RSS registration row: What history tells us

More than fifty years ago, one man posed a question that Karnataka Home Minister Priyank Kharge is asking today.

His name was MD Kamdar. He was not a Congress leader. He was not a Left activist. He was not an ideological opponent of the RSS.

He was an RSS man.

After spending nearly three decades within the organisation, Kamdar went to court in the 1970s and asked a simple question:

What exactly is the RSS? Is it a charitable body? A religious organisation? A political organisation? And if it is any of these things, why is it not registered?

The answers that the RSS gave during those legal battles contain some of the clearest answers to the questions being asked today. It also explains why the RSS has long resisted registering itself as an organisation.

To understand the controversy today, we need to go back more than half a century. To Kamdar’s questions and RSS’ answers. And how its Constitution was changed. 

Let me explain.

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Produced by Megha Mukundan, Script by Pooja Prasanna, Edit by Nikhil Sekhar ET, Camera by Ajay R.