The RSS

by A.G. Noorani

India is battling for its very soul. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is the most powerful organization in India today; complete with a private army of its own, unquestionably obeying its leader who functions on fascist lines on the Fuehrer principle. Two of its pracharaks (active preachers) have gone on to become prime ministers of India. In 1951 it set up a political front, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which merged into the Janata Party in 1977 only to walk out of it in 1980. In issue was its superior loyalty to its parent and mentor, the RSS; not the Janata Party. Within months of its defection, the Jana Sangh reemerged; not with the name under which it had functioned for nearly three decades, but as the Bharatiya Janata Party, deceptively to claim a respectable lineage. The RSS is at war with India’s past. It belittles three of the greatest builders of the Indian State – Ashoka, the Buddhist; Akbar, the Muslim; and Nehru, a civilized Enlightened Hindu. It would wipe out centuries of achievement for which the world has acclaimed India and replace that with its own narrow, divisive ideology. This book is a magisterial study of the RSS, from its formation in 1925 to the present day. With scrupulous and voluminous evidence, one of India’s leading constitutional experts and political analysts, A.G. Noorani, builds a watertight case to show how the RSS is much more than a threat to communal amity. It poses a wider challenge. It is a threat to democratic governance and, even worse, a menace to India. It threatens the very soul of India. And yet, despite its reach and seemingly overwhelming political influence, the author shows that the RSS can be defeated. The soul of India can be rescued.

Genres: India, Politics, History, Nonfiction, Religion

903 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 29, 2020

About the author

Abdul Ghafoor Majeed Noorani, known popularly as A. G. Noorani, was a Muslim scholar, lawyer and political commentator. He practised as an advocate in the Supreme Court of India and in the Bombay High Court.

Reviews

[Muhammed Hussain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was born in the 1990s, and like many others of my generation, I tried understanding the BJP and Narendra Modi without having recognised and understood the RSS first. This book helped me get that context right. Among many other things, it makes one understand how Narendra Modi is just a symptom of the environment that was created by the RSS.

RSS is India's most powerful organisation. Money and power have never been a problem for it. 38 out of 51 Indian ministers are folks from the RSS today, including India's Prime Minister and Home Minister.

Noorani makes his disgust for the RSS amply clear. He makes it known how intellectually bankrupt the organisation is, and backs it up with stellar research on the RSS' founding, growth, and secrets. He points out that RSS is against everything that the idea of India was created upon. The RSS even hates the figures of Indian history that are revered - it hates Asoka, a Buddhist emperor, it hates Akbar, a Muslim emperor, and it hates Nehru, an enlightened Hindu.

India is battling for its very soul, Noorani rightly says. Everything from our democracy to our constitution to our nation itself is under threat from a well-oiled, powerful organisation that has infected every arm of the state.

Nevertheless, for all its seeming invincibility, the author adds that the RSS will simply fail the test of time. And it is incumbent upon Indian intellectuals to expose the organisation for what it is. To protect Hind Swaraj from being replaced by Hindu Rashtra.

The idea of India was built by intellectuals. It will have to be saved by intellectuals.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all this is a majestic and scholarly work. Second, reading about RSS is very triggering and sad. There were so many possibilities, so many solutions and so many ways they could have been stopped by so many leaders at a lot of junctures. Or simply could have not given them clout (JP for eg).

RSS is an organisation built and run on a very uncouth racial outlook and Noorani does a very good job charting the path and founding principles to till date. Wooing Italian fascists (Moonji meeting Mussolini), Savarkar being in touch with german agents who gifted him Mein Kampf and the relationship between Hindu Mahasabha and RSS are all crystal clear. What is very shocking (perhaps it shouldnt be considering the fact that dehumanisation and otherisation comes so easily for Indians) this racial outlook is often whitewashed but mostly ignored by self proclaimed liberal Indians. Imagine calling ourselves a democracy while allowing outright genocidal organization to exist, grow and eventually rule us. I have no words. I really wish, the one leader who completely understood RSS and also had the clout - Nehru had stomped them out of existence.

But here we are. There is a long road ahead and we may not live to see the doom of RSS but we need start working immediately.If there is one takeaway from this nazi organisation it is their persistence and brutal consistency. We need a lot of it.

[RJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I believe RSS is a social organization who is Nationalistic & Social Organization that has been purposely defamed since 1947 by Congress party of India to remain in power since 1947. RSS is the only organization in India which along with Indian army goes proactively to save people during disasters. During the Kashmir Earth Quake they went and carried Kashmiri muslims out of earth quake zones. During the Kerala floods they carried christians out of flood areas, gave them food. Even now in Coronavirus they go to remote areas and poor muslim areas to give them food. But no mainstream media will put their photos in newspapers cause it does not suit the propaganda of Congress party. Cause if RSS gets positive publiscut this means muslims will start voting for BJP. RSS is not into politics, but because many of the BJP leaders were at one stage or other members of RSS. For 65 years congress fooled the hindus they kept the BJP out of politics by confusing the hindu voters and saying the RSS & BJP is evil. But in reality it is not this was the propaganda in news for 65 years, so hindus voted for congress, but now the congress was exposed due to many reasons and so now for 10 years the Hindus voted in mass majority to BJP, this is when congress party started creating propaganda by joining hands with Pakistani army and Pakistani ISI. In India the media is already help congress in fake propaganda, now even the Pakistanis make fake videos and send them to help out the congress party, In reality Pakistani army, ISI and Congress party was always one as both are agents of the British and the USA. The world 2% control media of the world and they have interest to keep congress in power in India. If any other party other then congress will come to power there will be development in India , poverty will be eradicated. But the nexus of India's enemies don't want that poverty eradication in pakistan and India. This is why in India the Pakistanis are taught hatred as part of the govt school curriculum.. This way Pakistani poor will be diverted towards India rather then development issues in own nation. In India meanwhile congress has always ruled with same strategy like the British divide & rule, they will constantly tell the muslims if you dont vote for congress the RSS will kill you, and it will confuse hindus by maintaining agenda that if you vote for BJP there will be no development. This is the strategy to keep BJP out of power it worked for 65 years but it does not work now for 10 years. so they are now doing riots in India funded by foreign enemies of India.

Your understanding of RSS is what you see in NDTV or congress propaganda machinery but the real RSS is quite different. There is a deliberate attempt to create hatred for RSS via fake books and fake videos spread by congress party. Congress, Pakistan ISI and Nehru parivar and its supporters are interested in painting a negative picture of RSS this is the only hope for congress survival in Indian politics. The reality is congress party of India and Pakistan ISI are partners hand in glove with British imperial powers.

Muslims speak from inside RSS
https://www.facebook.com/Kartikray7/v...

An American expert Walter K Andersen , who has studied RSS since Golwarkar, speaks about RSS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiNu4...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmYv8...

RSS is not against Islam, they are asking muslims don't become saudi culture, wahabhi culture. Be muslims practice your religion, but retain your hindu culture. take hindu as your geographical identity not as religion.

47000 muslims children study in RSS schools, 271 muslims teacher in RSS schools. Owaisi generates votes by hate politics to get muslims votes, just like congress uses divide and rule as a party policy.

Dont forget RSS is the only party which has a muslim wing called RMM , muslims who are part of RMM are nationalists and have a say in BJP working. I have never met anyone from RSS, but I met muslim member of RSS, after I met him, he changed my view about RSS, cause like you I use to read all kinds of shit from NDTV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llr9p...

If you like Nationalism, or are a patriotic Indian irrespective of religion u will like RSS, so long you are not a hardcore wahabhi , cause wahhabism asks you to be more arab culture and not committed to your nation disconnect from your own roots,.so if you like the arab culture and feel that is more your identity you will not like RSS. But other then that all that you see in media is anti RSS propaganda of congress party to rule india.

Have you ever seen RSS doing these things -
1) stoning women for adultery,
2) Killing the Gays,
3) killing the non-believers ( kafirs ),
4) Doing ethnic cleansing to build an Islamic caliphate where non muslims will not have freedom of speech and have to live under sharia i.e islamic rule
5) chopping off the hands for stealing
6) Blasphemy laws to circumvent freedom of speech.

If you have not seen RSS doing these things then RSS is not ISIS. Any Yezidi child and girl can tell you that RSS is not ISIS.?

Congress party of India has been defaming RSS since ever and ever

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have said it before , I will say it again, India is a federation of failed & quasi-failed states.The rich & the goons rule , the middle class don't care & the poor are subject to unfathomable struggles , just to survive.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 1 out of 5]

#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads # Hindutva, Indic

There are polemics that burn with controlled fire, and then there are polemics that set the entire library alight just to prove a point. A.G. Noorani’s book falls squarely in the second category. It is a book so convinced of its thesis, so determined to club the reader into submission, that one wonders if Noorani was less interested in persuading and more interested in exhausting his opponents into silence. It is, in short, a tirade dressed up as history, and while it is undeniably well documented, it suffers from the academic equivalent of screaming into a megaphone for 400 pages.

To be clear: Noorani is not wrong to identify the RSS as a powerful and often problematic force in Indian politics. His decades of legal scholarship and commentary meant he had both the archives and the footnotes ready at hand. He marshals quotations, resolutions, official statements, and a litany of incidents to show the Sangh Parivar’s role in shaping communal politics. In this sense, the book functions as a massive dossier: one part evidence locker, one part prosecutorial brief.

However, here’s the rub: dossiers are not narratives, and prosecutorial briefs are not persuasive essays. The central flaw of Noorani’s book is its refusal to recognise complexity. It is an extended monologue that assumes the case is already closed. Rather than allowing the reader to reach conclusions, Noorani delivers conclusions on every page, hammering the word “menace” into the reader’s skull until it loses all rhetorical force. By the halfway mark, “menace” no longer shocks—it drones.

Every critic has his or her favourite trick, and Noorani’s is repetition. If the RSS is authoritarian, it is also fascist, communalist, reactionary, and proto-Nazi. If they are sectarian, they are also exclusivist, supremacist, and intolerant. The piling up of adjectives is not meant to expand meaning but to flatten nuance. At times, it feels like Noorani is writing in fear that the reader might not have understood him the first twenty times.

This technique produces diminishing returns. The early chapters crackle with energy: the RSS as a secretive cadre organisation, its aversion to constitutionalism, its shadowy cultural influence. However, by the time the same arguments are recycled in later sections, illustrated with different but analogous events, the force of the indictment is dulled. What might have been a sharp essay or even a 200-page critique is instead inflated into a brick of redundancy.

Noorani has no patience for the possibility that the RSS may have evolved, or that its ideology contains internal tensions worth examining. Instead, he treats the organisation as a monolith — unchanged from the 1920s to the 2000s. In doing so, he commits the very sin he accuses the RSS of: ideological rigidity.

To argue that the RSS is a menace is one thing; to argue that it is only a menace, across time and context, is quite another. The BJP’s electoral strategies, the shifting roles of the VHP and Bajrang Dal, the complexities of coalition politics — all of these could have been analysed as part of a living, adaptive network. Instead, Noorani gives us a caricature: a single-minded hydra whose heads are different names but whose brain is unchanged since Hedgewar. It makes for easy reading but shallow analysis.

Perhaps Noorani’s background as a constitutional lawyer explains the style: the book reads like an extended legal brief. Every paragraph is a piece of evidence, every quotation an exhibit, every conclusion foregone. The courtroom, however, is a poor model for historical writing. In a trial, the goal is to convict. In history, the goal is to understand. Noorani’s insistence on conviction-at-all-costs means he often sacrifices understanding for rhetoric.

For example, his comparisons of the RSS to European fascist movements are wielded like a blunt instrument. There are certainly parallels — uniforms, paramilitary drills, leader-worship — but the historical and cultural contexts differ dramatically. By stretching the analogy too far, Noorani risks undermining his own credibility. Readers who might be sympathetic to his critique of communalism roll their eyes when they encounter yet another strained Nazi comparison.

Let us admit: polemics can be fun. Christopher Hitchens, Arundhati Roy, even Perry Anderson — whatever one thinks of their politics, they write with verve, sarcasm, a delight in the cut-and-thrust of intellectual combat. Noorani, alas, has none of that. His prose is flat, his rhythm monotonous, his anger joyless. He is less a gladiator in the arena than a judge reading out a life sentence in droning tones.

This makes the book exhausting. The reader is battered by evidence, repetition, and certainty, but rarely entertained or seduced. The irony is that the RSS, as a cultural and political movement, is deeply theatrical — pageantry, slogans, mass rallies. One would think a critic could wield some irony, some satirical sting. Instead, Noorani offers grey slabs of indignation.

Another weakness: Noorani’s selective vision. He is so intent on exposing the menace of the RSS that he ignores wider structural or historical factors. Hindu communalism is not a phenomenon that emerged in a vacuum; it is entangled with colonial policies, Congress politics, regional aspirations, and the failures of secular nationalism. Noorani’s refusal to examine these contexts makes his critique feel one-dimensional. It is as though India’s political crises can be reduced to one villainous organisation.

This simplification allows the reader no room for doubt. Yet history is richer when doubt is acknowledged. By refusing to admit complexity, Noorani weakens the force of his critique — not strengthens it.

And yet, for all these flaws, The RSS: A Menace to India cannot be dismissed. It is a monument to persistence: a scholar who has tracked an organisation for decades, who has amassed an archive of statements and actions, who refuses to let historical amnesia set in. For younger readers or those unfamiliar with the RSS’s long shadow, the book is a crash course in the genealogy of Hindutva.

Its value lies not in its style but in its function as a reference work. If one wishes to know what the RSS said about Partition, or about Gandhi, or about secularism, Noorani has the quotes ready. If one needs to trace the links between the Sangh and its affiliates, Noorani’s footnotes provide the map.

But a reference work is not necessarily a compelling book. One consults it; one does not savor it. Noorani’s text will endure as a quarry for future scholars, but as literature, it will be remembered less fondly.

Now, if I were to carve up a roast of the book’s habits, to put it plainly, I’d say:

1) Repetition: If the RSS sneezes on page 10, Noorani will describe the germs again on page 110, page 210, and page 310.

2) Overloaded Adjectives: Why call something “authoritarian” when you can call it “authoritarian, fascist, communalist, exclusivist, and proto-Nazi” in one breath?

3) Rigid Thinking: The RSS is always, forever, unchangingly the same. Evolution is for Darwin, not Hedgewar’s descendants.

4) Prose as Punishment: You will read, and you will suffer. You will be convinced, not by eloquence, but by sheer fatigue.

5) Footnotes as Bludgeons: Where one reference would do, ten are provided. It is scholarship by avalanche.

So where does that leave us? Noorani’s The RSS: A Menace to India is, ironically, itself a menace—to nuance, to narrative, to the pleasures of prose. It is the kind of book that wins debates by attrition, not persuasion. It is indispensable as an archive, but indigestible as a read.

Perhaps, in the end, The RSS: A Menace to India should be read not as a book but as a symptom: of an intellectual who believed that in the face of ideological zeal, only zealotry of another kind could respond. The tragedy is that in becoming so single-minded, Noorani’s critique mirrors the rigidity of his subject.

One leaves the book not enlightened but exhausted, not convinced but relieved to close the covers. And that, for a work of political writing, is the gravest menace of all.

[Ajes]

https://ajespmathew.blogspot.com/2020...

What is at stake is not only the Indian Dream. What is at stake is the soul of India.
Through 25 chapters and 550 pages Constitutional expert, Supreme court lawyer and author of over a dozen books, A.G. Noorani describe how a communal ideology takes shapes in modern India, its adherence towards nazism and fascism, divulge its act during independence moment, and how RSS advance with Ram.
Noorani's study unmasks the political ambitions of RSS. Though RSS is an organisation with no electoral participation it holds the most atrocious political agenda that is making of a 'Hindu Rashtra'. In a period where Indias dreams had been changed from tagorean 'Idea of India' to Savarkar's Hindutva, the book will give you a clear picture of history.
Decoding RSS means decoding one of the largest terrorist organisation, it's about studying how India's society become so communal and understanding how this country became a Jurassic park with two dinosaurs.
When justice is hampered to 5 Acres and Ram temple become an actuality in a secular country we should remember that the true ram of India had been murdered by RSS in 1948 January 30.
And yet, despite its reach and seemingly overwhelming political influence, the author shows that the RSS can be defeated. The soul of India can be rescued.

[Nagarajan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An insight into RSS formation, journey and functioning. Especially whats the role and standing on India's independence, Gandhi's assassination, formation & rise of BJP covering through extensive details and insights. A must read book to know about India's most powerful organisation and their funtioning.

[Sanjay Banerjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-researched book providing the history of RSS since its inception and its role! Also provided in the Appendix are the numerous correspondences that its then Sarsanghchalaks carried out with ruling Govts from time to time.

[Ambika · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true tome on the right-wing organization, its history and propaganda machinery. I realize Christophe Jaffrelot's book is supposed to be the authoritative voice on this subject, but I am glad I picked this one up since it gave more recent insights up to the 2019 elections as well.

[Yogesh Beniwal · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very detailed and accurate account of things being told in a matter of fact manner rather than brainwashing narrative, a must read for people who want to find out what’s actually been happening in the country

[Ayush · Rating 5 out of 5]

pretty good to understand how BJP works and how it takes decision

but its a scholar work so you will need to have quite a interest in history to like it but I LOVED IT!!!!!!

If you arent intimidated by history then I would recommend you this

[Iqra Tasmiae]

https://www.thehindu.com/books/best-n...

[Royce Raju Beena · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed study about why and how the future of India is in fascist hands

[Youshay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great scholarly work for ages to come

[Ram · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the extensive appendices extremely informative.