OPINION | The RSS and the limits of western ‘right-wing’ labels

The RSS believes in organising society around the concept of Dharma.

As the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) celebrates its centenary, it is an opportune moment to revisit one of the most persistent descriptions attached to the organisation: that it is a "right-wing" entity. Routinely applied by most of the English-language media and large sections of academia, it appears to reflect a lack of understanding driven by Western intellectual frameworks that are unarguably ill-suited to India’s civilisational realities.

The labelling of the RSS as a right-wing organisation is an outcome of the intellectual frameworks inherited from Western political theory. The categories of "Left" and "Right" have a historical context whose origin is the French Revolution of 1789.

Those who favoured more power for the King were seated on the right in the French National Assembly after the revolution, and those who wanted less power for the King were seated on the left. This led to the emergence of the terms "right-wing" and "left-wing."

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the emergence of nation-states in the West and ideologies like capitalism and communism cemented the ideological construct of "Left vs Right wing." During the Cold War, it became further formalised. The "Right Wing" came to be equated with "conservatism" that believed more in protecting and preserving old traditions and institutions as well as the "free market" policy. The Left wing came to be associated with a more radical ideology of carrying out a revolution and installing a government of the working class.

Both these constructs are rooted in the concept of the nation-state and the Western concept of nationalism, which is a recent phenomenon. As noted historian David Sassoon, who earned his PhD under Eric Hobsbawm—one of the foremost authorities on Western nationalism—observed in his introduction to a collection of essays and lectures by Hobsbawm, On Nationalism: "In Europe, nationalism was the product of the ‘dual revolutions’, the French Revolution and the British Industrial Revolution."

Samuel P. Huntington made an important observation in his seminal work The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order:

“In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilisational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.”

Unlike the West, the RSS believes in organising society around the concept of Dharma. Leading thinkers of the RSS such as M.S. Golwalkar, Dattopant Thengadi, and Deendayal Upadhyay have rejected both "capitalism" and "communism" as unviable frameworks of governance for India.

All six RSS chiefs have mentioned on different occasions in their speeches that if anything from the past is not relevant today—be it a scripture or a tradition—then that should not be carried forward. The RSS has also not been in favour of a "free market" economy, which runs on the concept of "supply creates its own demand" and hence promotes reckless consumerism. Thus, the organisation cannot be straitjacketed into the frame of a "conservative" or "right-wing" organisation.

In fact, one of the core ideological pillars of the RSS is that it doesn’t believe in any "binary", be it "Right vs Left" or "Capitalism vs Communism."

Because Western academia wrongfully equated "religion" with "Dharma", and based on that intellectual framework, the RSS is called a "Right-Wing" organisation.

Unlike the right wing in the West, which is known for its emphasis on market fundamentalism, racial hierarchy, and an authoritarian state, the hallmark of the RSS’ philosophy is social harmony, cultural unity, and moral restraint.

Huntington summed up this argument aptly as he observed: “Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures.”

Thus, to look at an Indian civilisational movement like the RSS from the lens of Western binaries of "left vs right" or "conservative vs progressive" is not merely inaccurate; it is conceptually misleading. The RSS needs to be looked at from the lens of "Dharma."

Thengadi has explained how the RSS looks at "Dharma" in a collection of his work Third Way, a treatise that outlines the broad ideological framework of the organisation:

“Dharma envisages the autonomy of each human group to seek its social fulfilment through its own unique paradigm, and psychological integration of all such groups in a common framework of harmonious and mutually complementary interrelationships of One World—Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam—each group enriching the common human understanding by making its own characteristic contribution to the collective wisdom of humanity.”

The RSS, thus, cannot be equated with any "right-wing" organisation. It is rooted in a civilisational context that dates back millennia, even before the concept of "Left and Right" wings came into existence.

Earlier RSSFACTS columns can be read here.