Sangh accepted as entity working for unity, can’t be banned, says Hosabale

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 the organisation.

“Entire society recognizes the RSS as an organisation that works for the unity, security, culture and development of the country. Thrice in the past the 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.

On the 150th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Kharge had yesterday said the RSS should be banned. The Congress leader had claimed that even Patel, India’s first Home Minister, had banned the participation of government employees in RSS events.

On July 9, 2024, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had 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 the proscribed organisations.

The development has liberated the RSS, BJP’s ideological mentor, from the company of Jamaat-e-Islami.

The first ban on the RSS was imposed on February 4, 1948, following Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. It was lifted on July 11, 1949, after courts absolved the RSS in the matter.

One precondition that the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru had put on the RSS to lift the ban was that it would draft a constitution. That is how the RSS constitution came into being.

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