RSS events.

On July 9, 2024, Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) removed the mention of RSS from a 58-year-old office order that barred government officials, serving and retired, from participating in the activities of proscribed organisations. This development has liberated RSS, BJP’s ideological mentor, from being grouped with the Jamaat-e-Islami.

The first ban on RSS was imposed on February 4, 1948, following Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. It was lifted on July 11, 1949, after the courts absolved RSS in the matter. One precondition that then PM Jawaharlal Nehru put on the RSS to lift the ban was that it would draft a constitution. That is how the RSS constitution came into being.

Since its establishment in 1925, RSS has maintained that it is not a political organisation.