A fog of mystery surrounds the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—or RSS—the largest cadre-based organisation in the world. Veteran journalist and author of the bestseller Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay lays bare its fascinating, unique and perhaps startling world. He also chronicles the personal and political journeys of the most important men (and one woman) of the Hindu Right-wing, digging up little-known but revealing facts about them.
Through individual stories of the organisation’s tallest leaders - Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Madhav Sadashiv Gowalkar, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Balasaheb Deoras, Deendayal Upadhyaya and others, including Vijaya Raje Scindia, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani and Ashok Singhal - a bigger picture emerges. Also, despite the RSS’s insistence that it has no truck with electoral politics, the group is, and will be, the hand that rocks the BJP’s cradle.
The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right
By: Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay
Publisher: Westland
Pages: 432
Price: Rs 799