As India celebrated Independence, RSS played a key role in partition relief

Independence Day celebrations: Freedom is not only something to be celebrated — it’s something to be lived. It’s a daily discipline, a shared duty

(RSSFACTS is a column that demystifies the functioning, organisational structure and ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.) 

On 15 August 1947, as the nation celebrated independence from British colonial rule, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was quietly working with full force to bring millions of Hindus and Sikhs safely back to India from Pakistan and provide relief and rehabilitation for them. It had set up relief camps in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Delhi, and West Bengal to provide immediate relief and later worked for the rehabilitation of thousands of families with the help of community support.

The key role in northern India was initially played by the Punjab Relief Committee set up by the RSS in Lahore. Later, it moved to India, and its branches were set up all over Punjab, and eventually extended to Jammu-Kashmir and Delhi. In Punjab, which bore the deadliest brunt of partition with a large number of Hindus and Sikhs killed, raped, and converted to Islam in Pakistan, one of the key branches of this Committee was set up in Amritsar. It started relief and rehabilitation centres for refugees coming from Pakistan at Taran Taran, Khemkaran, Attari, Ajnala, Dera Baba Nanak, and several other places.

White Caps, Black Caps

Manik Chandra Vajpayee and Sridhar Paradkar, who have produced hundreds of oral testimonies in their seminal work ‘Partition-Days: The Fiery Saga of RSS’, recount an interesting incident (pp. 43): "The Amritsar branch of the Punjab Relief Committee was busy providing all possible relief to refugees coming from the west (Punjab). Here too, the (Indian National) Congress organised its ‘Punjab Riots Sufferers Committee’ and set up a camp. But the refugees streaming in were so angry with the Congress that they did not want to see even the faces of Congress workers. They had no faith in them. They trusted the Sangh and the Sangh alone, as Sangh workers had sacrificed their own lives to rescue them and bring them to India from West Punjab. The result was not difficult to imagine. Whenever a train carrying refugees from the West (Punjab) arrived at Amritsar station, Swayamsevaks wearing black caps (that is part of the full uniform of the RSS), representing the Sangh Committee, and Congress Committee representatives wearing white caps would go up to the refugees to take them away. But the refugees would generally say with one voice, ‘We will go with the Black Caps. They rescued us and we trust them; it was because of the White Caps that we had to leave our hearths and homes.’"

Nationwide Relief and Rehabilitation Work

In Batala, the RSS volunteers arranged accommodation for 7,000 refugees; in Madhavpur for 10,000; and in Sujanpur for 3,500. When trouble began in the villages of Shakargarh tehsil on 20 August 1947, the Hindus and Sikhs living there were helped by the Punjab Relief Committee to cross the river Pattan and reach Gurdaspur safely, where the Committee immediately opened a relief camp for 4,000 people. In Abohar, 60,000 people were catered to by the RSS volunteers in its relief camps.

In East Punjab, the relief committee set up camps in Ferozpur, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur, Mandi, Jalalabad, Muktsar, Moga, Jind Talwandi, Ambala, Abohar, Jalandhar, Gurgaon, Fazilka, and Pathankot.

A branch of the relief committee was also opened in Jammu, where nearly three lakh people were helped in various ways at relief camps from March 1947 to October 1947. Later, after the attack by the Pakistani army and tribals, more camps were set up in the second phase during the Indo-Pak war (1947–48). These efforts were led by senior RSS functionaries like Pandit Premnath Dogra and Balraj Madhok, among others.

According to Vajpayee and Paradkar (pp. 47), “Every train coming from Pakistan had bands of swayamsevaks on board. When the train came to a halt at the platform, they helped the refugees take down their meagre belongings and took them to the trucks waiting outside. The kitchens served meals the whole day. Children were given milk, and the ill and ailing were given medical attention.”

In Delhi, looking at the massive influx of refugees, the RSS had set up the Hindu Sahayta Samiti. Around 4,000 to 5,000 Hindus started arriving in Delhi every day after the massacre of Hindus and Sikhs in Rawalpindi by Muslim League cadres, backed by the local police and administration. Delhi's state head of the RSS (Sanghchalak), Lala Hanraj Gupta, headed this Samiti, and a well-known advocate, VP Joshi, was its general secretary. The RSS volunteers were stationed round the clock at the railway station where trains carrying refugees were arriving. After helping them with some food and immediate relief, the RSS volunteers helped them reach one of the four camps in Delhi for these refugees. Hundreds of RSS swayamsevaks worked at these camps.

In addition to the relief work, the RSS volunteers also patrolled the city streets during the night to keep Hindus safe from any communal attacks by Muslim mobs. Hundreds of public meetings were held by the Sangh with local residents to help them organise themselves to ensure their safety while also contributing to the relief and rehabilitation of the uprooted Hindus and Sikhs.

According to Vajpayee and Paradkar, “On 24 August, a mammoth public meeting of 50,000 people was held at Ramlila ground under the auspices of (Hindu Sahayata) Samiti. In this meeting, which continued for three hours, the Muslim League’s misdeeds were exposed, and Hindu society was put on guard. The meeting criticised the fact that the Bihar government had sanctioned ₹2 crore for a handful of Muslims in the State, while the Central government had sanctioned only ₹10 lakh for 55 lakh Hindus of Punjab. The local papers did not report the meeting... Local newspapers were under government pressure, so they did not give proper publicity to the Samiti’s work.”

Earlier RSSFACTS columns can be read here.